Self-Driving Vehicle Updates: Ford, Hesai, Westwell, Plus, and Ambarella in the Spotlight
In a significant move, Hesai Technology, a leading provider of lidar solutions, has partnered with Westwell, a global leader in autonomous driving solutions. This collaboration aims to revolutionize the autonomous driving industry by integrating Hesai's advanced lidar technology into Westwell's solutions.
Westwell's PlusVision stack, running on a mid-range CV3-AD655 SoC, is capable of processing 11 cameras simultaneously at 30 frames per second. This high-performance setup provides a detection range of more than 200 meters for front cameras, making it suitable for high-speed driving conditions.
The partnership sees Hesai's lidars, such as the XT32 and AT128, being integrated into several of Westwell's solutions. These lidars offer several benefits, including high-resolution 3D sensing, long-range detection, robust performance in various conditions, compact and lightweight designs, high frame rates for real-time processing, and multi-channel laser architecture.
These features enhance environmental awareness, improve safety, and ensure reliable operation across a wide range of driving conditions. Westwell's autonomous driving Q-Trucks and E-Trucks, for instance, use the XT32 mid-range lidar, while the AT128's 128-channel laser setup provides denser point clouds for better detection of smaller or distant objects in complex driving scenarios.
The efficiency of the CV3-AD family also helps increase battery range in new electric vehicles, providing OEMs with additional headroom to integrate other software and create differentiated features. This partnership is expected to result in more energy-efficient autonomous driving solutions.
Westwell's autonomous driving solutions have already been deployed in various locations, including Hong Kong's largest independent air cargo operator, Hong Kong Air Cargo Terminals Limited (HACTL), and the Felixstowe Port in the United Kingdom, where Westwell boasts the largest fleet of Q-Trucks.
In another development, Zeekr, a company delivering over 240,000 vehicles powered by the Mobileye SuperVision platform, plans to accelerate the scaling and delivery of core underlying technologies for the Mobileye SuperVision platform. Zeekr also plans to expand the installation of the SuperVision platform on additional vehicles and increase the highway and urban coverage of its existing Navigation Zeekr Pilot (NZP) systems.
Zeekr and Mobileye also aim to accelerate technology localization in China, integrating Mobileye technologies into the next-generation Zeekr models. The PlusVisionTM, a high-performance transformer-based AD perception software stack developed by Plus, is now available on Ambarella's CV3-AD AI domain controller family of systems-on-chips (SoCs). This collaboration will enable Zeekr engineers to better utilize Mobileye's technologies and development tools for software upgrades.
With this multitude of partnerships and collaborations, the autonomous driving industry is set to witness significant advancements in the near future. The integration of Hesai's lidar technology into Westwell's solutions, for instance, promises to enhance the safety and efficiency of autonomous vehicles, paving the way for a future where autonomous driving becomes the norm.
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