Nio will hold an event on NOP+ on Saturday, April 20, starting at 2 pm Beijing Time, followed by a user communication session, where a timeline for the full rollout of NOP+ is expected to be announced.

(Image credit: CnEVPost)

Nio (NYSE: NIO) will hold an event for NOP+ (Navigate on Pilot Plus) tomorrow, followed by a user communication session, where a timeline for the full rollout of the feature is expected.

Nio will hold the event for NOP+ on Saturday, April 20, starting at 2 pm Beijing Time, which will be streamed live on platforms including the Nio App as well as its Weibo account, the electric vehicle (EV) maker's vice president of smart driving research and development, Ren Shaoqing, announced yesterday in a post on the Nio App.

Following the event, the company will hold a user communication session about NOP+ in Beijing on Saturday from 4:00-5:30 pm local time, where Nio's head of smart driving products and experience, Harry Wong, will answer user questions, according to a separate Nio App post.

"Nio's full-domain pilot assisted driving feature, NOP+, is due for a major release, and at this user communication session, we would like to talk to you in detail about the content of this release and the thinking behind it," the company said.

The user communication session will also be live-streamed including on Nio App, Nio Radio.

Nio did not mention any specific details about the two events. The company is expected to announce a timeline for the rollout of NOP+ to all eligible vehicles, which it had earlier mentioned it was aiming to achieve in the second quarter.

NOP+ is an ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance System) feature built by Nio based on its NT 2.0 platform that enables a point-to-point assisted driving experience on highways as well as urban roads. The company is also building the more powerful NAD (Nio Autonomous Driving) software.

Nio announced NAD with the launch of ET7 in January 2021, which is available for all NT 2.0 platform-based models, with full functionality on a monthly subscription model known as ADaaS (AD as a Service). NOP+ is seen as paving the way for the launch of NAD functionality.

The service fee for the NAD feature is RMB 680 ($94) per month, and will be offered as development validation is completed, according to information previously announced by Nio.

NOP+ is less expensive and remained in beta until June 30, 2023, allowing Nio owners to try it out for free.

On July 1 last year, Nio announced that NOP+ came out of beta and started accepting subscriptions at a price of RMB 380 per month ($52).

As of June 30, 2023, the NOP+ beta had ran for 185 days of free trials, racking up 42.86 million kilometers of driving and adding 2.1 million kilometers per week, the company said at the time.

With more than 52,000 users participating in the NOP+ beta trial, the software enabled rapid iterative updates, it said on July 1 last year.

With the official version of NOP+, Nio brought a new BEV (Bird's Eye View) with an occupancy network perception model and switched to the same technology stack as NAD, it said at the time.

On September 21, 2023, Ren announced at the Nio IN 2023 event that NOP+ coverage was officially extended from highways to urban roads, providing users with a point-to-point intelligent driving experience for all-area access.

Following the Nio IN 2023 event, Nio spent several months focusing on expanding NOP+ coverage on urban roads and announced on March 8 that the feature's coverage expanded to 726 cities.

Prior to the start of the Chinese New Year holiday in mid-February, Nio opened up the urban NOP+ experience to 1,000 new pioneer users, and on March 21, Nio recruited a new batch of 20,000 pioneer testers for NOP+.

Nio had previously said that NOP+ is available for models based on the NT 2.0 platform, and rough calculations by CnEVPost show that cumulative deliveries of NT 2.0-platform Nio models stood at around 230,000 at the end of March.

It's worth noting that the vast majority of Nio owners don't yet have to pay for the use of NOP+, as new owners over the past year have been given at least one year of free access.

On May 31, 2023, Nio gave away one year of free use of NOP+ as a car purchase entitlement to new customers, and the entitlement for those who first got it will expire on June 30 this year.

On December 1 last year, Nio announced that it would continue to offer one year's free use of NOP+ to new customers, while extending the entitlement to two years for customers who had previously received one year's free use of NOP+.

Current customers who purchase a Nio vehicle will still receive one year of free use of NOP+.

($1 = RMB 7.2421)

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