Geely Auto is scheduled to produce China’s first automotive grade seven-nanometer system-?on-a-chip in 2022, as the nation’s largest private carmaker accelerates its efforts to produce autonomous vehicles. The chip, called SE1000, is to be used to offer smart onboard features, said Geely CEO Gan Jiayue. The intelligent car control chip is designed by Siengine, a Hubei province-based joint venture established by ECARX. Gan said it will roll out two five ?nanometer high-performance chips from 2024 to 2025. One of them, with a computing capability of 256 tera operations per second, will be used for Geely’s autonomous vehicles. “Geely is to commercialize Level 4 autonomous driving by 2025 and have the complete know-how of Level 5 autonomous driving,” Gan said. The Society of Automotive Engineers International defines six lev?els of automation from Level 0 to Level 5. It said Level 4 means the vehicle can operate itself in most of circumstances while L5, also known as full driving automation, requires no human participation at all.
Cui Dongshu, Secretary General of the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA), said it makes sense that car?makers develop chips because smart vehicles with autonomous features are more reliant on chips than current vehicles, whose production has already been crippled by global chip shortages. McKinsey Partner Ondrej Burkacky estimates that chips used to enable autonomous driving functions will generate USD29 billion in revenue by 2030, up from USD11 billion in 2019. Chips and autonomous driving are one of nine goals that Geely announced on October 31 for 2025 to stay competitive in the fast-changing automotive industry. Other goals include earmarking CNY150 billion for investment in five years and launching 25 electric and plug-in hybrid models by 2025. The continuous investment and new models are expected to propel its annual sales to 3.65 million vehicles by 2025, of which 600,000 will be sold overseas, said the car?maker.
Geely sold 921,796 vehicles in the first three quarters, up 5% annually or around 60% of its sales goal of 1.53 million this year. Gan said Geely’s sales have been affected by the Covid-19 pandemic and the sweeping chip shortages, saying that it had over 100,000 vehicles on its order book by the end of September.
SAIC Motor, China’s largest car?maker by sales, and Great Wall Motors, have become investors in Beijing-based startup Horizon Robotics. In July, Horizon unveiled its latest automotive-grade processor – Journey 5 – designed for L4 autonomous driving, with up to 128 tera operations per second of AI computing power, the China Daily reports.
