Autonomous driving and artificial intelligence are the buzzwords at this week’s Guangzhou auto show — the last major gathering of Chinese carmakers for the year.
With Elon Musk’s Tesla aiming to bring what it markets as full self-driving to China in the first quarter of next year, pending regulatory approval, domestic electric car manufacturers are telling customers that their advanced driving-assistance services — which can navigate highways or busy city streets — are coming very soon, if they’re not already here.
Last week, Xiaomi’s chairman Lei Jun conducted a livestream test drive of the SU7 EV going from “parking spot to parking spot.” The feature, to be trialed with a select group of owners and media, is inspired by Tesla’s FSD end-to-end technology, which uses cameras and large AI models to make real-time driving decisions, rather than relying on engineers to code rules to simulate driving, Lei said.
“Parking spot to parking spot means starting from a parking spot to the one at the destination, using smart driving the whole way,’’ Lei said during the livestream. “This technology is magical. It’s also the most advanced technology in assisted-driving today. It was first released by Tesla in the U.S. in January. Our peers in China all have started to try to catch up in this new frontier. Xiaomi is in a relatively leading position in this field,” he said.
Although the safety and reliability of driver assistance systems are still in question — with lawsuits and a U.S. federal probe being mounted into Tesla’s Autopilot and FSD systems — many in the industry are betting on autonomous-driving technology as the future of mobility and are racing to stay ahead of competitors in the field.
Indeed, Musk has staked Tesla’s future on solving self-driving. He last month unveiled the prototype Cybercab, though admitted the robotaxi — which has no steering wheel or pedals — will likely only go into production in 2026 at the earliest.
Geely’s premium Zeekr EV brand also used the Guangzhou show to launch version 2.0 of its smart driving solution — which includes end-to-end technology — and plans to roll out urban navigation to the entire country by the end of the year. The EV maker is also considering releasing its ADAS technology for the global market in the future.
Chen Qi, who joined Zeekr in 2021 after running Huawei’s autonomous driving unit, said…
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