Chinese automaker Nio will be able to mass produce its in-house developed autonomous driving (AD) processors within one to two years, according to company hardware Vice President Bai Jian.
Bai made the claim in a recent posting on Chinese social media Weibo.
Bai noted that since the launch of its Nio Technology Platform 1.0 (NT1) the company has been designing its own domain controllers, with production handled by contract manufacturers. He said that Nio has also been developing its own test kits and software for use by the contract manufacturers.
"In the next one to two years, some of (Nio's) key chips, mainly AD chips, will be in-house developed for mass production! Truly full stack, truly in-house developed!" he said in the posting.
Nio founder Bin Li has claimed that the US chip sanctions against China will not affect Nio's operations in the short term, and neither will they have any meaningful impact on the company's long-term strategy. For core technology, Nio's goal is to achieve comprehensive in-house chip development, he said.
Nio has been fast expanding in different market segments, such as automotive chips, batteries and handsets. Asked why the company would devote efforts to developing batteries and ICs, Li said that in order to achieve profitability in 2024, it must be able to generate a gross profit margin of more than 20% from the mass market for cars priced around CNY100,000 (US$13,701) per vehicle. He said that it will not stand a chance of achieving that goal unless it makes its own batteries and ICs.
But Nio's loss widened in the first quarter of 2023, during which sales arrived at CNY10.68 billion, rising 7.7% on year. Its net loss came to CNY4.15 billion in the first quarter of 2023, expanding 216.9% compared to the net loss for the same period of 2022.
Its gross profit margin for the first quarter was only 1.5%, a sharp decrease from 14.6% for the first quarter of 2022. But the company has stressed that it will continue to invest substantially in R&D. Li has said that the company will devote CNY3-3.5 billion to R&D quarterly during 2023.
Nio delivered 54,561 new cars in the first half of 2023, rising 7.35% on year. But that quantity was only 21.82% of its yearly shipment goal of 250,000 vehicles in 2023. Nio will have to deliver more than 32,500 cars monthly on average in the second half of 2023 in order to achieve the annual shipment goal.
Nio delivered 20,500 cars in July, already a sharp rise compared to the monthly average for the first half of 2023. But competition is intensifying in China's new energy car market amid vendors' aggressive pricing campaigns.
Article translated by Rodney Chan
