ZEEKR launches the intelligent driving defense battle

Author | Chai Xuchen

Editor | Wang Xiaojun

Previously constrained by intelligent technology, ZEEKR has now confidently unveiled its smart driving ace.

On the evening of March 18, ZEEKR held a special press conference for its smart driving technology for the first time. This time, the new Chief Smart Driving Scientist of Geely Group, ZEEKR Vice President Chen Qi, took the lead in showcasing two high-level solutions from the "Qianli Haohan" smart driving system—H7 and H9—on the main stage.

The H7 solution focuses on the "full version parking to parking" and "continuous automatic avoidance G-AES" functions; while the H9 solution has a capability ceiling of L3-level advanced smart driving. One represents the current state, and the other corresponds to the pinnacle of future smart driving.

On stage, Chen Qi described the "full version parking to parking" function as: connecting all smart driving nodes, achieving "can go anywhere in the country, can park if there is a space, can use it the first time, and not take an extra step."

In a post-conference interview, ZEEKR Group CEO An Conghui told Wall Street Insight that the release of the full version parking to parking marks ZEEKR's entry into the first tier of smart driving, stating, "The long march has taken its first step; ZEEKR not only aims to enter the first tier but also to become a leading smart driving company."

Therefore, at the conference, Chen Qi introduced the L3-level smart driving technology architecture "nuclear bomb" equipped with five LiDARs, as well as the world's first self-developed smart driving domain controller based on dual NVIDIA Thor chips, with a terrifying computing power of 1400 Tops.

ZEEKR's ambitions for smart driving have thus begun—top-notch hardware, leading computing power and data advantages, and end-to-end Plus with rapid iterative evolution. This is the four foundational capabilities of ZEEKR's Qianli Haohan smart driving. An Conghui stated that Qianli Haohan aims to make Geely the leader in the smart driving era, with ZEEKR being the key vanguard.

It is worth mentioning that since its establishment, ZEEKR has faced the greatest skepticism regarding its intelligence, and for Chen Qi's team, catching up is also about fighting for a breath.

An Conghui candidly told Wall Street Insight that compared to the current first-tier competitors, ZEEKR's self-developed smart driving started relatively late, with a significant portion of energy previously invested in the original Mobileye solution.

Notably, Chen Qi, who is in charge of ZEEKR's smart driving, was once referred to as the "first person in Huawei smart driving." He joined ZEEKR in the second half of 2021, at which time XPeng had already launched its nationwide highway NOA. During this critical period for smart driving positioning, the time left for him to make a comeback was limited. Therefore, accelerating the "catch-up" has become the daily routine for Chen Qi and the ZEEKR team.

By the end of 2023, the ZEEKR 007 was officially launched, marking the first batch of models equipped with self-developed smart driving solutions. However, at that time, the functions were limited to highway NOA, with city capabilities only including LCC and parking functions. In August of last year, ZEEKR pushed out the nationwide urban commuting function; by the end of October, ZEEKR began public testing of the no-map urban NZP using an end-to-end architecture From the launch of the first self-developed model to today’s mass production of the end-to-end large model without images, ZEEKR has only taken 10 months.

Chen Qi stated that the rapid progress in the intelligent driving industry is due to everyone's willingness to think big and work hard. The company has significantly allocated resources to intelligent driving, and taking a bold step at the peak of the wave is the best return in life. This time, he proved one thing with a press conference: intelligent driving is not a moat for new forces.

As mentioned above, ZEEKR's "Qianli Haohan" is a unified intelligent driving solution formed after the resource integration of the entire Geely Group, akin to "one chess game." An Conghui said that when the intelligent driving platform is established, various brands and models under the company can achieve the application with minimal investment and the fastest time, "this is similar to Geely's approach to vehicle manufacturing."

Now, in the era of equal rights in intelligent driving initiated by BYD, ZEEKR is rapidly overtaking, leading the entire Geely system to further solidify its position in the high-end market. After ZEEKR and the Lynk & Co brand merged into ZEEKR Group, its task is to cross the threshold of luxury car companies.

This year, ZEEKR Group's sales target is 710,000 units (ZEEKR 320,000, Lynk & Co 390,000). In the 300,000 yuan market, annual sales exceeding 700,000 units is the benchmark set by BBA in China over the past three years.

Currently, ZEEKR aims to transform from a past follower to a leader in terms of intelligent technology and sales scale. A race against time is about to unfold.

Below is the transcript of the dialogue with ZEEKR Technology Group CEO An Conghui, Vice President Lin Jie, Vice President Lin Jinwen, Vice President Chen Qi, and Vice President Jiang Jun (edited):

Q: What is the relationship between Qianli Haohan Intelligent Driving and the original Haohan Intelligent Driving? Will Lynk & Co use it in the future?

Chen Qi: Geely Intelligent Driving is like one chess game, and Qianli Haohan is Geely Group's unified intelligent driving solution, integrating the top capabilities of "Qianli Technology" and "Haohan Intelligent Driving." The former excels in computing power and large model capabilities, while the latter performs well in algorithms. By merging, we can effectively integrate the advantages of both sides.

Qianli Haohan is already integrating the intelligent driving capabilities of various brands within Geely Group, initially achieving shared computing power and data, and the integration of algorithms is also progressing rapidly. Qianli Haohan is divided into five levels: H1, H3, H5, H7, and H9. Each brand and model within the group uses corresponding solutions based on different positioning.

An Conghui: Qianli Haohan will enable Geely Holding Group to respond to the arrival of the intelligent driving era and become a leader.

Lin Jie: The Lynk & Co 900 will be the world's first model equipped with the Thor chip and will feature the H7 solution of Qianli Haohan.

Q: How has ZEEKR managed to surpass others in intelligent driving?

An Conghui: Compared to the current first-tier competitors, we did enter the market a bit later, but with our efforts, the fully functional version of the vehicle-to-vehicle system released today can be said to meet the threshold of the first tier, and we will continue to iterate quickly in the future. I am also currently using intelligent driving, with the pioneer version iterating weekly and the full version iterating monthly.

The long march has taken its first step; the next step is not only to enter the first tier but also to become a leading intelligent driving company Chen Qi: From a technical perspective, we still have the ability to truly develop independently—every line of code can be modified; secondly, the tool system can ensure that we minimize rollbacks during rapid iterations; thirdly, our team's combat effectiveness is strong, continuously creating new technologies and solutions, and we are also quite open to absorbing experiences and lessons from the industry.

An Conghui: The intelligent driving system is one that relies on systematic and comprehensive capabilities, involving overall hardware, algorithms, computing power, data, and teams. These are the five key elements I understand about intelligent driving, which is why we are steadfast in our long-term investment in this area.

Question: Why does ZEEKR keep emphasizing the parking scenario of mechanical parking spaces? Currently, under the unified intelligent driving system of Geely, what is the structure of the entire intelligent driving R&D team?

An Conghui: In the parking system, mechanical parking spaces are the most challenging. We were the first to achieve this last year, and the experience effect in other scenarios must be the best.

Qianli Haohan is Geely Group's unified intelligent driving solution, which benefits from fully realizing platformization, allowing various brands and models to achieve minimal investment and the fastest application, similar to the reasoning behind Geely's vehicle architecture. Our SEA Haohan architecture can be applied across multiple brands, effectively controlling costs.

Question: The Qianli Haohan H9 is equipped with five LiDARs, while some competitors use a purely visual approach. In the future, with the development of end-to-end solutions, should hardware costs be reduced?

Chen Qi: The five LiDARs mainly provide safety redundancy. In low-light or other extreme scenarios, LiDAR can detect objects much earlier, potentially hundreds of meters or tens of meters away, which can be a matter of life and death.

An Conghui: L3-level intelligent driving technology does not simply consider the intelligent driving system; it faces systemic challenges regarding the entire vehicle's mechanical architecture, electronic architecture, cabin, power, chassis, body, etc. Safety, backup, redundancy, reliability, and durability must be fully considered. Costs will indeed increase, which is why we are launching L3-level intelligent driving technology first in the ZEEKR 9X flagship model.

Question: What advantages will we have in promoting L3 and above advanced intelligent driving in the future? Is there a rough timeline?

An Conghui: Currently, ZEEKR's Qianli Haohan intelligent driving already has a quasi-L3 experience. The Qianli Haohan H9 intelligent driving solution adopts a leading L3-level intelligent driving technology architecture, which will be showcased at the Shanghai Auto Show in April.

Question: Has Geely considered self-developing intelligent driving chips?

Chen Qi: From the group's perspective, intelligent driving chips are already being coordinated, but at this stage, I believe that every enterprise's primary pursuit is user satisfaction, followed by meeting the mass production of self-developed chips. If the scale of the enterprise is not that large, the cost of self-developed chips is higher.

Question: Under what circumstances did ZEEKR decide to self-develop chip domain controllers?

An Conghui: This is a strategic issue for the enterprise. For new energy vehicles represented by electrification and intelligence, it is necessary to form a vertically integrated capability across the entire industrial chain of electrification and intelligence to participate in future competition. Of course, the difficulty is also very high, and the challenges are significant, with high investments For the cockpit and intelligent driving domain controller, we started planning this three years ago before the establishment of the ZEEKR brand. This capability has now been formed, and more than half of the self-developed domain controllers on the ZEEKR 001 intelligent driving model are produced in-house.

Q: With the high computing redundancy of ZEEKR's new products, will there be a unification in the intelligent cockpit field?

An Conghui: We have integrated in the intelligent driving aspect, and the cockpit is also undergoing integration work. We will merge the entire hardware, middleware, and upper application functions to quickly achieve branding for the cockpit systems under Geely Holding, just like in intelligent driving, while allowing different brands to form differentiation.

Jiang Jun: Each brand under Geely started the system integration of intelligent cockpits early on. In the future, there will basically be a unified architecture, unifying the brand in areas that are not visible to everyone, while there will be some differentiation in HMI and interaction based on different brand positioning.

Q: How does ZEEKR balance market popularity and safety in its intelligent driving?

An Conghui: Safety itself is part of the DNA under the Geely system; safety is the bottom line. Why does ZEEKR come standard with lidar? Because ZEEKR has a certain brand premium and can accept the increased cost of lidar.

Why is L3 intelligent driving used on the 9X? We only dare to use it because the price can bear the cost of L3. In short, everything is built on the foundation of safety; only when safety is equal can intelligent driving be equal.

Q: What is the difference between MLM and VLA, and are there advantages or disadvantages?

Chen Qi: MLM and VLA are not completely defined concepts. VLA essentially incorporates control and execution. VLM uses a front camera to recognize and understand the scene, which provides some initial applications upon getting into the car. Our current MLM combines VLM with other sensors to create multimodal inputs. For example, there are some texts that can be understood and also auditory inputs.

VLA technology serves applications. From the early active safety systems to later ACC and LCC, the qualitative change is continuity; this change has always served the continuity of experience. The current AEB to high-speed NOA has strengthened the continuity of experience, and finally, the urban NOA further enhances the continuity of experience.

In fact, the issue of experience continuity has basically been resolved from parking space to parking space. The development of technology also serves these experiences. In the future, it may develop towards low-speed automation, and both VLA and MLM are for these experiences. VLA and one-piece end-to-end are all for this service; technology does not have good or bad distinctions.

The primary issue with data is compliance, which cannot be surpassed. Geely's advantage lies in compliance and map providers, and currently, only Geely and Huawei have this. Networking is also very important; this will be a breakthrough point for achieving a truly good experience in the future.

An Conghui: We have the mobility platform Cao Cao, which is an advantage that others do not possess.

Q: What do you think about many car companies eagerly entering the mid-to-large luxury SUV segment this year? Lin Jinwen: The entire ZEEKR Group has its own strategy, ZEEKR is upward, Lynk & Co is broad, and it is inevitable for ZEEKR to pursue large-sized SUVs. This inevitably encounters many competitors, some of whom have been laying out in the track for many years, and some have a considerable scale in the early market. However, in China's new energy sector, there is basically no track that can be exclusively enjoyed by a few people. Everyone is clear that the next few years will basically be an elimination race, and all will be laid out in a market of a certain scale.

This year, the battle for mid-large and full-size SUVs will inevitably start from this year's Shanghai Auto Show and continue to be released until the end of this year. As long as each brand competes, they will enter the SUV field around 5 meters to 5.2 meters in size.

ZEEKR has a significant advantage in entering the SUV field; we have the strongest SEA architecture and the strongest hybrid technology, as the entire large group has been laying out hybrid for many years. Based on this, ZEEKR is developing super electric hybrid technology. We believe we have the opportunity to take over this track.

An Conghui: Let me reveal in advance that the 9X adopts a super electric hybrid system. It is very important to understand what the future user demands will be.

What are the pain points of the products that users are currently using, whether it is EV, REV range extender, or PHEV plug-in? What are the pain points of each technical route? What are the advantages? I think this needs to be studied clearly. Based on this, we need to consider what kind of products future consumers need. ZEEKR's super electric hybrid comes from this, and it must combine the advantages of pure electric, pure range extender, and plug-in.

The ZEEKR brand will steadfastly pursue the ultra-fast charging route. From 300 to 400 volts to now 800 volts. Supporting the super electric hybrid system, we will launch new batteries that will be announced before the end of this year.

Today, the release of ZEEKR's intelligent driving from parking space to parking space is actually just a starting point; in the future, it will face many challenges and user expectations, and we will continue to evolve and develop rapidly.

Question: Hangzhou is building the Eastern Silicon Valley; what role does ZEEKR play in this?

An Conghui: Yushu Technology and ZEEKR actually linked up last May. Currently, the humanoid robots have already been tested and applied in ZEEKR's Hangzhou Bay factory, and our manufacturing system is already in close cooperation with them