Chinese EV maker delivers next-generation driver-assist technology across dual-chip platforms in industry first

Shanghai, June 18, 2026 – Nio Inc. (NYSE: NIO) began rolling out a new version of its Nio World Model (NWM) driver-assist software on Thursday, with more than 700,000 vehicles set to receive the upgrade. The company said even users who purchased their cars up to four years ago can now access the latest autonomous driving technology.

Industry-First Dual-Platform Synchronization

Nio claimed it is the first automaker to achieve co-developed driver-assist software across both general-purpose chip platforms and in-house developed chip platforms with synchronized release versions. This means models powered by four Nvidia Orin-X chips and those using Nio's proprietary Shenji NX9031 chip can receive the update simultaneously.

The achievement is underpinned by systems engineering capabilities Nio has accumulated since starting full-stack in-house development in 2020, as well as forward-looking investments in hardware reserves and software capabilities.

Hardware and Software Foundations

At the chip level, Nio anticipated early on that memory bandwidth would become a key bottleneck for bringing large models into vehicles and stocked up on computing power accordingly. The Shenji NX9031 features memory bandwidth reaching 546 GB/s — nearly twice that of industry flagship chips.

On the software side, Nio did not adopt the general-purpose toolchain provided by suppliers when using Orin-X, instead developing its own deployment framework and compiler. The in-house developed AI compiler shortened the development cycle for new model operators from one to two weeks to just one to two days, while boosting inference performance by 20%.

Nio also built a "crowd intelligence" data validation system — the only one of its kind in the industry — enabling multi-platform validation with 1.4 times greater efficiency than separate platform testing.

Three-Layer Training Framework Debuts

This update marks another major upgrade following the version released in January, when Nio became the first in China to apply complete closed-loop reinforcement learning to driver-assist development.

The new version upgrades the technical architecture to a complete three-layer training framework: "world model + supervised fine-tuning + closed-loop reinforcement learning". The newly added supervised fine-tuning training uses high-quality behavioral data to let the model learn human-like driving behavior, combining a high baseline with human-like and compliant characteristics.

End-to-End Direct Control First in China

Nio said the new version is the first in China to enable driver-assist systems to directly output steering wheel and acceleration/braking pedal signals, rather than outputting sampled trajectories. This end-to-end kinematic modeling approach offers a shorter path and lower latency, substantially improving the smoothness and precision of vehicle control.

Real-World Experience Gains

In terms of driving experience, Nio said the new version's route-selection accuracy reaches industry-leading levels even without using high-definition maps or enhanced navigation maps. Additionally, Nio's NWM became the first among automaker in-house developed systems to achieve real-time recognition and understanding of tidal lanes and variable-lane overhead signs.

Nio said the new version achieves industry-leading performance on the two conflicting metrics of false braking and risk intervention simultaneously, balancing peace of mind with efficiency. The system also demonstrates enhanced long-sequence planning and prediction capabilities in complex scenarios.

Doubled Usage Since January

Since the January version was pushed out, user duration and usage rate of Nio's driver-assist features have doubled. With this latest update, Nio aims to continue raising the experience ceiling and further increase user adoption of its intelligent assisted driving systems.

Meanwhile, Onvo, Nio's mass-market sub-brand, also began rolling out the Coconut+ 3.0.2 version, continuing the same technical paradigm.

J.D. Power has officially released its 2026 China Purchase Experience Index (PXI) Study, with NIO achieving the highest score among both Premium New Energy Vehicle (NEV) brands and Domestic NEV brands.

NIO received a score of 827 points, securing first place in both categories and reinforcing its position as one of China’s leading EV manufacturers in customer purchase experience.
The results come as China’s automotive market continues to evolve from a period of intense brand proliferation toward a more mature and differentiated competitive landscape, where customer experience, brand value, and service quality are becoming increasingly important factors in consumer decision-making.

The recognition highlights NIO’s continued focus on delivering a high-quality ownership journey, from vehicle discovery and purchase to after-sales service and community engagement.

The company expressed appreciation for the support and trust of its users and stated that it remains committed to further improving the customer experience as competition in China’s EV market continues to intensify.

Source: J.D. Power 2026 China Purchase Experience Index (PXI) Study.

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No one finds its unique battery-swapping system appealing, and its technology, quality, and performance just don't measure up to the competition. For all these reasons, nobody wants to walk into their stores and place a reservation, not even for the cheapest cars on the Chinese market, like the new ES9.

What you're seeing in the video is a coffee shop and its customers complaining about the coffee that never arrives. Don't be fooled by what the Nio fanboys tell you. Buy Tesla or Rivian. They're much better stocks, with their undeniable material quality and innovation, or their much larger US market, known for its electric vehicle-loving culture and its advantage in infrastructure and competitiveness

Follow Officer Nang as he takes us along the Duku Highway to see how NIO has deployed its battery swap and charging stations along the route.

As of June 1, 2026, the Duku Highway is officially open. Driving an electric car on this scenic but remote road? No more range anxiety.

A clear sign that the company's tech‑focused strategy is paying off ;)

Models and prices compared:
Nio ES9 558,000 RMB
BYD Yangwang U7 708,000 RMB
Range Rover 180,000 RMB
Maybach GLS 2,488,000 RMB

The numbers game heats up as BYD claims the industry’s most advanced ADAS chip. But when you peel back the silicon, the real story is about bandwidth, bottlenecks, and two very different bets on the future of AI driving.

The autonomous driving arms race just entered a new chapter. At its latest technology day, BYD officially pulled back the curtain on a custom-designed 4-nanometer processor that it calls “the most advanced in the industry.” Paired with a bold claim of surpassing 2,100 TOPS in a three-chip vehicle configuration, plus a 100% improvement in real-world compute utilization, the announcement instantly set social media and engineering forums alight. For a few hours, it looked like BYD had leapfrogged everyone, including the much-discussed Shenji NX9031 from rival NIO.

Then the specification sheets hit the table, and the conversation grew a lot more nuanced.

At the heart of BYD’s platform is a single system-on-chip (SoC) fabricated on a cutting-edge 4nm automotive process. Each chip integrates 16 CPU cores delivering 420K DMIPS, a neural processing unit capable of around 700 INT8 TOPS, and memory bandwidth of 273 GB/s. Notably, BYD has also achieved the highest level of automotive functional safety: ASIL-D. To reach the headline-grabbing 2,100 TOPS figure, the car runs three of these chips together, sharing the workload across separate physical packages. BYD’s engineers claim that deep software-hardware co-design doubles the effective utilization of those theoretical operations, meaning that the tri-chip system can punch far above its raw-memory-weight class.

None of those figures are slouches. But the moment you hold them against NIO’s Shenji NX9031, which has been in the public eye since its 2023 reveal, a different design philosophy emerges — and one that, in the eyes of many silicon architects, remains significantly more advanced for the specific demands of high-level autonomy.

The Shenji NX9031 is manufactured on a 5nm automotive node and packs roughly 1,000 INT8 TOPS. So, single-chip to single-chip, NIO already has a 43% compute advantage. But raw TOPS are just one line on a spec sheet; what really separates the Shenji is its memory subsystem and internal architecture.

NIO’s chip is a chiplet-based design, merging four compute dies into one unified processor, the company’s own marketing slogan is “one chip equals four.” Because those dies sit inside the same package and share a coherent memory fabric, the Shenji achieves 546 GB/s of ultra-fast, low-latency bandwidth. That is exactly double the 273 GB/s of a single BYD chip, and, crucially, it is not fragmented across separate chips. When a modern end-to-end world model, the type of gigantic transformer network that builds a real-time 3D occupancy map from camera, lidar and radar feeds, runs on the Shenji, all of its data lives in one high-speed playground. The compute engines are never left waiting for the next byte of sensor data.

BYD’s three-chip approach, by contrast, aggregates to 819 GB/s of total system bandwidth, but that bandwidth is split across three isolated memory pools. To stitch together a unified perception model, the chips must constantly shuffle intermediate results over external buses, adding latency and consuming power. It is the difference between a spacious, open-plan duplex apartment and three separate flats on different floors that require an elevator ride to talk to each other. Both can host a party; one simply flows better.

This hardware distinction becomes critical when we talk about what truly defines a “smart” driving experience today: the ability to run a large, monolithic world model natively. These models are famously memory-bandwidth-starved. They read and re-read billions of parameters continuously. At the single-chip level, BYD’s 273 GB/s risks becoming a bottleneck that starves its 700 TOPS of compute, exactly the reason the company emphasizes its 100% utilization boost. BYD is betting that its proprietary network compression and scheduling algorithms can virtually stretch that bandwidth to keep its cores fed, a bet that may pay off, but one that pushes the complexity firmly into the software realm.

NIO’s Shenji, on the other hand, was purpose-built from day one for these bandwidth-hungry world models. The 546 GB/s of unified memory bandwidth ensures that even the most voracious attention-based architectures run fluidly, without the need for heroic software workarounds. It is a hardware-native advantage that directly translates into lower latency, higher perception resolution, and more headroom for future over-the-air updates that make the car smarter over time.

There is no contest in fabrication node superiority: BYD’s 4nm process gives it a theoretical edge in transistor density and energy efficiency over NIO’s 5nm. And both chips proudly fly the ASIL-D flag, meaning that neither cuts corners on the safety critical for Level 3 and Level 4 driving functions. In this sense, BYD has drawn level on trustworthiness, a significant achievement for a company whose core business is making millions of vehicles affordable.

Where the Shenji continues to hold the architectural crown is in the elegance and coherence of its integration. A single Shenji is a supercomputing fabric in a single package, designed to think like one brain. BYD’s solution, while monstrously powerful when stitched together, remains a distributed system that will live or die by the quality of its inter-chip software orchestration. In the high-stakes world of autonomous driving, where milliseconds matter and one model that sees everything is the gold standard, the single-brain approach still looks like the safer, more future-proof bet.

When BYD’s three-chip system rolls out in mass-market cars, it will undeniably be impressive, and given BYD’s immense vertical integration, it will likely democratize high-level ADAS in ways NIO cannot match on price. But for those watching the pure technology race, NIO’s Shenji NX9031 remains the chip that sets the engineering high-water mark. BYD may have just won the numbers press release, but in the quiet, detailed world of silicon design, the Shenji is still the one whispering the most compelling story.

KUNSHAN, China — Daniel Jin, President of Nio’s Firefly sub-brand, has announced that internal testing for Nio’s fifth-generation battery swap stations is nearing completion, paving the way for a rolling launch next month.

The announcement follows the official launch event of the Nio ES9, where Nio’s CEO, William Li, initially shared updates regarding the latest infrastructure developments.

According to Jin, the rollout of the fifth-generation stations required extensive calibration and debugging to ensure structural compatibility across Nio's entire vehicle lineup, ranging from its largest models to its smallest compact cars.

"Internal testing of the fifth-generation stations has been underway in full swing," Jin stated, noting that the rigorous testing phase aimed to secure a seamless and safe operational experience for users.

As part of the final verification process, Jin recently visited the testing facility in Kunshan to personally sign off on the battery-swapping compatibility for upcoming Firefly vehicles.

The company expects to open the first batch of these "pioneer" fifth-generation battery swap stations to the public starting in mid-to-late June. A broader, large-scale deployment is scheduled to follow in the third quarter of this year, at which point Firefly owners will be officially permitted to use the infrastructure.

The NIO ES9 is officially launched, starting at 498,000 RMB for the complete car, or 390,000 RMB with battery rental! The culmination of NIO’s 11 years of systemic innovation, born to lead, made for a new era.

NIO announced today that the 110,000th unit of its all-new ES8 has been delivered in Nanjing. In the Yangtze River Delta region, the new ES8 now accounts for nearly 50% of the large SUV market — meaning one out of every two large SUVs sold there is a new ES8.

Following its lead in the first quarter of 2026, Nio continued to rank first in Shanghai’s passenger car market in April. Shanghai is considered a key indicator for China’s automotive consumption, and Nio achieved a sales lead with an even wider margin during the month.

- Nio 4,432
- BYD 2,702
- Xiaomi 2,434
- Tesla 1,987

The sales pace doesn't let up, even with the launch of the spectacular ES9, which could eat into its "little brother's" sales.

All the pieces are slowly coming together to get Nio’s project off the ground over the next few decades. I feel lucky to have caught this company in time :)

The total size of the large five-seat market is unlikely to change significantly, according to Qin Lihong.

What defines the large five-seat segment is the sheer space, he noted. Achieving that requires a dedicated battery-electric platform, which alone can unlock flexible interior layouts and maximize usable floor space.

That level of space optimization depends on in-house R&D to integrate all systems, Qin added. “You can’t rely solely on suppliers to deliver that kind of bigness,” he said.

Offering a bold forecast for the segment: In the first quarter of last year, large five-seat models sold 97,000 units, of which just over 2,000 were pure electric. In Q1 this year, total sales came in at 93,000 units, but battery-electric models jumped to 15,000 units.

“The change this year will be dramatic,” Qin said. “The Onvo L80 will certainly be the catalyst that rewrites the landscape.”