NIO is designing its second NP2 platform, which will research on L4 autonomous driving technology, skipping L3. “If this happens, we will be the first automakers with L4 technology,” LI Bin said.
NIO (蔚来) has announced plan to reduce its workforce by 3% as it works to optimize its organization efficiency, the company’s founder and CEO LI Bin (William Li, 李斌) told in an internal letter reported by Sina.
The company has seen a fast-growing development in the past four years and established an international organization. However, redundant departments, unclear mission and obligation, and money-losing staffers baffled the company. Thus, NIO will be reconstructing its businesses and related employees to suit the development strategy, as NIO replied to an alleged former employee’s opening post (see more in this article). After the reconstructing, the company will have 9,500 workforces in total.
Selling, general and administrative expenses in the fourth quarter of 2018 were CNY 1,945.4 million (USD 282.9 million), representing an increase of 130.0% from the fourth quarter of 2017 and an increase of 16.5% from the third quarter of 2018. NIO says that it is partly due to"increased number of selling, general and administrative employees", according to its latest quarterly report.
Improving operation efficiency is the company’s second mission, according to LI. To save money, the company will optimize and adjust its program budgets. In addition, the company will guarantee highly using efficiency of its existing infrastructure including power service network, NIO House and demonstrator cars. NIO also plans to raise its gross profit by raising employees' awareness of costs.
Another two mission for the company is to improve user satisfaction and build its second NP2 platform, LI wrote.
LI urges every staff to develop user development plan. ”It’s not a job only for User Experience department, ” LI said. LI also pointed out ES6 is NIO’s strategic product which will be ready for delivery in June. All the involved departments including engineering, supply chain, software, XPT, manufacturing, quality assurance, service operation, and local sales shall work together to make sure the delivery. The company also propaganda perfect offline branding including test driving and activities.
For the third mission to complete its NP2 platform, the company addressed that it is essential for the company’s future plan, which is, obviously, autonomous driving. NIO will define and design its first product based on the platform. NIO also plans to build its autonomous driving and supply chain cooperation relationship. As for road testing, the company wants to launch self-driving fleets at a certain scale.
The company has received a road testing license from the Beijing government in Jan (see more in this article) with only one granted car.
At the beginning of this month, NIO has launched an autonomous driving user communication conference in Beijing. Jamie Carlson, VP of Autonomous Driving and Advanced Driver Assist teams at NIO announced that the company will release Adaptive Cruise Control this April. Highway pilot, Traffic Jam pilot, and Auto parking assist will be available in June, reported by Sohu.
In the conference, LI Bin said that NIO is designing its second NP2 platform, which will research on L4 autonomous driving technology, skipping L3. LI claimed the company could achieve L4 autonomous driving in three years. “If this happens, we will be the first automakers with L4 technology,” LI Bin said.