"Auto News Weekly": Shanghai to Achieve L4-Level Autonomous Vehicle-Road Collaboration in the Future; Li Auto L7 Set for Official Launch Soon; Furutech Completes Hundreds of Millions of Yuan in B+ Round Financing.
Shanghai: Smart roads could soon enable vehicle-road collaboration for L4-level autonomous driving; Li Auto: The Li Auto L7 is set to make its official debut; Furutech: Completes a hundreds-of-millions-yuan B+ round of financing
Car News Weekly
Smart driving-related news broadcast
▶ Introduction
Hot Topic This Issue:
1. January's third and fourth weeks: Auto sales
2. Li Auto: The Li L7 is set to make its official debut soon.
3. Tesla: Unveils Software Update Version 2023.2.0.5
1. Forutech: Completes Hundreds of Millions Yuan in B+ Round Funding
2. Apple: Developing Advanced Autonomous Vehicle Systems
3. The New Landscape Among OEMs, Tier 1 Suppliers, and Chip Companies in the ADAS Market
This issue's keywords: Industry New Regulations, Automaker Updates, Autonomous Driving
PART.1 Industry New Regulations
1. Shanghai: Smart roads enable vehicle-road collaboration for L4-level autonomous driving in the future
On February 1, Shanghai Jiading officially announced that the ongoing smart road upgrade and renovation project in Jiading has nearly been completed. In the future, it will enable L4-level autonomous driving through vehicle-road collaboration, providing cooperative perception and information exchange for intelligent connected vehicles and high-level autonomous vehicles. This initiative will also establish typical application scenarios for vehicle-road coordination, meeting the diverse operational needs of L2-to-L4 autonomous vehicles across multiple environments.
In addition, this project also includes the smart renovation of four bus stops within the area, creating intelligent bus shelters. The renovated shelters will offer features such as real-time bus arrival announcements and convenient access to bus operation information, enhancing the overall waiting experience for citizens.
PART.2 Factory Updates
1. January's third and fourth weeks: Auto sales
In the third week of January 2023, new energy vehicle sales reached 67,500 units, with an average daily sales figure below 10,000 units. This represented a week-on-week decline of 32.01% and a year-on-year drop of 13.5%. In the fourth week, sales fell to 18,100 units, marking a week-on-week decrease of 73.26% and a significant year-on-year decline of 80.3%.
In the first four weeks of January 2023, cumulative sales of new energy vehicles reached 271,000 units, representing a year-on-year decline of 13.57%. During the third week of January, sales of pure electric models totaled 41,700 units, averaging 5,960 units per day; in the fourth week, pure electric model sales amounted to 12,600 units.
2. Li Auto: The Li L7 is set to make its official debut soon.
On February 1, Li Auto announced its January delivery figures. The company delivered a total of 15,141 new vehicles that month, representing a year-on-year increase of 23.4%. Since the start of deliveries, Li Auto has now accumulated a total of 272,475 vehicles delivered. Li Auto’s L7 is set to make its official debut on February 8.
The Ideal L7 will be priced in the 300,000–400,000 yuan range. Ideal AD intelligent driving and Ideal SS smart space solutions will continue to evolve. The Ideal L7 Pro comes equipped with the AD Pro intelligent driving system, powered by Horizon's J5 chip, and features a high-speed NOA navigation-assisted driving system. Meanwhile, the Ideal L7 Max boasts the AD Max intelligent driving system, featuring an AI computing platform that includes two NVIDIA Orin-X processors, delivering a total computing power of up to 508 TOPS.
3. Tesla: Unveils Software Update Version 2023.2.0.5
According to foreign media reports, Tesla has now begun rolling out the 2023.2.0.5 software update to its fleet, introducing several new features, including enhanced Traffic-Aware Cruise Control, cabin camera preview, and improved handwriting recognition.
As for speed assistance, Tesla has enhanced its car cameras to detect speed limit signs, which may improve the accuracy of local road and highway speed limit data in specific countries such as Germany and Spain. Additionally, the detected speed limits can also be displayed in the driver’s visual interface.
PART 3. Industry Chain Information
1. Forutech: Completes Hundreds of Millions Yuan in B+ Round Funding
On January 31, Forutech announced the completion of a hundreds-of-millions-yuan B+ round of financing, led by China Communications Blue Fund, Qingyan Capital, and Yunxiang Wuzhen Strategic Investment, with Taihe Capital continuing as the exclusive financial advisor. This follows Forutech's nearly 100-million-dollar funding round secured in November 2022, marking another strategic investment for the company. To date, Forutech’s total B-round financing has reached nearly 1 billion RMB.
This round of funding will continue to support Forutek's iterative development of advanced intelligent driving technology products, enabling the company to maintain its leadership in bringing cutting-edge intelligent driving solutions to commercialization through technological innovation and practical implementation.
2. Apple: Developing Advanced Autonomous Vehicle Systems
According to foreign media reports, Apple has applied for two new patents related to Project Titan at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. One of these patents involves an in-depth study of using neural networks to process graphical representations of tactical maps—specifically, delving into the reasoning, decision-making, and motion-planning processes at the core of complex systems and algorithms—to guide the movement of fully or semi-autonomous vehicles.
3. The New Landscape Among OEMs, Tier 1 Suppliers, and Chip Companies in the ADAS Market
The automotive industry is shifting toward a more pragmatic approach to ADAS, compelling automotive chip suppliers to revamp their marketing messaging around central processors. At this year’s CES, we observed that chip companies are no longer competing primarily on the raw computing power of CPUs/GPUs—as they once did—instead, the focus has shifted to the scalability of CPUs and domain controllers.
1. CES announced the pipeline and orders
Every year at CES, numerous chip suppliers announce new partnerships, orders, and pre-orders. This time, Mobileye and Qualcomm take center stage. Behind these partnerships and orders, OEMs with multiple brands and vehicle models can also collaborate with various platforms from different chip suppliers.
2. The Public's Mystery
Last year, Volkswagen’s Cariad and Bosch agreed to jointly develop autonomous driving software. Prior to this, Volkswagen had already struck separate deals with Mobileye and Nvidia. This fall, Volkswagen announced a 2.4-billion-euro investment in Horizon Robotics, aiming to collaborate on developing a full-stack ADAS/AD solution tailored for the Chinese market.
3. Will Ambarella be the dark horse?
After Ambarella acquired Oculli, it integrated the latter’s radar algorithms into the CV3 processor, also targeting the centralized single-chip processor market. The CV3 processes raw, high-resolution data from radar, cameras, ultrasonic sensors, and LiDAR systems, enabling deep, lower-level fusion and advanced driver-assistance (AD) path planning. For instance, Mobileye has developed a proprietary radar chip of its own. Mobileye’s vision is to process radar and LiDAR data independently from camera inputs, creating "true redundancy."
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