Nio aims to boost NOP+ coverage to 200,000 kilometers of urban roads by the first quarter of 2024.
(Image credit: CnEVPost)
Nio (NYSE: NIO) is bringing its ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance System) software, NOP+ (Navigate on Pilot Plus), to urban roads, becoming the latest local electric vehicle (EV) maker to do so.
NOP+'s coverage will extend from highways to urban roads, providing users with a point-to-point smart driving experience with full-area access, Nio's vice president of smart driving R&D, Ren Shaoqing, announced at the Nio IN 2023 innovation day event yesterday.
Unlike its major peers, including Xpeng (NYSE: XPEV) as well as Li Auto (NASDAQ: LI), which plan to advance the feature's coverage by city, Nio has chosen to advance the effort by road mileage.
In the fourth quarter of this year, the number of route miles capable of using NOP+'s urban area pilot-assisted driving will reach 60,000 kilometers, Ren said.
In the first quarter of 2024, that number will be boosted to 200,000 kilometers, and by the second quarter of 2024 it will reach 400,000 kilometers, he said.
(Image credit: Nio)
Similar to Nio's push for battery swap stations, the company will allow users to provide routes they wish to open, which will be prioritized to see coverage of the NOP+ feature.
At the end of September, Nio will allow users to submit wish lists. Starting in October, Nio will offer full-area pilot-assisted driving for these routes based on its operational plans and road conditions.
Nio's next-generation static awareness network, NAD Lane 2.0, senses intersection information in real-time, eliminating the need to rely on high-definition maps, according to Ren.
NAD (Nio Autonomous Driving) has reached 38,100 POPS of distributed computing power in its fleet of group intelligence systems, which will help NOP+ not rely on HD maps and be able to evolve in real-time, he said.
NOP+ is Nio's advanced assisted driving feature based on its NT 2.0 platform that enables a point-to-point assisted driving experience.
On December 27, 2022, Nio began recruiting the first beta testers for NOP+. On July 1 this year, NOP+ came out of beta and started accepting subscriptions at RMB 380 ($52) per month.
The company said on July 1 that with the official version of NOP+, Nio brought a new BEV (Bird's Eye View) design and occupancy network awareness model and switched to the same technology stack as NAD.
On September 13, Nio said that users had accumulated more than 500 million kilometers of driving with NOP and NOP+.
Nio's main local counterparts, on the other hand, are advancing the available range of their ADAS software by city.
At the launch of the new G9 SUV on September 19, He Xiaopeng, chairman and CEO of Xpeng, said the company's XNGP (Navigation Guided Pilot) will cover 50 cities in China by the end of the year.
XNGP is a full-scenario assisted driving system, and Xpeng's goal is for it to provide driving assistance in all scenarios, including highways, city roads, internal park roads, and parking lots. As of today, XNGP is available in 5 cities including Guangzhou, Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Foshan.
By 2024, Xpeng's coverage of this feature will expand to 200 cities, Mr. He said at the time.
Li Auto will begin internal testing of the commuter NOA (Navigation on ADAS) in September for early bird users, and the feature will initially cover 10 cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, it announced on August 25.
($1 = RMB 7.3026)
Nio's NOP+ driver assistance software available on Beijing's ring roads and major highways
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