On September 14, local time, NIO founder, chairman, and CEO William Li was invited to attend the "World Trade and Tech Day" held at the World Trade Organization headquarters in Geneva, where he delivered a keynote address.
This year's event centered on the theme "AI and Trade: Turning Potential into Progress," bringing together participants from international organizations, governments, and various industry sectors to explore new opportunities and challenges emerging at the intersection of AI development and global trade.
As artificial intelligence advances at an unprecedented pace, policymakers worldwide are confronting a critical question: how to encourage innovation while ensuring that AI is deployed safely, reliably, and responsibly. The automotive industry offers a representative real-world perspective, being one of the most globalized and highly regulated sectors in existence.
During his speech, Li emphasized that with the accelerating convergence of electrification, intelligence, and AI, intelligent electric vehicles have evolved into the most widely adopted physical AI agents. He asserted that the leading automakers of the future will inevitably be leading AI companies as well.
Intelligent assisted driving serves as a prime example of this transformation. Beyond the vehicle itself, it integrates AI, software, and hardware in a cohesive manner. Taking NIO as an illustration, the company established its vision for intelligent assisted driving a decade ago, aiming to "relieve driver fatigue and reduce accidents." Today, NIO's intelligent assisted driving system, built on a world model architecture and closed-loop reinforcement learning, has been deployed across more than 950,000 intelligent electric vehicles.
To date, NIO's intelligent assisted driving has accumulated over 7.7 billion kilometers of safe driving mileage, representing 98 million hours of total usage, and has helped users avoid or mitigate the impact of 8.35 million potential accidents. According to internal data, the average safety distance achieved under human-machine co-driving is eight times greater than that of human-only driving.
Looking at the broader global landscape, road safety remains a major societal challenge. In 2025, approximately 1.16 million people worldwide lost their lives in traffic accidents, and over one billion people spend an average of 70 minutes commuting daily. Safer, more intelligent transportation is not merely a technical matter; it is fundamentally a social imperative.
When technologies like intelligent assisted driving achieve higher levels of reliability and broader adoption, they can ease the burden on drivers, reduce accident risks, and enhance daily mobility for billions of people, generating social value that extends far beyond the vehicles themselves.
The global rollout of intelligent assisted driving requires close collaboration across the entire industry chain. Different countries and regions have varying road conditions, traffic regulations, data governance frameworks, safety standards, and market access rules. Yet AI systems must maintain consistent and stable safety performance across diverse environments. This demands that automakers consider global market compliance and localized adaptation during the product development phase, conducting targeted testing and validation against regional regulations to ensure robust and safe system operation.
From Li's perspective, the industry now faces a critical challenge: how to bring new technologies into global markets safely, efficiently, and in full compliance. Achieving this will require stakeholders to work toward unified testing methodologies and mutual recognition of test results, which can significantly reduce the costs associated with new technology deployment overseas. The core of international dialogue should not be about forcing complete alignment of regulatory frameworks across jurisdictions, but rather about finding common ground that allows innovation to flow freely while maintaining safety as an absolute baseline.
As the global trade environment grows increasingly complex, regional regulatory discrepancies have raised the threshold for scaling frontier technologies. Sound regulatory frameworks should not stifle innovation but instead foster cross-regional trust, dismantle barriers, and facilitate the international flow of technology, talent, and trade, thereby creating greater social value. Li expressed his hope that within the framework of the WTO, all parties will continue to engage in dialogue, build consensus, and implement viable international rules that open new avenues for global economic development, working together toward a more sustainable and prosperous future.
Let's keep charging ahead together.