Leapmotor announces China’s first homegrown autonomous driving AI chip

Shanghai (Gasgoo)- At the CES Asia 2018, the Hangzhou-based vehicle startup Leapmotor announced on June 13 that the first domestically made artificial intelligence (AI) chip, dubbed “Lingxin 01 (in Chinese)” has entered the phase of integration verification.

The AI chip, co-developed by Leapmotor and Zhejiang Dahua Technology Co., Ltd (Dahua Technology), is expected to be tested on vehicles in the second quarter of 2019, the startup announced at the same time.

The Lingxin 01, which is designed for autonomous vehicles, features the capability of deep learning and China-leading computing power. Besides, it adopts homegrown central processing units (CPU) which is safer and controllable, according to Zhang Xingming, vice president of Dahua Technology.

Zhu Jiangming, chairman of Leapmotor, stated that the company has independently researched and developed three major vehicle platforms and grasped the  core technologies in battery, electric motor, electric control, intelligent connectivity system and autonomous driving system. In addition, the LP-S01, the company's first production vehicle model, has achieved Level 2.5 autonomous driving functions and will be elevated to Level 3 through software upgrading by 2020.

From April, 2018, Leapmotor has deployed over 40 vehicles which carry the startup's latest autonomous driving technologies, to be tested on roads. Up to now, those tested vehicles have completed a total of over 500,000km autonomous driving road test without safety incidents under diverse road conditions, covering national trunk highway, country road, urban road, bridge as well as macadam road.