New Chinese car brand Zeekr, which is owned by the parent company of Volvo and Polestar, has vowed to launch what it claims will be the ‘world’s first consumer autonomous vehicle’, capable of driving itself unsupervised in certain conditions, by 2024.
Zeekr was launched last year with the aim to launch a range of fully electric premium vehicles that will eventually be sold in both China and Europe. What sets Zeekr apart from numerous other brands aiming to becoming ‘China’s Tesla’ is parent firm Geely: its models will be based on the same advanced electric platforms that future Volvo and Polestar models will use, and it can share much of the same research and development as those brands.
Zeekr’s first machine, an all-wheel-drive five-door shooting brake called the 001, was revealed last year and is built on the SEA platform that will be used for future models from Volvo and Polestar. It went on sale in China late last year, and is due to launch in Europe later this year. Zeekr is aiming to launch two cars each year.
The firm is now working with Mobileye, an Israeli autonomous technology firm owned by computing giant Intel, on plans for a new machine due to launch by 2024 that will offer advanced self-driving systems that reach Level Four on the five-point autonomous technology scale.
That basically means that it will be able to drive itself unsupervised in certain conditions – such as highways with suitable connected architecture. For comparison, current autonomous systems, such as Tesla’s Autopilot, are only rated as Level Two, because they require the driver to pay attention at all times in case corrections are needed.
Zeekr says that the advanced technology will be enabled by both Mobileye’s hardware and software systems, and the technology built into the SEA platform. It will use what Zeekr calls the ‘true redundant braking’, steering and power from that architecture, with the software powered by Mobileye’s Opel EyeQ 6xEyeQ5 system-on-chip – a super-fast trip claimed to be capable of 176 trillion operations per second.
There are no details yet on what form the vehicle will take, what it will cost, and whether the 2024 launch date will be for both the Chinese and European markets. One big challenge with Level Four technology is regulation: very few countries have yet established rules that will allow for such self-driving cars to be used on public roads outside of limited trials.
The partnership with Mobileye is one of a number of autonomous projects Zeekr is pursuing. It is also working with Californian technology firm Waymo on another project to product an autonomous ride-hailing shuttle.
Mobileye was founded in 1999, and was bought by Intel in 2017. It has supplied hardware and software systems for various driver assistance technology to a range of car firms, including BMW, Tesla, General Motors, Renault, Nissan and Chinese firm Nio. It secured a deal to work with Geely on advanced driver assistance systems in 2020.