Great Wall Motor said to tap chip industry

Shanghai (Gasgoo)- Great Wall Motor (GWM), the Chinese largest SUV and pickup manufacturer, is about to make inroads into chip industry, according to a local media outlet, citing persons familiar with the matter.

The persons revealed GWM is likely to strategically invest in Horizon Robotics, the leading Chinese AI chip manufacturer. Both parties may carry out collaboration on a slew of areas like ADAS (advanced driver assistance system), high-level autonomous driving and intelligent cockpit.

After being reached for a comment, Horizon Robotics said the result should be in compliance with the announcement from GWM, while the automaker has not made any comments yet.

Photo credit: GWM

GWM previously disclosed its interest on chips. “With the rapid development of such emerging industries as 5G, AI and big data, the automobile industry is facing a profound transition to intelligentization. Great Wall Motor is paying constant attention to chips, the core parts for the development of intelligence,” Fu Xiaokang, vice president of GWM, said at a media interview.

On the side of R&D, GWM and Horizon Robotics will team up on ADAS, autonomous driving, multimodal interaction of intelligent cockpit and SDV (software-defined vehicle) by leveraging GWM’s leading manufacturing technologies and development experience, and Horizon Robotics’ advantages in AI, automotive-grade AI-powered chips, visual perception, HD (high-definition) map and intelligent speech, said one of the persons.

Based on GWM’s demands, Horizon Robotics may offer the automaker its integral intelligent vehicle solution combining chip, algorithm and cloud, covering the AI-enabled processor for intelligent driving, the computing platform for autonomous driving, the algorithm for visual perception, the multimodal interaction as well as the crowdsourcing for mapping.

The strategic investment will knit together GWM's multi-year technical accumulations in auto intelligentization and Horizon Robotics’ industry-leading auto-related smart chips and algorithm, helping GWM speed up its strategic transition to being a global technology mobility company and better satisfy the diversified demands from the users of its intelligent-connected vehicles (ICVs), said an industrial analyst.

Horizon Robotics says it is “the world's first automotive smart chip startup company based on deep learning technology,” and it claims to have achieved mass production of automotive-grade factory-installed smart chips.

The startup recently announced it has obtained a strategic investment from Sunny Optical Technology (Group) Co.,Ltd. (called “Sunny Optical” for short), a leading optical device manufacturer in China, marking a further drive for the startup's deployment of intelligence businesses.

Meanwhile, Horizon Robotics entered into a strategic partnership with Zhejiang Shunyu Zhiling Technology Co.,Ltd., a subsidiary of Sunny Optical, to jointly explore automobile intelligence technologies with ADAS, autonomous driving and intelligent cockpit as the focus, so as to offer the auto industry highly reliably vision solutions, help OEMs stand out from their rivals, and speed up the R&D and mass production of the products related to intelligent vehicles.