Following a solid October delivery report on Monday, NIO's collaboration with Mobileye has pushed the company’s rebound.
Image credit: NIO website.
Following a solid October delivery report on Monday,China's EV maker NIO's collaboration with Mobileye has pushed the company’s rebound.
Mobileye is an Israel-based auto sensor developer, making devices that provide warnings for collision prevention and mitigation. It was acquired by Intel in 2017 for USD15.3 billion.
As part of the planned cooperation, NIO will engineer an L4 self-driving system designed by Mobileye, building on Mobileye's level-4 (L4) AV kit, and installing the technology into the second generation of its complete vehicle platform.
Since they experienced financial difficulty and lost their CFO, the buzz around NIO has been loud. However, delivery levels have been growing rather steadily since the start of 2019, especially since July.
China's passenger vehicle market has experienced its first downturn since 2018. From July this year, the CAAM downgraded the annual NEV sales expectations, from 1.6 million to 1.5 million. Even this is still not manageable if the downturn continues.
But there remain reasons for optimism, there's also hope for NIO's long recovery. This partnership between NIO and Mobileye will be the first of its kind, targeting consumer autonomy, engineered for automotive qualification standards, general quality, cost, and scale.
NIO will mass-produce the system for Mobileye and also integrate the technology into its electric vehicle lines for consumer markets and for Mobileye's driverless ride-hailing services. This variant will target an initial release in China, with plans to subsequently expand into other global markets.