Labelled as the “first joint product of the two enterprises”, the electric vehicle will have level 4 autonomy and “exciting new energy capabilities”. While GAC will be providing the chassis, Huawei will be bringing the computing and communication aspects, with the pair planning “eight models and multiple series” of electric vehicles. In June, GAC, Huawei, and Didi said they would be “pooling resources, data, and scientific research”. “One exciting project that GAC is working towards in cooperation with Huawei and Didi is ‘Level 4’ autonomous vehicles, which can operate almost entirely without input from humans (current driver-assist mechanisms are classed as Level 2 autonomy),” the trio said at the time. “Combining resources from the three parties, intelligent L4 vehicles are planned to be mass-produced by 2024, utilising GAC design and manufacturing capabilities and automatic driving software from Didi and Huawei. Didi’s intelligent hardware platform, Didi Gemini, is already being road-tested by several multinational car companies.” Didi founder Cheng Wei has previously said the company wanted a million autonomous vehicles by 2025. If the Didi script sounds familiar, it was once the vision of Uber, which took in $500 million from Toyota in 2018. By December 2020, Uber sold its self-driving unit.

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