Recently, GWM completed its strategic investment in Beijing Horizon Robotics Technology R&D Co., Ltd. (“Horizon Robotics”), a leading auto smart chip startup in the industry. This marks the official entry of GWM into the chip industry. GWM will develop rapidly in the chip industry through strategic investment, strategic cooperation, independent research and development, and other means.
GWM signed a Strategic Cooperation Framework Agreement with Horizon Robotics to jointly explore intelligent technologies and develop market-leading intelligent vehicle products with focusing on the advanced driver-assistance system (ADAS) and advanced autonomous driving and intelligent cabin for rapid implementation of autonomous driving, intelligent connectivity and other core intelligent technologies to accelerate R&D and mass production of intelligent vehicles.
Jack Wei, Chairman of GWM, said, “With the development of automobile intelligence, the importance of chips to the automobile industry has become increasingly prominent. GWM always pays attention to the development of the chip industry. Horizon Robotics is a leading automobile smart chip enterprise, and we value its strong strength in the field of artificial intelligence algorithm and chip design. We believe that GWM and Horizon Robotics can give full play to their respective core R&D capabilities in the future, jointly build the AI core technologies of full-chain autonomous driving, and strive to promote in-depth cooperation in mass production of factory-installed products.”
Yu Kai, founder and CEO of Horizon Robotics, said, “GWM has industry-leading technological innovation strength, especially in the field of automobile intelligence, and Horizon Robotics has strong strength in such fields as artificial intelligence chips, visual perception and multi-modal interaction. Both sides are intended via this cooperation to build an extensive and in-depth cooperative relationship, and are committed to promoting the ecological construction of intelligent vehicles and jointly building future-oriented intelligent vehicle products.”
According to the Cooperation Agreement, both parties will make use of their respective advantages in automobile and AI fields for common development by jointly exploring intelligent, networked and other auto technologies and developing market-leading intelligent connected vehicle products based on service integration in multiple fields. At the level of cooperation in research and development, GWM will take advantage of its leading technologies and research and development experience in automobile manufacturing and Horizon Robotics will take advantage of its strong strength in such fields as smart chip, visual perception, HD map and voice technology to cooperate in key areas such as ADAS, autonomous driving, intelligent cabin multi-modal interaction and software-defined automobiles. At the level of product cooperation, Horizon Robotics will open the basic technical platform consisting of “chip + algorithm + tool chain” for intelligent vehicles based on the requirements of GWM, including AI processor for intelligent driving, computation platform for autonomous driving, visual perception algorithm, multi-modal interaction, map crowdsourcing and positioning to fully satisfy the diversified demands of GWM for manufacturing of intelligent connected vehicles.
With the rapid development of emerging industries such as 5G, AI and big data in recent years, the automobile industry needs profound innovations in intelligent and networking technologies. As a world-famous SUV and pickup manufacturer, GWM is well versed in the way of innovation. GWM started the development and application of ICV technologies in 2009 and has established eight R&D centers around the world till now, including intelligent driving, intelligent connectivity and new energy. Based on years of technical accumulation and iterative updating of scientific and technological achievements, more than 45% of GWM models are equipped with L2 intelligent driving technology. According to the Intelligent Driving “331 Strategy”, GWM will achieve the first L3 autonomous driving function with redundancy throughout a vehicle, the first mass-produced autonomous driving with lidar, and the autonomous driving with navigation on highwaypilot (NOH) capability this year in China.
Horizon Robotics, the world’s first automotive smart chip startup company based on deep learning technology, independently develops auto smart chips featuring extreme efficiency, openness and ease of application, and adheres to the use of the “chip+algorithm+tool chain” as the basic platform to open and empower the underlying technologies. For this, Horizon Robotics has become the only technology enterprise that has realized the mass production of factory-installed products for auto smart chips in China, and has formed a complete product layout of L2-L3 “intelligent driving+intelligent cabin” chip solution. Moreover, Horizon Robotics will soon launch the industry’s flagship Journey 5 chip for L3/L4 autonomous driving. This chip is based on the product development process system of ASIL D defined by ISO 26262, features a whopping 96 TOPS of AI computing power, supports 16-channel camera sensing computing, and has the performance superior to that of the most advanced mass-produced chip for autonomous driving at present worldwide.
With this strategic investment, GWM aims at establishing cooperation between strong enterprises in jointly building the intelligent connected system and realizing industrialization development by combining the technical experience of GWM in the intelligent field with the leading auto smart chip and algorithm of Horizon Robotics to promote the development in depth and breadth of GWM in the chip industry and quicken GWM’s strategic transformation into a global mobility technology company.
SOURCE: GWM
