Latest news with #NioET9
Motor Trend
3 days ago
- Automotive
- Motor Trend
The Era of Cars Running a Single Computer and Operating System Is Here
Is China really 'there' already, producing cars with centralized computers and a hypervisor? Coming out of CES 2025 earlier this year, we covered a Snapdragon innovation Qualcomm was pitching to automakers, capable of running an entire car on a single chip. Now we just returned from China where we drove a similar system by Chinese EV maker Nio—which designed, developed, and manufactured its own chip in-house, along with the software that runs on it. 0:00 / 0:00 See All 5 Photos Chinese Smart-EV startup Nio's Shenji NX9031 Chip--the world's first Automotive 5nm chip. How are these newish Chinese car companies (Xpeng has designed its own chip, too) able to pull this off? By prioritizing digital development. Nio's engineering workforce of between 10 and 11,000 engineers is split about 70/30 between software versus other branches of engineering, so they do their own electrical architecture, for example, while leaving some hardware-based tasks such as suspension design and development to third parties. Tesla's engineering mix is similar in scope to Nio's, but most legacy automakers reverse those percentages. See All 5 Photos Nio SkyOS Operating System Schematic SkyOS The name may conjure frightening references to SkyNet from the Terminator movies, but this comprehensive vehicular operating system is designed to oversee all systems onboard Nio's entire range of cars—from its simple, compact Firefly EV to the all-singing, all-active-suspension-dancing Nio ET9. We asked whether there was a measurable difference in the number of lines of code or the computing power between a Firefly application and ET9 and were told that no, one SkyOS system fits all. There will simply be fewer features on some models, all connected via an ethernet backbone. A huge benefit touted for SkyOS is its extremely low latency (response time), which is said to be far less than a millisecond. That's considerably quicker than competing Linux systems, and drivers can appreciate such an improvement in latency through touchscreen responses and shorter ABS stopping distances. See All 5 Photos Nvidia's Orin chip has been one of the auto industry's top-performing chips. Nvidia Orin or Shenji NX9031? SkyOS is designed to run on various chipsets, so cars demanding fewer features can utilize less expensive existing chips, while full-featured cars like the ET9 get Nio's new Shenji NX9031—hailed as the automotive world's first production 5nm chip. (Note: 5nm is simply a chip-marketing term that refers to the next step in the evolution of transistor density—the gates are not physically 5 nm apart, but the chip houses more than 50 billion transistors.) Billed primarily as an autonomous driving enabler, the chip reportedly possesses at least double the processing power of two Nvidia Orin chips with a pixel processing capacity of 6.5GB/s and a response time of less than 5 ms, yet it draws considerably less power than an equivalent Nvidia array. Such processing power improves things like the vision systems' ability to recognize objects in low light and for AI personal assistants like Nio's NOMI to process large-language models. See All 5 Photos Schematic comparing and contrasting domain-based versus zonal electrical architecture. Isn't Rivian Basically Right There Too? Close. Rivian's electrical architecture is in the vanguard of American manufacturers, but its system still largely qualifies as zonal, in which various zones aggregate signals from nearby sensors and send them (via simpler communications) to the central computer. Rivian runs an OS from QNX Blackberry. Nio employs zones, as well, but generally fewer of them. Low-feature-set cars like the Firefly might employ one or two zones while a fancy ET9 needs four. What About Tesla? The other vanguard player in America's SDV universe is Tesla, which still employs considerably more than a handful of zones in its more centralized zonal architecture. It also runs open-source software (OSS) such as Linux, GNU toolchain, and other community-based projects such as Ubuntu. SkyOS is Also Open Source Perhaps a future Tesla may leverage Nio's SkyOS, which the company has announced it has made 'open source.' What does that mean? Mostly the software development community is free to look under the hood and develop products and apps to run on the SkyOS system. This is the main motivation for Nio making the software opens source: to improve the user experience with more potential over-the-air updatable features and Easter eggs developed out-of-house. (For reference, Android is open source, while Apple's iOS is not.) Might Americans Ever Experience SkyOS? Barring outright bans on Chinese software, there's every possibility that, say, a domestic or European automaker could leverage Nio's open-source software. Perhaps that possibility is highest with McLaren, which has a technology sharing agreement with Nio. It would certainly seem wise to leverage the development expense of those NX9031 chips by selling them to other automakers, but a lot of strategic calculus goes into making any such decision.
Motor Trend
6 days ago
- Automotive
- Motor Trend
Could Nio's Safety-Certified Yoke Steer-By-Wire be Safer Than Tesla's?
We love the Tesla Cybertruck's steer-by-wire system's functionality so much we awarded it a Best Tech award for 2025. We like how it works and love the way Tesla continually challenges the status quo. But a recent trip to China introduced a tiny sliver of doubt as to exactly what authority—if any—signed off on the safety of that technology. The Tesla system is clearly built with redundancy—there are two steering motors fed by separate wiring, etc. But the Chinese EV automaker Nio claims that its steer-by-wire system, now in use in its Nio ET9 flaship, is the first in production to have undergone a full safety certification. The company collaborated with other manufacturers to develop a triple-layer redundancy system, one informed by aviation-industry best-practices, that then passed a Chinese government certification program. 0:00 / 0:00 First Level Redundancy At this level, all computer controls, communication, and electromechanical controls are duplicated. This much everybody does. Nio also uses separate electrical architecture zones to control the twin communication and power paths, with an independent monitor comparing signals. In the event of a discrepancy, the monitor determines a 'winner.' Nio, and many others offering steer-by wire use a single motor with multiple phases in the winding, wired to the disparate control systems—either of which has sufficient power to steer the vehicle (other systems provide for a fail-safe mechanical shaft connection). There are separate DC-DC converters, separate CAN bus connections, multiple steering torque sensors, and steering-yoke position sensors. See All 6 Photos Tesla Rear Steering Rack Second Level Redundancy Here's where we believe the Nio approach deviates from Tesla's in following aviation's lead. The separate zones and their communications networks were developed by different teams and sourced from different suppliers whenever possible. This helps minimize the chance of a common failure mode or use-case scenario crippling both systems at the same time. See All 6 Photos Tesla Cybertruck showing front and rear tires at max turning angle. Third Level Redundancy In an absolute worst-case scenario when a steering order fails to be executed by either of these disparate control, communication, and execution systems, the computer is programmed to utilize other approaches to execute the intended steering request. This can include activating the rear steering (which the ET9 and Cybertruck are both equipped with), and/or heavily braking one or both inside wheels on the side in which the car is intended to steer. See All 6 Photos Nio ET9 luxury sedan steering wheel. Measuring Results During the lengthy development of the Nio ET9's steering system, the company and the homologation reps from the government considered the job done when recorded failures could be measured in events-per-trillion-hours of operation. We're eager to learn more about the various layers of redundancy Tesla employs, and we'd love to know how Tesla's system would fare if subjected to this same new Chinese homologation testing, but for now the Cybertruck's form factor is disallowed in China.
