The Volkswagen Group is expanding its local technology competence in China as part of its ongoing commitment to the “In China, for China” strategy. At Auto Shanghai, Volkswagen will debut its first proprietary AI-powered, highly automated driving system. Specially developed for China’s complex traffic environments, the system is self-learning and engineered for both seamless and extremely safe driving experiences.
Through an efficient System-on-Chip (SoC) with high computing power, it enables smooth, rapid responses to a wide range of driving scenarios. The group will present a Volkswagen- brand model with this technology in China before the end of this year. Starting next year, it will also be integrated into models based on the China-specific Compact Main Platform (CMP), marking it accessible to price-sensitive compact segment customers.
The development marks a significant milestone in building up in-house development competence for core technologies that are in high demand among Chinese customers. Already today, a quarter of all newly registered vehicles in the Chinese market are equipped with a Level 2 driving system for highway scenarios. By 2030, Level 2+ is expected to be in use in more than 80 per cent of vehicles in the market. Level 2++, which covers both highway and urban traffic scenarios, is then expected to be installed in 75 per cent of new vehicles.
In line with this outlook, Volkswagen Group established CARIZON a joint venture between its software lighthouse CARIAD and Chinese tech company Horizon Robotics, in November 2023 as part of its “In China, for China” strategy. The joint venture specialises in highly advanced automated driving systems for the Chinese market. Over the past 18 months, more than 500 software experts across the company’s Beijing and Shanghai locations have driven the development of the new ADAS technology forward.
Ralf Brandstätter, Volkswagen AG Group Board Member for China and CEO of Volkswagen Group China: “With our new ADAS system, we are demonstrating what is possible when strengths of Volkswagen are combined with local innovation. The system has been developed at ‘China speed’, fully tailored to the needs of our Chinese customers and will set a new benchmark in the market for driving performance, safety and quality. The rapid progress we have made reflects the outstanding capabilities of our joint venture CARIZON and the successful implementation of our ‘In China, for China’ strategy.”
GAIA: AI-powered data platform accelerates development cycles
The system transforms Intelligent Connected Vehicles (ICVs) into predictive driving companions with human-like driving experience that can avoid dangerous situations before they arise. The key to this is “GAIA”, CARIZON’s proprietary AI-driven data platform for intelligent data collection and analysis. With two terabytes of data collected per vehicle per day and over 100,000 kilometres of test driving daily, GAIA enables highly automated AI training of the vehicle software.
Compared to conventional data platforms without an AI Big-Data technology, GAIA accelerates data analysis sixfold and reduces the verification cycles of AI solutions to just one-twentieth of their original duration.
This enables CARIZON to generate and validate hundreds of thousands of real-world driving scenarios with exceptional speed and accuracy— accelerating the development cycle, reduces costs, and ensuring a particularly seamless and safe driving performance.
Marcus Hafkemeyer, CEO of CARIZON, said: “With a team of 500 local ADAS experts and the consistent integration of AI in the development process, we have built an advanced ADAS system in a very short time—one that will deliver outstanding performance in driving performance and safety. This year, we will bring Level 2+ ADAS to the road. Level 2++ ADAS with Urban Navigate on Autopilot (NoA) is in advanced testing and will be launched in 2026. This will also enable us to lay the technological foundations for a fast-track evolution towards Level 3.”
