Who is latest Nvidia autonomous vehicle partner NIO?

Chinese automobile manufacturer NIO is one of a bevy of autonomous electric vehicle producers founded in recent years.

It has set itself apart from the pack by virtue of efforts including a Formula E racing team, and its development of an electric hypercar, the EP9.

The company has recently announced its first saloon, a director competitor to Tesla’s Model S. The ET7 is expected to reach Chinese customers first in 2022, boasting an industry -leading 150kWh battery.

It’s efforts in the autonomous vehicle space have also drawn attention, having first been granted an autonomous testing permit in California in 2016. Its NIO Pilot autonomous system was launched in 2018, ranked level 2 on the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) Levels of Driving Automation Standard. Level 2 denotes a vehicle with automated steering and acceleration features, such as stay-in-lane and self-parking.

NIO recently announced a partnership with American tech firm Nvidia to develop a new generation of autonomous vehicles, using Nvidia’s DRIVE Orin SoC to power an in-built supercomputer slated to appear in its vehicles starting in 2022.

In a press release, William Li, Founder, Chairman and CEO of NIO, said: “The cooperation of NIO and NVIDIA will accelerate the development of autonomous driving on smart vehicles. NIO’s in-house developed autonomous driving algorithms will be running on four industry-leading NVIDIA Orin processors, delivering an unprecedented 1000+ TOPS in production cars.”

“Autonomy and electrification are the key forces transforming the automotive industry,” said Jensen Huang, NVIDIA founder and CEO. “We are delighted to partner with NIO, a leader in the new energy vehicle revolution—leveraging the power of AI to create the software-defined EV fleets of the future.”

It closed out last year with the announcement that it had achieved record vehicle deliveries in December totalling 7,007, increasing by 121% year over year.