- Nio will open the NWM to early adopters for trial in early April, and ET9 is expected to see an update to the smart driving system to NWM at the end of June.
- Nio seems to have focused its efforts on NWM in the field of smart driving over the past year, as local peers have launched end-to-end-based solutions.
Nio (NYSE: NIO) will open the Nio World Model (NWM) for user trials early next month, and all eyes are on whether this will restore recognition for it in the field of smart driving.
The company announced today that it will begin opening the NWM for trial use to pioneer users in early April, but only for Nio models equipped with the Banyan intelligent system, that is, models based on the NT 2.0 vehicle platform.
After the trial is over, the NWM will be open to all Nio models equipped with the Banyan system, according to the company.
The ET9 executive flagship sedan, which will start deliveries on March 29, is expected to see the smart driving system updated to NWM by the end of June, as the system adaptation with the software based on the Shenji smart driving chip is undergoing final verification, according to the company.
The ET9 will support a number of assisted driving functions including active safety and parking assistance in the area of battery swap stations when deliveries begin, Nio said.
Nio is one of the first Chinese electric vehicle (EV) makers to install ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance System) in vehicles, and these features were a key selling point for its cars several years ago.
However, over the past year, Nio seems to have lost its edge in this field, as its local peers have followed Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) in launching end-to-end smart driving solutions and have received acclaim for doing so.
Now it seems that the company has been focusing its efforts on NWM in the field of smart driving.
Nio's vice president of smart driving Ren Shaoqing introduced NWM at the Nio IN 2024 technology day event on July 27, 2024, calling it the world's first smart driving world model.
NWM is a multivariate autoregressive generative smart driving model that can reconstruct the form of the physical world through the understanding of data, thus possessing the ability to imagine, reason, and make decisions, Ren said at the time.
The model can simulate 216 possible scenarios within 100 milliseconds and find the optimal decision from them.
As a generative model, NWM can generate a 120-second synthetic video based on 3 seconds of driving video.
Ren's speech at the time was very technical and did not seem to generate much excitement. But he explained at the time that NWM is superior to end-to-end models, even though end-to-end was rarely of interest to the average consumer at that time.
"Is end-to-end enough? We don't think so, because the end-to-end model does not necessarily have the two core capabilities we just mentioned," Ren said at the time.
The two core capabilities he mentioned refer to two very core human abilities: spatial understanding and temporal understanding.
Ren explained these two abilities at the time as follows:
Spatial cognition is also called the ability to reconstruct an imaginary scene. When we imagine a tree, you don't see it, but it appears in front of your eyes.
Temporal cognition is called imaginative reasoning. You can imagine a tree going through summer, autumn and winter, and the changes in time will appear in your mind.
The six months of time changes in reality are completed in your mind in two seconds. The changes in time are completely reconstructed in your mind.
Ren said that these two abilities together constitute human's cognitive ability of time and space. "We believe that intelligent agents need to have spatial cognition, imaginative reconstruction, and temporal cognition and imaginative reasoning abilities like humans."
Therefore, Nio hoped to build a model that can, like the human brain, have the ability to imagine space and reason about time, Ren said at the time.
NWM is just such a thing, he said, adding that Nio hoped the model would learn the human ability to understand space, reconstruct imagination, and reason about time.
Ren mentioned at the time that Nio had mentioned the existence of such a model at the Nio IN 2023 event a year ago.
"After a year of development, we can now talk to you about this work, and we are preparing to mass produce it next," Ren said at the time.
Here is Ren's speech in Chinese at Nio IN 2024:
Nio also announced NAD Arch 2.0 at last year's Nio IN 2024 event, saying it was an end-to-end architecture that incorporates a world model.
The architecture can generate driving decisions based on raw sensor data, thereby reducing information loss and improving prediction capabilities, according to Nio at the time.
NAD Arch 2.0 would lead to a smarter driving experience that is easier, safer and more human-like, Nio said.
It is unclear whether the NWM will bring praise or disappointment to Nio, but the Chinese smart driving sector has changed dramatically over the past year.
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) has introduced FSD (Full Self-Driving) to China and is offering a free trial for eligible vehicles from March 17 to April 16.
BYD (HKG: 1211, OTCMKTS: BYDDY) has brought smart driving capabilities to models priced as low as RMB 70,000 ($9,670).
Xpeng (NYSE: XPEV), Li Auto (NASDAQ: LI), and Zeekr (NYSE: ZK) have all announced their own self-driving systems based on end-to-end solutions.
($1 = RMB 7.2388)
Nio partners with CATL to create world's largest battery swap network
Related posts on CnEVPost
