What will the car of the future be like? While introducing a concept car at SXSW a young girl in a video imagines,
“If I call it will come and get me with just a wave of my hand. The door will open like magic. It knows how I feel. It drives with me all by myself. It’s just like home. Like my living room. I can feel save an cozy. My mommy and daddy can sit with each other talk to each other or friends miles away. I can sit by in the front all by myself. I can discover the whole world. Go on adventures. When I get tired there will be seat so comfortable it feels like a cloud. Stars, I can see all the stars. There’s the Lion. While I’m asleep my car will watch out for people in the street. It will speak to other cars in a secret language. And it’s going to look so cool. It’s from the future. One day it will be real and I’ll call it EVE.”
The introduction of the new car was live-streamed and then posted to YouTube. Tech CARS nominee, Padmarsee Warrior was on hand to tout the global startup with a U.S. headquarters in the Silicon Valley. In just a few years, they have combined talent from the automotive and technology industries to make NIO EVE, which looks like a SUV that has been reformed to be a mobile/bedroom/office/playroom.
“We will be working really hard to bring you a car that is intuitive, that is your companion, that is your living space, that keeps you safe, and takes with wherever you want to go and fulfills all your mobility needs for the future,” said Warrior who expects the level 4 autonomous vehicle to be on the market in 2020 and be geared for the luxury market.
NIO’s EVE (fomerly Next EV) has a heart called NOMI, an artificial intelligence engine with an intuitive human interface, providing verbal and visual connections both within the vehicle and with the outside world. Nomi uses the vehicle’s active glass to provide an augmented vision for occupants and for new kinds of entertainment.
There aren’t back and front doors, the comfy interior is accessed through a wide forward-sliding door. The fixed seats are belted and positioned to deliver flexibility and an enhanced feeling of openness. In the main seating area, a folding table creates work or play space. A seat/lounger reclines and allows for relaxation or even sleep. The forward two seats, have an enhanced panoramic view, with digital displays provided on the active glass when needed to support non-autonomous driving. It’s the female-named car, we’ve seen. It seems to have feminine form factor and it looks like it has “womb” for everyone in the family.
First NIO launched the NIO EP9,the fastest electric car in the world and drove it self at the peak speed of 160 mph without a driver. The video shown at the unveiling called the company “blue sky thinking.” It was made the same team that is working on bringing the new cars to public.
The software was written and launched within four months for fastest electric car.
NIO, formerly NextEV in the U.S., is a global start-up, designing and developing smart, high-performance, premium electric vehicles. NIO has thousands R&D and design experts from around the world with significant technology and management background from leading automobile and high tech companies. NIO has more than 2,000 employees in San Jose, Shanghai, Munich, London and eight other locations.
NIO is funded by Chinese venture firms, like Tencent, and tech entrepreneurs, like William Li from Bitauto. The company has been luring away experts from Tesla and Apple.