Domestic firms show way to safe, smart cars

Chinese technology companies are seeking to advance intelligent driving systems to improve the efficiency and safety of global transportation.

To that end, they are showcasing their latest technologies at the Consumer Electronics Show 2024, which opened in Las Vegas in the United States on Tuesday and will run through Friday.

For instance, Hesai Technology unveiled its latest automotive lidar products that allow a smart car to better sense its surroundings, so as to better support advanced driver assistance systems, commonly known as ADAS. Hesai is the world's top supplier of automotive lidar with a 47 percent share of the total global market revenue in 2022.

The Nasdaq-listed company unveiled its new flagship AT512 ultra long-range lidar, which offers a maximum range of over 400 meters.

David Li, co-founder and CEO of Hesai, said the new product represents a breakthrough in lidar technology and provides big performance improvements in all of the key areas such as range, resolution, thermal, power consumption and form factor.

Hesai also announced it has completed construction of a new 740,000 square foot state-of-the-art research and development center in Shanghai, which is expected to strengthen its manufacturing.

The new facility includes the world's most advanced lidar testing lab and will utilize many smart industrial robots, helping automate over 100 production processes, with the automation rate reaching 90 percent, Hesai said.

"Our new Maxwell facility is not a traditional manufacturing facility but an advanced R&D center where we design and build automated lidar production lines, which can then be easily replicated across our global network of manufacturing facilities," said Li. "With Hesai's commercial engine now in full swing, we expect to drive lidar adoption forward for everyone."

Yole Intelligence, a market research provider, had forecast that Hesai would maintain its No 1 position in the automotive lidar market for 2023.

Hesai recently surpassed the milestone of delivering 300,000 accumulative units of lidar, including a new high of 50,000 units in December alone.

Liu Jiansen, an analyst at Canalys, a market research provider, said that with electronics manufacturers vying to showcase the selling points of AI, electric vehicles with ADAS are expected to be a prominent focus at this year's CES.

Chinese carmaker Xpeng is showcasing its flying car at the CES, suggesting it will likely double down on its ambition to mass-produce its model.

To better support the development of smart cars, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, China's top industry regulator, issued a new guideline on Monday to draft national automotive chip standard system.

By 2025, more than 30 key standards for automotive chips will be established to outline foundational requirements such as environmental and reliability considerations, electromagnetic compatibility, functional safety and information security, the guideline said.