Nio is attempting to stand out from a wave of Chinese electric vehicle competitors through its technology. The corporate is hoping its partnership with Tencent can assist it boost its tech prowess in areas from mapping to autonomous driving.
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Chinese electric vehicle maker Nio and tech giant Tencent agreed to work together on areas including autonomous driving and high-definition mapping.
Tencent — a gaming, social media and cloud computing titan — has signed a cooperation agreement with Nio, one in every of Tesla’s rivals in China, because the firms look to money in on Beijing’s give attention to so-called recent energy cars.
The partnership could allow Tencent to do that, while also giving Nio the technology backing of one in every of China’s biggest firms. Tencent is already a significant investor in Nio, which is striving to distinguish itself from a sea of electrical automotive start-ups.
It comes after e-commerce firm Alibaba and Nio rival Xpeng in August opened a computing center to coach software for driverless cars.
Nio and Tencent said on Monday they are going to work together on high-precision mapping systems for drivers. Nio will even be using Tencent’s cloud computing infrastructure for data storage and training for autonomous driving. Driverless cars require huge amounts of real-time data to be processed with the intention to train algorithms.
Tencent’s partnership with Nio gives the corporate one other opportunity to push into recent business areas as its core video gaming business, which has been battered by strict domestic regulation, continues to face headwinds.
Nio meanwhile is facing its own challenges, including widening losses and pressure on margins from higher material costs and provide chain issues.
Still, the corporate delivered 31,607 vehicles within the third quarter, marking a quarterly delivery record for the start-up.
Nevertheless, China’s once high-flying EV start-ups have seen their share prices hammered this yr as investors turned away from growth stocks and China’s economy faced a slew of problems.