Nio vows autonomous electric car by 2020 in U.S.

PanARMENIAN.Net - A "global startup" which makes electric racing vehicles unveiled plans Friday, March 10 to sell a fully autonomous electric car in the U.S. market by 2020, AFP reports.

The company called Nio, founded by Chinese entrepreneur William Li and with offices in Silicon Valley, Europe and China, unveiled a prototype of the vehicle called Eve at the South by Southwest tech conference in Austin, Texas.

According to a Nio statement, the car will be "a digital companion, a robot on wheels" equipped with "an artificial intelligence engine with an intuitive human interface, providing verbal and visual connections both within the vehicle and with the outside world."

It will use its glass panels as "an augmented vision for occupants and for new kinds of entertainment," according to the company statement.

The new car is likely to compete in the premium segment with vehicles from Tesla and others, including another Chinese-funded startup, Faraday Future, as automakers ramp up efforts to deliver autonomous driving.

"We're excited about having autonomous electric cars for U.S. consumers in 2020," said Padmasree Warrior, chief executive of U.S. division and a former executive at Cisco and Motorola.

"Today we also unveiled our vision for the car of the future, focused on delivering unmatched user experience through leading edge, software defined hardware."

Nio, which produces the NextEV cars for Formula E racing, has raised capital from Chinese tech firms Tencent and Lenovo, the private investment firms TPG and Sequoia Capital, and Singapore's sovereign wealth fund Temasek.

According to its statement, Nio has more than 2,000 employees in various locations around the world and has an autonomous vehicle testing permit for California.