Declining demand for cars and technical risks have made the automatic driving system not yet have the right to continue to raise prices.
We are no longer jumping. In June of this year, Wei Lai announced NIO Pilot driver assistance system version 2.0 push, adding 7 new features. These major functions have been released in the near future, including automatic pilot (pilot), turn signal control lane change (ALC), automatic road maintenance (LKA), front side vehicle warning (CTA-F), road sign recognition (TSR). Wait. This shows that the NIO Pilot has acquired the L2 level of assisted automatic driving.
The NIO Pilot developed by Weilai involves technologies such as perception, path planning, decision making, control, simulation, cloud, high-precision maps and hardware. In difficult development, new functions are being upgraded step by step: In 2017, Wei Lai opened the basic functions of forward collision warning (FCW), lane departure warning (LDW), automatic emergency braking (AEB), etc. In the month, the adaptive cruise (ACC) function was pushed.
As one of the future values of smart electric vehicles, automatic/assisted driving has become an important selling point for electric vehicles. Previously, in order to push Model 3, Tesla gave a free wave of Autopilot in China for a limited time, which brought a lot of good feelings and sales. At the beginning of July, Wei Lai also announced that the price of NIO Pilot post-installation upgrade service has been reduced from 45,000 to 39,000.
In the general trend of the decline in new car sales, Weilai has not been spared. According to the sales data in July, the new effect of the NIO Pilot promotion can’t offset the impact of the previous ES8 battery recall. According to the data, Weilai delivered 837 vehicles in July, of which only 164 were delivered in ES8, down 67% year-on-year.
The NIO Pilot promotion, which has been maintained for a month and a half, is still in progress and will end on August 31. Coupled with the new listing of ES6, this may be good news for Weilai’s sales this month.
At present, the ability of autonomous driving has not been fully released: L2-level assisted automatic driving has been popularized in most vehicles, and R3 level and above capabilities are still under development. In actual use, in some models, assisted automatic driving still has inaccurate object recognition, and even a small collision accident has occurred, even the best technical Tesla. Not spared. Therefore, some consumers are still cautious about assisting autonomous driving.
Previously, Musk had announced that autopilot would raise the price, and recently changed the name to say that the price increase of the fully automatic driving system will be postponed. This may indicate that the autopilot system does not currently have the right to continue to raise prices.