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NIO ET7 audio system reveals how important software will be in future vehicles [Editorial]
NIO went the extra mile—and then some—when it conceptualized the audio system for the ET7. The NIO ET7 has 23 speakers powered by Swedish digital audio pioneer Dirac’s Opteo Professional audio software and Dolby Atmos technology.
NIO and Dirac’s work on the ET7’s audio system reveals the changing design of the car’s cabin and the role software plays in its redesign.
The NIO ET7’s Sound
Every automaker has a specific sound they would like their passengers to enjoy in their vehicles. NIO also has a particular sound target, and for the ET7, the Chinese automaker wanted it to come through crystal clear.
NIO worked closely with Dirac to create its sound. The NIO ET7’s official online page states that the four-seater car has 23 speakers, four overhead speakers, and a subwoofer. It also has a 20-channel amplifier and comes standard with Dolby Atmos Technology.
NIO didn’t just add lots of speakers to the ET7, though. The China-based automaker together with Dirac were meticulous and intentional with the ET7’s audio system.
Redefining the Cabin
Audio experts must consider the environment the sound will be played in, making it challenging to work with vehicles. Lars Carlsson, the Head of Business Development Automotive Audio and Vice President at Dirac, told Teslarati that audio experts have to consider many things when creating the perfect sound inside a vehicle. They have to consider the number and position of the speakers and the number of seats in the vehicle. Audio experts must also consider how sound reflects on the cabin’s different surfaces and windows.
Each speaker output in the NIO ET7 was measured with 16 microphones, positioned in each seat for a total of 64 measurement positions in the cabin. The measured data gave Dirac a good overview of the acoustic performance of the car’s cabin and creates the base for Dirac’s patented algorithms to optimize the sound.
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“We base everything on measurements and data. Our process really saves audio engineers a lot of time. They can tune on their computer instead of spending weeks in the car,” Carlsson said.
After measuring the cabin, Dirac used algorithms to “derive the optimum solution” for its sound field control technology. With sound field control, Dirac created “super speakers” for the ET7. Typically, there are three speakers in a car door: low frequency, mid-range frequency, and a tweeter for the high frequency. Dirac uses sound field control to digitally align the speakers, making them collaborate to realize one full, quality sound.
“In addition our algorithm lets the speakers in the cabin and the subwoofer collaborate to create an even sound field in the car, which means we can actually create an equal audio experience in every seat. You get the voice right in front of you and a good imaging and a very even bass distribution and tight bass,” explained Carlsson.
Software’s Critical Role in Future Vehicles
Software is playing an increasingly important role in the auto industry as automotive OEMs and startups reconceptualize the idea of the vehicle. Now, automakers are reimagining the use of the car cabin as more vehicles integrate autonomous software.
Software lies at the center of redesigning the cabin space for passenger activities. Many automakers have started investing in software for their vehicles. For instance, Volkswagen invested €2 billion in a joint venture with China-based Horizon Robotics. And Stellantis launched a software development center in India recently.
Audio, in particular, is beginning to play a more significant role in the cabin as automakers introduce more types of media for passengers to enjoy while on the road. Electric cars coming out on the market have fun new features now, like karaoke, videos, games, and more which rely heavily on audio systems. However, it is autonomy that drives the cabin’s redesign.
“We have an enormous interest for our solutions because audio is getting more and more important in the car. This is true for electric cars because it’s a quieter environment but also when looking into autonomous cars, where maybe you’ll be working in your car, you’ll be listening to music, you’ll be watching videos, you’ll have maybe rotating seats,” said Carlsson.
“There’s a lot of challenges also coming ahead, but I would say that Dirac is very well equipped for future challenges because software for anything in the cars is key,” he added.
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Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that flying cars will be coming to the market, something that his own company has hinted at previously.
Musk said on X, in response to a post that read, “We were promised flying cars and all we got is infinite superintelligence for everyone,” “You will get flying cars.”
You will get flying cars
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 12, 2026
The post rang back to when Musk teased flying and hovering capabilities for the Tesla Roadster, the company’s supercar that has been delayed more times than anyone cares to count. It was set for an unveiling earlier this year, but it was then pushed back to August. There is still no sign of it coming.
However, that does not mean it won’t. But one of the biggest features of the Roadster that was teased was a SpaceX package that featured cold gas thrusters on the rear end that would help with white-knuckle acceleration. Another set would face the ground and would help the Roadster gain small bits of altitude, potentially helpful to jump over obstacles.
Elon Musk hints at Tesla Roadster’s “hovering” abilities in SpaceX package
But it is not a straightforward thing for Musk. As a serial entrepreneur, he tends to spend his time on major disruptors; currently, his largest projects are artificial intelligence and compute power, as well as SpaceX’s launches that will eventually make life multiplanetary.
In the past, he has been critical of flying cars and has been in favor of tunnels, one of the big reasons he started the Boring Company. In 2017 at a TED talk, he said:
“There is a challenge with flying cars in that they’ll be quite noisy. The wind force generated will be very high. Let’s just say that if something’s flying over your head, if there are a whole bunch of flying cars all over the place, that is not an anxiety-reducing situation…You’re thinking, ‘Did they service their hubcap? Or is it going to come off and guillotine me as they’re flying past?'”
However, he’s never been against them. He has also said he’s in favor of both tunnels and flying cars.
Contrary to press reports, I’m not against flying cars. Just said it was important to consider both pros and cons.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 24, 2015
Most recently, Musk said that anyone who wants a flying car should be able to get one. This was stated last October on the Joe Rogan Experience:
“My friend Peter Thiel once reflected that the future was supposed to have flying cars, but we don’t have flying cars… I think if Peter wants a flying car, we should be able to buy one.”
Whether the Roadster will be Tesla’s flying car or potentially another one remains in the mind of Musk. Of course, the Roadster will have to make its way to production lines before we find out.
Elon Musk
SpaceX’s next trillion dollar bet has nothing to do with rockets, Musk tells staff
Elon Musk told SpaceX staff AI revenue will soon dwarf rockets and Starlink combined entirely.
Elon Musk told SpaceX employees this week that artificial intelligence, not rockets, will soon carry the company’s revenue. In a roughly 29 minute internal address posted on SpaceX’s X account on Tuesday, Musk said AI revenue will pass every other line of business at SpaceX “probably in September” and pull further ahead by the fourth quarter.
The numbers he gave are specific. SpaceX currently runs 1.4 gigawatts of AI compute capacity. Musk wants that at 10 gigawatts by the end of 2027, a jump he tied directly to revenue: “if we bring 10GW of AI online by the end of next year, it will be $300 billion to $500 billion a year in revenue.” He called those “big numbers,” which undersells a projection larger than what most countries produce in a year.
We made rockets reusable and are rebuilding the internet in space. The next challenge: making life multiplanetary and understanding the true nature of the universe
Watch @ElonMusk deliver a company update to @SpaceX employees pic.twitter.com/5c8rxoCQfu
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) August 11, 2026
Musk went further on where AI fits into SpaceX’s future. “Probably in four or five years, AI will be 99% of the value of SpaceX,” he told staff, adding that digital intelligence would eventually run “a trillion times” ahead of biological intelligence as computing scales. He tied that growth to the company’s founding mission, telling employees “we must win on AI, because the future is overwhelmingly AI and robots,” with the payoff meant to help fund Starship and a Mars program that increasingly runs through Terafab, the joint Tesla, SpaceX and xAI chip plant.
Elon Musk launches TERAFAB: The $25B Tesla-SpaceXAI chip factory that will rewire the AI industry
None of this is entirely new territory. SpaceX told investors much the same story during its first earnings call as a public company on August 4, where Musk moved the company’s $1 trillion revenue target up a year to 2030 and said Starlink could someday carry a majority of the world’s internet. What the all hands video adds is a hard deadline and a specific power figure Musk had not given publicly before, along with a franker pitch to his own workforce that AI, not launch cadence, is now the thing SpaceX is betting its future on.
The AI revenue itself is not coming from SpaceX training its own models. It is largely Starlink acting as the network layer for xAI’s workloads, plus SpaceX renting out compute capacity directly, the same approach behind the roughly $16 billion the company spent on AI infrastructure in a single quarter.
Musk closed the video with a pitch aimed at recruiting and retention rather than investors, telling employees that anyone who helps SpaceX win the AI race will eventually get the chance to go to the moon or Mars themselves. Whether SpaceX can turn 1.4 gigawatts into 10 in seventeen months is the more immediate question, and one that will show up in quarterly numbers well before anyone leaves Earth.
In a new note to investors on Tuesday, Morgan Stanley analyst Andrew Percoco said that Tesla has one big financial question to answer for investors regarding its Robotaxi rollout, Full Self-Driving software, and Optimus.
Percoco said in the note that, for the most part, investors are still very positive about the direction the company is headed. However, there are some things the firm would like to see, and they have to do with financials.
Tesla (TSLA) Q2 2026 earnings results: miss on EPS, beat on revenue
Tesla bulls are more than convinced that the company’s Full Self-Driving software is proof it can develop physical AI. Financially, however, there are still some questions, especially on elevated spending, which CEO Elon Musk said would occur as the company works to roll out Robotaxi faster and continue developing its Optimus robot.
The latter two are where Tesla will have to prove progress to investors, as Percoco writes that both projects “will require clearer evidence that Robotaxi is scaling and more tangible Optimus proof points to support the ROI on elevated capex.”
Percoco said the second quarter earnings call did not change his long-term thesis of where Tesla is positioned in the AI race, which is out in front. However, there are concerns that weaker gross margins and higher R&D spend will stress financials, and that has “sharpened our (and investors’) focus on measurable progress across Robotaxi and Optimus.”
Additionally, Robotaxi still needs to be proven with more operation in existing cities while maintaining safety but improving how many rides it gives in any given time, he said. For Optimus, Percoco wrote that he is “still looking for evidence beyond commentary around SOP.”
Morgan Stanley put Percoco in charge of covering Tesla after long-time analyst Adam Jonas transitioned to the automotive side.
Currently, Morgan Stanley has a $415 price target on Tesla and a ‘Hold’ rating on the stock. It is trading at around $330 at the time of publication, which was 2:30 P.M. on the East Coast.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk says flying cars are coming
SpaceX’s next trillion dollar bet has nothing to do with rockets, Musk tells staff
