Nio officially announced the rollout of its first version of the Nio World Model (NWM) system in a statement released on May 30. The update will initially be deployed to over 400,000 “Banyan” series vehicles, with “Cedar” models, including the ET9, new ES6, new EC6, new ET5, and new ET5T, scheduled to receive the upgrade by the end of June.

The NWM system delivers comprehensive upgrades across four key driving scenarios: active safety, highway navigation assistance, urban navigation, and intelligent parking. These improvements demonstrate what Nio describes as the “solid foundation and high potential” of their world model technology.

The active safety upgrades focus on three critical areas: driver incapacitation detection, collision prevention, and universal obstacle recognition.

Nio claims to be the first automaker to implement a production-ready emergency autonomous roadside parking feature. When the driving assistance system detects an unresponsive driver, it gradually reduces speed, automatically changes lanes to reach the rightmost emergency lane, activates hazard lights, and initiates SOS emergency rescue services.

The universal obstacle warning system has been expanded to respond to obstacles during turns and lane changes. The system now recognises a wider range of potential hazards, including barriers, guardrails, fence separators, and curbs, helping to prevent common low-speed scraping accidents in parking structures and tight corners.

The NWM system introduces parking space memory functionality, allowing drivers to save parking spaces after parking. This enables seamless navigation assistance from saved parking spots to destinations and back. Upon return, the system automatically finds nearby available spaces if a saved parking space is occupied.

Another industry first claimed by Nio is production-ready autonomous parking garage navigation. The system can understand natural language commands and uses visual comprehension to interpret signage and text within parking structures. Without relying on maps, navigation systems, or memorised routes, the vehicle can locate exits or building entrances across different areas and levels of underground parking facilities.

Nio’s fully model-based parking assistance can identify spaces in all 360° directions, including opposite, behind, and across aisles, expanding the parking space display range by four times. Drivers can initiate parking commands from any position, and the system utilises available aisles for long-distance manoeuvring or switching between different spaces. As long as walls don’t completely block spaces, the system enables a “see it, select it, park in it” experience.

Nio emphasised that thanks to forward-thinking hardware planning, even three-year-old “Banyan” series vehicles can benefit from these latest driving assistance technologies. The “Cedar” series vehicles equipped with Nio’s proprietary 5nm automotive-grade high-performance driving chip “Shenyi NX9031” will receive the NWM technology architecture version by the end of June.

Source: Nio