Nio will invest up to 1bn Dollar into self-driving vehicles

Chinese electric car maker Nio Inc. (NYSE: NIO) has made a strong comeback amid the pandemic and appears to be leaving no stone unturned as it holds the momentum. The company has started internal R&D for self-driving chips. According to its CEO and founder, William Li Bin, the development of computer chips is still in the early stages.

Am overseeing the project has been working on a final structure for the program. According to Chinese news broadcaster 36Kr, Bin is looking for a technical manager with a chip background. The company has already set up another hardware team internally called Smart HW. The investments required to develop the chips range between $ 140 million and $ 1 billion, depending on the amount of research. Since the beginning of the year, the company has raised approximately $ 3 billion in convertible bonds and increased the number of shares issued.

A company spokesman pointed out that the company has invested in self-driving. He said as to the specific technology path and the details of the software and hardware research, it will be communicated at the appropriate time. The spokesman said the company was unwilling to respond to every rumor. The move to develop chips in-house follows the path of Tesla (Nasdaq: TSLA), which developed its own chips last year. In-house developed chips are part of Nio's fully self-driving computer.

Each chip is capable of performing around 72 trillion operations in one second. The company plans to follow Tesla's steps with a vertically integrated department for the production of electric vehicles. The development of chips for autonomous vehicles will strengthen the central competitiveness of Nio. Nio is one of the leading manufacturers of electric vehicles in China, and the company shipped 4,708 units in September, up 133.2% for seven straight months from last year. In the third quarter, the company delivered 12,206 units, an increase of 154.3% over the previous year. In the year to date, the company has delivered around 26,375 electric car units.