Li Auto forms strategic partnership with NVIDIA, Desay SV

Beijing (Gasgoo)- Li Auto, an innovator in China’s new energy vehicle market, signed a strategic partnership with NVIDIA and Desay SV Auto, the chip giant’s partner.

    (Signing ceremony; photo source: Li Auto)            

NVIDIA Orin chips will be used in Li Auto’s new full-size smart SUV model to be launched in 2022. Based on NVIDIA chip’s computing power, Desay SV will provide domain controller for Li Auto, who will complete independently all program design and algorithm logic setting for autonomous driving features. Thus, Li Auto will become the first new energy vehicle company in China to develop its own Level 4 autonomous driving system.

Introduced in 2019, the NVIDIA Orin system-on-a-chip (SoC) will be mass-produced from 2022 on. The Orin can deliver 200 TOPS with a single NVIDIA Orin SoC—nearly 7X the performance of NVIDIA Xavier™. The scalable Orin product family enables developers to build, scale, and leverage one development investment across an entire fleet, from entry Level 2+ systems all the way to Level 5 fully autonomous vehicles.

Li Auto will provide end customers with upgradable solutions. Upgraded to one single Orin chip with 200TOPS of computing power, vehicles can provide Level 2+ advanced driving assistance functions while with two Orin chips, computing power of the vehicles can be up to 400TOPS, providing Level 4 autonomous driving. In the future, the integration of dGPU will further strengthen the computing power with an expected maximum to 2000TOPS.

(Wang Kai, CTO of Li Auto; photo source: Li Auto)

In its IPO prospectus, Li Auto made it clear that it intends to continue to enhance its smart-vehicle solutions, particularly by increasing computing power and bandwidth. What's worth mentioning is that Li Auto plans to gradually enhance its Level 2 autonomous driving, and ultimately, to develop Level 4 autonomous driving technology. Just like what Wang Kai, the recently-appointed CTO of the automaker, said at the signing ceremony, they will improve the user experience step by step.