Written by Cláudio Afonso | LinkedIn | X
On Sunday, the electric vehicle (EV) maker Nio hosted in Shanghai the second edition of its annual Tech Day event, the NioIN.
At the event, Founder and CEO William Li unveiled updates on SkyOS — Nio’s in-house developed operating system — a new generation of the Nio Phone.
He also introduced the world’s first 5nm AD chip and other in-house developed technologies that will integrate with the upcoming vehicle platform, NT3.
After launching its first smartphone last year, the company has upgraded the Nio Phone model aiming to empower the brand’s ecosystem while providing Nio drivers a better experience between their car and their phone.
The model is equipped with SkyUI and NOMI GPT, the advanced version of Nio’s in-car AI assistant NOMI. So far, the phone has only been available in the Chinese market.
The phone is equipped with a Gen-3 Snapdragon 8 processor and offers up to 1 TB of storage. Prices remain consistent with last year’s inaugural version, ranging from RMB 6,499 ($896) to RMB 7,499 ($1,034).
During the event, the chief executive also announced the full release of SkyOS, Nio’s vehicle operating system initially revealed in 2023 that unifies the management of vehicle connectivity, control, intelligent driving, digital cockpit, and smartphone applications.
Speaking to the local media Sina Technology, William Li said he’s open to share the operating system with other automakers.
“Nio developed the full-domain operating system from scratch. For many vehicle scenarios, especially in critical key performance indicators, our system has a much higher upper limit and performs better. We are open to sharing it with the entire industry. Internally, we have different brands and models, and our engineers need to build services and applications based on this toolchain. Without a good toolchain, efficiency is compromised internally,” he stated.
However, the chief executive warned that licensing the software is not the company’s priority.
“We have the foundation to share our system with the entire industry, but our priority is to perfect our own operations first. Sharing with the industry is not our top priority yet. However, some component partners are willing to use some of our modules or kernels because other systems may not be as efficient or cost-effective for them. We are willing to share with them. But indeed, making the system available to the industry is not our priority. Our first step is to perfect our own operations, using this system internally across different brands, platforms, and models,” Li said.
“The second step is to share it with component partners who cooperate with Nio. The third step is to share it with other companies in the industry, but this will take time, similar to the battery swap process. We need to perfect the process internally, coordinate with Onvo, match our first, second, and third-generation cars, and then open it to other peers. The process is the same,” he concluded.
Written by Cláudio Afonso | LinkedIn | X
