Nio’s family oriented sub-brand Onvo is upgrading both the hardware and software of its assisted driving system.
The changes include a LiDAR-equipped variant for the refreshed L90 SUV and a major update to its ‘Coconut’ operating system.
The tow year old brand announced the upcoming ‘Coconut’ OS 3.0 software update on Tuesday, while announcing that the rollout is planned for July.
The update represents the most significant overhaul of Onvo‘s software platform since the brand launched on May 15, 2024 — the International Family Day.
The new iteration includes improvements on the driver assistance, the cabin, chassis intelligence, and underlying system performance.
What Coconut 3.0 Brings
The headline feature is a full iteration of the end-to-end intelligent driving model.
According to a presentation slide shown during the event, the update will deliver major improvements to urban and highway navigation assist, introduce a human-machine co-driving mode, and add personalized parking spot selection.
The cockpit is also getting upgraded. Onvo‘s in-car voice assistant ‘Xiao Le’ will gain a new vehicle assistant agent and improved voice recognition performance.
The system will also add themed cabin spaces.
On the chassis side, Coconut 3.0 introduces smart control logic for wet road surfaces, slippery road joints, and epoxy-floor parking garages — conditions that commonly affect ride quality and traction in Chinese cities.
The underlying performance improvements are equally notable.
Through SkyOS — Nio‘s full-domain operating system — resource occupancy has been cut by 37%, average CPU usage has dropped by 33%, and the number of SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture) services has grown by 25%.
A Long Road to a Real ADAS Update
The July timeline would deliver on a promise that has been outstanding since January.
Onvo brand chief Fei Shen told owners at an offline event at the start of the year that a major iteration of the pure-vision ADAS would arrive after the Spring Festival holiday in mid-February.
That update did not materialize.
Instead, Onvo rolled out Coconut 2.1.5 in late March — a cabin-focused update that refined audio settings, added Dolby Atmos support through QQ Music, and expanded the ‘Xiao Le’ voice assistant’s command set. It did not include any driver assistance changes.
The 2.1.5 release arrived nearly four months after Coconut 2.1.0, which Onvo pushed in late December 2025.
That update had been the first to integrate urban navigation and parking assistance into Nio‘s unified end-to-end City Pilot system.
The L90, Onvo‘s second model, ran Coconut 2.0 at launch.
The software was described at the time as the ‘NT.Coconut 2.0 Smart System’ — coordinating smart cabin, smart driving, vehicle control, and smart connectivity.
New Hardware
The Coconut 3.0 preview came during the launch of the revamped 2026 L90, which marks a significant hardware upgrade for the sub-brand.
The updated SUV replaces the Nvidia Orin-X chip with Nio‘s in-house Shenji NX9031 — a 5-nanometer autonomous driving processor already deployed across the main Nio brand.
Upon the model’s launch in July, Nio‘s founder and CEO William Li had stated that the company’s Shenji NX9031 chip would only be used in vehicles from the group’s main brand — at least while production capacity was still limited.
The 2026 L90 is also the first Onvo model to feature LiDAR, ending the pure-vision approach the sub-brand had promoted since its debut.
The sensor is roof-mounted in a watchtower-style layout matching Nio‘s premium vehicles.
The LiDAR variant will be sold alongside the existing vision-only version, which will continue to receive OTA updates.
L80 and Beijing Auto Show
The L90 launch comes days before the Beijing Auto Show, which runs from April 24 to May 3.
The three marques will share a single booth for the first time, after Onvo had a separate one at the Shanghai Auto Show last year — with which the Beijing event alternates biannually.
Onvo is expected to present the L80 — a five-seat variant of the L90 that shares most of its components — during the event.
Co-founder and President Qin Lihong said last month that the L80’s pricing will slot between the L60 and L90.
Deliveries are expected to begin in mid-May, timed to coincide with Onvo‘s second anniversary on May 15.
The L80 will be available in both pure-vision and LiDAR versions, unlike the L60, which has so far remained vision-only — although a regulatory filing revealed a LiDAR-equipped version of the debut model earlier this year.
Nio CEO William Li identified the ES9 and the L80 as the company’s top priorities for the second quarter at an internal meeting earlier this month.
