NIO said to develop its own autonomous driving chips

Shanghai (Gasgoo)- Chinese EV startup NIO is planning to develop its own computing chips for autonomous driving, while the project, which is mainly driven by NIO's chairman and CEO William Bin Li, is still at its early stage, a local media outlet reported on October 21.

Although the project has not been discussed by the board of directors, William Bin Li's intention has been clear. He is mulling over the final architecture and is ready to communicate with senior executives and shareholders ahead of schedule, according to the local report, citing persons briefed on the matter.

To support the project, NIO has also set up an independent hardware team internally named “Smart HW (Hardware)”. According to the report, William Li has been looking for talents with technical backgrounds of silicon-based substance R&D to lead the project.

At the Chengdu Motor Show 2020, William Li disclosed the possibility that NIO will develop its own autonomous driving chips. He said, in the long term, ADAS will be improved from four aspects of chips, system, algorithm and data, and NIO will definitely develop full-stack capabilities.

Responding to the request from Gasgoo, NIO said it has kept investing in autonomous driving technologies. As for the concret technical roadmap and relevant details about the hareware & software R&D, NIO will communicate with shareholders and users when the timing is prepared.Currently, it is unable to comment on the rumor.

NIO announced on August 31 the pricing of the offering of 88,500,000 American depositary shares (the “ADSs”) at a price of $17.00 per ADS and said it will grant the underwriters in the ADS Offering a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 13,275,000 ADSs, seeking to raise $1.5 billion to $1.726 billion.

The company plans to use the net proceeds from the ADS Offering mainly to increase the share capital of and the Company's ownership in NIO China, to repurchase equity interests held by certain minority shareholders of NIO China, and for the R&D in autonomous driving technologies, global market development and general corporate purposes.