Autonomy and electricity are the two major complementary trends that will shape the cars of the future. NIO, a global enterprise, has been designing and building a new generation of electric road cars that have been delivering superior performance and unique user experiences since the company was founded in 2014. The company’s mission is that electric vehicles will simply become the natural choice for everyone, leading to a more sustainable tomorrow.
Right from the start, NIO was committed to expanding its global reach and needed a strong technology platform to support its growth and to orchestrate more than 10 development and manufacturing facilities, including in Shanghai, Beijing, San Jose (California), Munich and London. NIO selected 3DEXPERIENCE as its enterprise R&D platform. Its engineers in China, Germany and the United States can perform development tasks collaboratively, despite the distance between them.
They also gain rapid access to all vehicle data at any time, while checking integration and changes proposed by teams working on other sub-systems. Business partners and suppliers located in Sweden and India can also access the same data. What matters most to NIO is time to move from concept to product launch, staying ahead of the competition.
With the ability for many teams to collaborate on the platform to quickly iterate product designs, NIO speeds up the entire development cycle; it only took NIO three years to develop a car from scratch in these conditions. NIO uses the platform to manage the entire product development process: definition, specifications, initial nomenclature, technical design in 3D and 2D, technical adjustments and shared functionality, as well as the interface with the downstream ERP information system. The continuous information flow carries through into manufacturing operations, including final assembly and logistics, via the virtual factory managed by the DELMIA solution.
FIA ADOPTS 3DEXPERIENCE
The FIA, the governing body for world motor sport, has decided to use the 3DEXPERIENCE platform in the cloud so that it can interact more seamlessly with constructors competing in one of its World Championship. To improve and facilitate compliance checks on vehicles taking part in its events, the FIA’s goal was to carry them out using CAD data. Since carmakers use different design systems, the data are provided in a neutral format that the 3DEXPERIENCE platform can interpret.
