On the evening of December 18th, Li Bin, founder, president and CEO of NIO, unveiled the new coupe ET5 at NIO Day 2021 held in Suzhou. This is the fifth version of NIO after EC6, ES6, ES8, ET7.
This new model with Aquila-NIO super sense system, ADAM-NIO supercomputing platform and 19 auxiliary driving functions has attracted industry attention with the basic price of 328,000 yuan before subsidies and the starting price of 258,000 yuan after BaaS.
All series are equipped with driver assistance hardware and software as standard
On the one hand, the price of ET5 continues NIO's high-priced luxury car positioning; on the other hand, its starting price after BaaS allows it to meet the same price range as Model 3.
Indeed, et5 comes standard with a large number of assisted driving hardware and software, according to the cost calculation method of traditional car companies, its pre-subsidy starting price is fully acceptable.
Check its configuration table, ET5 comes standard with 33 perception hardware (1 high-precision lidar, 7 8-megapixel HD cameras, 4 SONY 3-megapixel high-perception cameras, 5 millimeter wave radars, 12 ultrasonic sensors, 1 main driving perception, 2 high-precision positioning systems, 1 vehicle-to-road collaborative perception), and with Nvidia's 4 autonomous chips Orin, the computing power reaches 1016 TOPS. On the software side, the ET5 also has a car called PanoCinema, which uses AR/VR technology. NIO and AR technology company NREAL jointly launched an ultra-thin AR glasses with a 6-meter line-of-sight, equivalent to 201 inches, and cooperated with NOLO to launch NIO VR Glasses, equipped with ultra-thin Pancake optical lenses, which can achieve the effect of 4 K double eyes. Supported by these hardware systems, ongoing software development and development, as well as the latest 256-color digital lighting and lighting, and the 7.1.4 Dolby Stereo System, PanoCinema will provide a unique and all-round immersive experience for the ET5.
The positioning of autonomous driving by enterprises will become a watershed
If you look at it from the perspective of software-defined cars, or from the perspective of new car manufacturers such as Tesla or Xiaopeng, this price is high, which is not conducive to increasing its sales scale, and in the short term, it cannot dilute the cost of research and development through scale effects.
Some fans of "software-defined cars" believe that these smart hardware, as a surplus design, are actually free or low-cost conditions, because they can pay for the above smart hardware through software such as consumer driver assistance.
In this regard, Qin Lihong, co-founder and president of WEIO, said in an interview with Travel Finance that Weilai insists on taking such a road of high-end products, high-end services, and gradually digesting costs, which is a strategic choice. But high-end does not mean that sales are necessarily small, "today BBA in China, a year is 700,000, 800,000, soon to advance into a million vehicles, high-end market and annual double-digit growth."
Qin Lihong said that for the current Weilai, this high-end positioning method can indeed not allow enterprises to complete cost sharing in the short term, but if we can "achieve half of the BBA - four or five hundred thousand vehicles, we will be finished." According to his point of view, Weilai needs to think farther in the early stage of development, do what should be done well, and use time and growth to digest it, rather than showing great enthusiasm for cost performance now, so that everything cannot be done.
Therefore, "in the final analysis, whether autonomous driving is technology or service, it will become a watershed for various car companies." Qin Lihong believes that there is a very important subtext behind the ET5 NAD subscription: Weilai regards automatic driving as a service. But today, manufacturers sell assisted driving as a function.
Qin Lihong said that now when the car enters automatic driving, it is more like a service. Why? Because, the most important thing in the middle is not a technical problem, but a legal problem, and the main responsibility for assisted driving is borne by the driver, and assisted driving only provides assistance. Automatic driving uses this word, driving safety is the responsibility of the car manufacturer, technology is constantly improving, frankly speaking, the probability of accidents can not be completely circumvented by any platform car. So you should give the choice to the user, you feel mature, you feel the need, you subscribe to it. You feel that there is no need, or are worried about immaturity, you can not subscribe. According to the introduction, starting from the beginning of this year, the full function of NIO's autonomous driving technology NAD will be provided by a monthly subscription model, that is, ADaaS (AD as a Service), and the service fee will be 680 yuan per month.
Now Weilai will automatically become the standard hardware, that is to say, the whole vehicle is standard automatic driving, if the initial subscription rate is not high, but weilai's software research and development sharing time will be longer, but the impact on the financial health of the entire company is relatively small, and it is more fair for users.
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