Nio vehicles on the NT 2.0 platform will be able to choose to turn on the NOP+ feature covering urban roads and highways in the settings after the in-vehicle system is upgraded to Banyan 2.6.0.

(Image credit: Nio)

Nio (NYSE: NIO) today began opening up the urban area available NOP+ (Navigate on Pilot Plus) driver assistance feature to all NT 2.0 platform-based vehicles, following a preview 10 days ago.

Nio vehicles on the NT 2.0 platform will be able to choose to turn on the full-domain NOP+ feature covering urban roads and highways in the settings after upgrading the onboard system to Banyan 2.6.0, the electric vehicle (EV) maker announced today.

On a set navigation route, the vehicle can complete driving tasks including lane changing, overtaking, speed regulation, and intersection passing under the driver's monitoring, covering highways, urban expressways, and urban roads, according to a Nio App post today.

This will be the largest smart driving feature in urban areas in China in terms of user scale, Nio said, adding that it also has the longest verified mileage on the road, with more than 1.2 million kilometers covering 726 cities.

At the same time, Nio emphasized that NOP+ can help users save energy and reduce accidents, but the feature is still assisted driving, not autonomous driving.

In using NOP+, users need to drive in accordance with traffic regulations and be prepared to take over, Nio said.

The company said it does not recommend that users use NOP+ in bad weather, on roads with complex construction, at intersections with heavy pedestrian-vehicle mixing, and at intersections with cluttered lane lines and complex intersections.

NOP+ is an ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance System) feature built by Nio on its NT 2.0 platform. Its predecessor was NOP, which enabled pilot assist driving on highways.

The vast majority of Nio owners don't have to pay for NOP+ yet, as new owners in the past year have received at least one year of free access.

On April 20, Nio founder, chairman, and CEO William Li said that NOP+ functionality available in urban areas will begin to be delivered to all vehicles based on the NT 2.0 platform on April 30.

By the end of March, Nio had delivered 228,935 vehicles on its NT 2.0 platform, Li's keynote slides at the time showed.

Nio's goal is for the feature to contribute 80 percent of all driving time by 2025 for NOP+-enabled owners, Li said.

The company is asking users to complete a learning task to understand the boundaries of NOP+'s capabilities before they can use the feature.

Nio's vehicle systems will rate a user's driving behavior based on the last 30 days of smart driving data.

The company requires users to have 100 kilometers of smart driving usage in the last 30 days to receive a score.

Out of a total of 100 points, if the user's score is greater than or equal to 70, then the available mileage for NOP+ is the total verified mileage that currently exceeds 1 million kilometers.

If the user's score is less than 70, then his or her available mileage for NOP+ is limited to about 500,000 kilometers of verified urban main roads.

Nio says NOP+ assisted driving feature coverage expands to 726 cities