Hesai Technology Reaches Cooperation With SAIC Motor Subsidiary to Speed Up Mass Production of Autonomous Vehicles

On Wednesday, lidar firm Hesai Technology and Youdao Zhitu, a commercial vehicle intelligent driving company owned by SAIC Motor, announced a new strategic cooperation agreement.

According to the agreement, Hesai Technology will provide Youdao Zhitu with high-performance lidar sensors for L4 and L3 automated driving, and the two sides will carry out in-depth cooperation on mass production of semi-solid-state lidar that complies with vehicle standards. The two sides will cooperate and explore the iteration of research and development of automated driving and other business scenarios, and jointly develop the technology for smart transportation, the early scale-up of smart logistics services, and the safer mass production of commercial-used autonomous vehicles.

Youdao Zhitu was established in November 2021, and is committed to creating value for consumers with AI-featured commercial vehicles. The L4 intelligent heavy truck of Youdao Zhitu is based on the sixth generation of SAIC HONGYAN’s GENLVON series heavy duty truck. It features sensing equipment such as lidar, cameras and millimeter wave radar from the production line and is equipped with a completely autonomous vehicle gauge-level domain controller, with significant computing power, and a network connection controller, as well as the latest scheme of intelligent driving technology.

At present, Youdao Zhitu has equipped its L4 smart heavy truck with Hesai’s high-performance lidar. Through the long-distance and high-precision sensing of lidar, combined with multi-sensor fusion sensing and 5G-V2X vehicle communication, these vehicles realize the L4-level automated driving at the port, and boast functions such as centimeter-level positioning, precise parking, interaction with automatic port machinery and equipment, and queue driving on East Sea Bridge.

Meanwhile, Hesai lidars can ensure reliable visibility in harsh working environments such as high humidity, high fog, rain and the truck vibrations that vehicles face when driving along the port. As such, it guarantees the stable operation of unmanned trucks in the port.

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As of early December, Youdao Zhitu’s L4 commercial-used automatic driving intelligent heavy trucks have driven more than 2 million kilometers and transshipped over 61,000 TEUs.

In the future, Youdao Zhitu will equip Hesai semi-solid lidar and other products on more mass-produced commercial vehicles such as the new generation L3 intelligent heavy trucks, intelligent city buses and intelligent sweepers.