NIO Releases Its First Self-developed LiDAR Chip

On the morning of September 21st, NIOIN2023 Innovation Technology Day was held in Shanghai, and NIOIN2023 officially launched its first self-developed chip — the LiDAR main control chip “Yang Jian”, which is expected to be mass-produced in October.
According to Li Bin, the “Yang Jian” chip is the first self-developed chip released by NIO’s intelligent hardware team. It uses an 8-core 64 bit processor, providing strong computing support, and is equipped with an 8-channel 9-bit ADC, with a sampling rate of up to 1GHz, which can efficiently capture the original data of LiDAR sensors.

The focus is on improving performance. The laser radar chip achieves a 50% reduction in power consumption compared to before, optimizes the delay of point cloud processing by 30%, and processes up to 800W of point clouds per second. While reducing power consumption and improving performance, further cost reduction has been achieved.
As for why Weilai would like to go off and develop its own laser radar chip instead of relying on external suppliers, Li Bin explained: “We have to have gross profit. How can we do without gross profit? Such a chip can help us save hundreds of dollars. So chip is not for advanced and advanced purposes. Cost is an important consideration when improving performance.”