160,000 cars have used China's "first AI chip for automotive regulations", and mass production is accelerating

Changan UNI-T, which first launched Journey 2 in 2020, used Journey 2 as the core foundation of the smart cockpit.

This year, Journey 2 has completed its "complete" evolution. On UNI-T and the newly launched UNI-K, Journey 2 serves as the brain of both the smart cockpit and autonomous driving.

What are the advantages of this technical solution?

Generally speaking, an ordinary passenger car uses about 50-150 highly integrated chips, which are responsible for autonomous driving, communication, entertainment, body control, driving signals, etc.

Platform-based chips can be diversified through software to cover application requirements in many different scenarios.

For manufacturers, whether they are car manufacturers, software suppliers, or electronic control system manufacturers, there is no need to make a customized chip for every detailed problem. The R&D costs can be shared through a wider range of application scenarios.

Openness is another major feature of the flexible chip architecture.

At the beginning of the year, Horizon Robotics launched a new generation of Tiangong Kaiwu AI development platform based on existing algorithm capabilities and tool chains, covering three functional modules: Model Zoo, AI chip tool chain (AI Toolchain) and AI application development middleware (AI Express).

In the model warehouse, Horizon has opened up multiple sets of classic product algorithm models and reference algorithms.

In terms of the tool chain, Horizon has opened up a full set of tools covering the entire AI development process.

For example, visual tuning and debugging tools, rich algorithm samples, etc., the purpose is to help customers develop customized functions efficiently, easily and flexibly based on their own needs.

Taking Changan’s new car UNI-K as an example, combined with the AI ​​computing power and algorithm technology points of Journey 2, Changan Automobile can develop more complex customized functions based on its own needs, quickly launch new functions for users, and realize upgrades from interactive objects, interactive methods to interactive logic.

The third feature is automation.

This is also one of the main reasons why Horizon can quickly iterate and update its algorithms and products.

At this point, Horizon's weapon is Horizon AIDI™️ - an end-to-end cloud-integrated data closed-loop development platform.

The platform replaces pure manual labeling and comparison, and instead uses algorithms to automatically mine data, allowing model iteration, software integration, regression testing, etc. to be automated.

Moreover, this set of processes and "right to speak" are not exclusive to Horizon, but are jointly built with customers.

The above is Horizon’s customized “family package” of chips + solutions, which can be said to accurately meet the needs of car companies.

But in the series of official signing news, what did the non-car company Tier 1 partners see in Horizon?

In fact, it is very simple. The core is still the open technical features of Horizon. The electronic control, entertainment, communication modules, etc. provided by Tier 1 can be connected to the Journey computing platform at a lower cost.

Moreover, as the "first chip in automotive mass production", Horizon Robotics has been mass-produced in a large number of vehicle models and has been recognized by the market. When suppliers access Horizon Robotics solutions, they have already gained potential customers.

So it is not difficult to understand why Tier 1 partners are interested in Horizon.

It’s time to reassess the horizon

For autonomous driving, there are only two routes at present: "self-research" and "supplier".

Car manufacturers develop their own autonomous driving solutions and directly provide them to car owners, such as Tesla and Xpeng.

Suppliers, such as Apollo and Huawei, provide technical solutions to car manufacturers.

Horizon Robotics has now expanded beyond its role as a single "chip supplier" and joined the battle for "complete vehicle intelligence."

At the Shanghai Auto Show, Horizon Robotics not only signed contracts but also released its complete vehicle intelligent solutions, which include three sets of solutions:

Horizon Matrix® solution, focusing on autonomous driving.

Horizon HaloTM solution focuses on in-vehicle intelligent interaction.

The linkage between the inside and outside of the car is aimed at defining the next generation of intelligent driving.

The core Horizon Matrix provides a full range of autonomous driving solutions, including:

Horizon Matrix Mono Assisted Driving Solution

Horizon Matrix Pilot Driving Solution

Horizon Matrix FSD Fully Autonomous Driving Solution

The three solutions are gradually evolving to form an autonomous driving solution from standard to advanced versions. The solution has four characteristics: high cost performance, high reliability, high computing power utilization, and flexible cooperation methods.

Horizon Matrix Pilot is an intelligent driving solution based on Horizon Journey 3 and is at the L2+ level.

Its perception solution includes 6 cameras and 5 millimeter-wave radars.

Horizon Matrix Pilot integrates a vision-based high-precision positioning algorithm that can achieve lane-level positioning accuracy without a high-precision positioning box.

Horizon Matrix FSD is based on the soon-to-be-released Journey 5 chip and is officially positioned as a fully autonomous driving solution.

Horizon Matrix FSD can support 12-channel camera solutions and can use lidar as an option to achieve point-to-point autonomous driving without takeover, urban parking and automatic car calling, and autonomous driving covering all scenarios.

As for the Horizon Halo in-vehicle intelligent interaction solution, the current Halo 2 is based on the Journey 2, and the future Halo 3 will be based on the Journey 3, supporting all-round perception and interaction between the front and rear seats, inside and outside the car, and vision and voice.

The ultimate goal of intelligent driving is to link the inside and outside of the car and co-drive people and machines.

Based on a unified chip architecture and a complete intelligent driving and intelligent interaction solution, the inside-outside linkage can integrate the triple capabilities of outside-inside visual perception, inside-inside visual perception, and inside-inside voice perception to quickly connect the inside-outside functions of the car.

Horizon also provides automakers with easy-to-use tools to support flexible development of customized applications and create unique interactive scene experiences.

So if we connect the dots and take a comprehensive look, the horizon that is recognized as an AI chip company is actually not fully reflected.

What is the horizon?

From product plans and support from various industry strategic investors to frequent collaborations at the Shanghai Auto Show, it is clear that another horizon is being drawn.

This is a horizon standing in front of the surging wave of automotive intelligence, a horizon that provides platform-based and scalable full-vehicle intelligent solutions.

More specifically, there are three levels of horizon:

The first is similar to Nvidia, which only provides chip hardware to customers.

The second is to provide customers with complete solutions including chips and algorithms based on customer needs.

The third is to cooperate with customers. Horizon will provide chips and tool chains, and work with customers to develop and polish perception algorithms to create complete solutions.

So you think the horizon is on the first layer, but in fact the complete horizon now has three layers.

It's time to reassess the horizon.