Two Chinese heavyweights, Huawei Technologies and GAC Group will partner to develop a smart, medium- to large-size all-electric SUV with Level 4 autonomy that the two companies hope will hit the market by the end of 2023.
This is the first joint project between GAC Group, a Chinese automaker headquartered in Guangzhou, and Chinese technology giant Huawei Technologies, since the two companies signed a strategic cooperation agreement back in 2017.
The two companies have already worked together to further intelligent connected EV technology, as well as accelerate a number of strategic cooperation projects which has led to the mass production of multiple systems.
In September of last year the two companies signed a further agreement to deepen cooperation, this time with a focus on computing and communication architecture, in line with the increasing trend of software-heavy vehicles.
As always, with announcements such as this latest partnership between Huawei and GAC, there is very little in the way of specifics regarding the electric vehicle they intend to develop.
We do know that GAC and Huawei hope to begin mass producing their “smart SUV” by the end of 2023 and that it will be a medium- to large-size SUV. A pure electric, the two companies promised that the SUV will also “bring exciting new capabilities” as well as come with Level 4 autonomous driving functionality.
It would also appear as if GAC and Huawei are planning to extend their partnership beyond just this one smart SUV, explaining that they are looking to “build a new generation of intelligent vehicles and digital platforms.”
The partnership between GAC and Huawei came just two days after it was announced that GAC Aion New Energy – the electric vehicle marque of GAC Motor – would use LiDAR technology supplied by Chinese Smart LiDAR Sensor provider RoboSense LiDAR.
GAC Aion will use RoboSense’s second-generation intelligent solid-state LiDAR equipped with the ADiGO autonomous driving system, which it will use in mass production of a variety of autonomous driving models including the Aion LX.
ADiGO is an independently developed and interconnected intelligent driving ecosystem that was developed in part by GAC and is currently available for mass production vehicles with Level 3 autonomous driving technologies, and is also able to support Leve 4 pilot running in some closed scenarios.
However, the current ADiGO system – which is built into the Aion LX and Aion V – uses a triple perception system made up of camera, millimetre wave radar, and high-precision map, so as to achieve Level 3 autonomous driving in highway and expressway situations.
RoboSense’s second-generation LiDAR technology incorporates active high-precision three-dimensional perception, which then allows ADiGO to obtain more reliable perception information, increasing the safety of its autonomous driving.
Joshua S. Hill is a Melbourne-based journalist who has been writing about climate change, clean technology, and electric vehicles for over 15 years. He has been reporting on electric vehicles and clean technologies for Renew Economy and The Driven since 2012. His preferred mode of transport is his feet.