Nio’s owner shared a video from his dashcam, showing the emergency steering of Nio’s NOP (Navigate on Pilot) system, which saved the car from a crash. “Nio saved my life,” he posted on WeChat.

NOP is Nio’s alternative to Tesla’s Autopilot. It is an ADAS (advanced driver-assistance system) technology that assists drivers with safely operating a car using sensors and cameras.

In the video, Nio’s owner drives on the highway at 80 km/h, following another car. Suddenly, the car in front of him changes lanes at high speed, trying to avoid congestion on the highway. The maneuver is partly successful; however, we can see the driver slightly crash into the stationary vehicle, causing part of the car to fly high into the air, most likely the rearview mirror.

Nio’s AES immediately reacted and changed the lane to the left while braking, successfully avoiding the car driving parallel to it. AES (Active Emergency Steering) is part of NOP ADAS. It is an advanced safety system that applies braking and assists with steering to help avoid a collision. When braking alone is insufficient, it can work alongside AEB (Automatic Emergency Braking) to maneuver the vehicle away from obstacles.

In January, Nio updated all its vehicles with Banyan 3.1.0, which reportedly included the advanced AES function.

The NOP driving system was launched in September 2020 in Beijing. In December 2022, an updated version of NOP+, which supports lidar, followed. In early 2024, Nio started updating all its vehicles with the advanced version of assisted driving software. In June last year, the company claimed that NOP+ saw total user mileage cross 1 billion km.