Horizon to bring driving aids to the masses

China's largest group of car owners — people who navigate the hustle and bustle of daily urban life — don't they deserve the most user-friendly urban driving assistance features? Yu Kai, founder and CEO of Horizon Robotics, posed this question at the company summit last week.

To answer it, the Chinese homegrown AI chip firm has revealed an urban assisted driving solution powered by a single Journey 6M chip, which is set to enter mass production.

This will make a mature and reliable intelligent driving solution available in the 100,000 yuan ($14,164) price range, said Yu. Such features were once exclusive to high-end cars.

"The true value of technology lies in achieving widespread accessibility," he added. With entry-level cars priced under 100,000 yuan accounting for 50 percent of new car sales, the move aims to lower the threshold for integrating premium technology into mainstream car brands.

According to Yu, the first urban assisted driving product using the Journey 6M chip involves two types of collaboration.

The first is a chip tool chain collaboration, with partners including auto components giant Bosch, LiDAR provider Zvision and self-driving company QCraft. The second type is algorithm service collaboration, with partners such as Toyota-affiliated Denso, Volkswagen-Horizon joint venture Carizon, and Horizon-Continental joint venture neueHCT.

Horizon's commitment to standardizing intelligent driving has been validated by the market through its Horizon SuperDrive, HSD, which has been installed in cars since November.

Once confined to cars priced above 200,000 yuan, these intelligent driving capabilities have been brought to the 130,000-yuan segment in one fell swoop.

In the first two weeks after launch, the system recorded over 12,000 activations across its debut models: the Changan Deepal L06 sedan and Chery Exeed ET5 SUV, with the former having a starting price of 132,900 yuan.

To date, HSD has secured partnerships with over 10 automakers, covering more than 20 models.

In the market for autonomous driving computing solutions among Chinese brands, the company's market share has grown to 32.4 percent, empowering over 400 designated collaborative models.

Founded in 2015 in Beijing, Horizon initially focused on chip development and the success of its Journey series, supported by automakers such as Li Auto and Changan, has brought it public recognition.

With cumulative shipments of the Journey series chips surpassing 10 million units, Horizon's technology is now found in one out of every three intelligent cars in the Chinese market.

Beyond core chip supply, Horizon has enriched its business to offer end-to-end intelligent driving solutions and collaborate with industry partners to build a shared ecosystem.

At the summit, Horizon introduced a new HSD Together cooperation model, making its HSD algorithm models accessible. It allows automakers to build upon a foundation for secondary development, enabling them to focus on differentiating capabilities and enhancing user experience, thereby reducing entry barriers and investment for advanced intelligent driving.

Yu said: "The model aims to enable our partners to reduce manpower investment, computing power consumption, and time to market during product development by 90 percent each, based on Horizon's proven and mature intelligent platform."

He stated that in the next three to five years, Horizon plans to achieve mass production of urban assisted driving systems numbering in tens of millions by collaborating with ecosystem partners through HSD Together.

According to data from NE Times, a Chinese NEV service platform, US chip company Nvidia held the largest share of China's installed intelligent driving chip market with a share of 53.8 percent in October. Huawei ranked second with a share of 13.3 percent, while Horizon was third with a market share of 9.4 percent.

Urban intelligent driving systems, like those developed by Nvidia and Huawei, are primarily featured in vehicles priced 200,000 yuan and above. With its ecosystem-building efforts and low-price positioning, Horizon is expected to accelerate its popularization across the mass market.

Intelligent driving has been a hot topic in China's auto market for years and 2025 is widely regarded as a pivotal year, marking the transition from technological breakthroughs to widespread access.

Data from January to July shows that sales of new passenger cars in China equipped with Level 2 advanced driver assistance systems reached 7.76 million units, with a market penetration rising to 62.58 percent.

A J.D. Power research report says the smart driving experience has become the third most important factor in car purchase decisions, following vehicle quality and performance.

Su Qing, vice-president and chief architect at Horizon, who once took charge of intelligent driving products at Huawei, said he used to be pessimistic about autonomous driving (due to the uncertainty of the technological path). However, Tesla's FSD (Full Self-Driving) V12 software has shown that an end-to-end approach is feasible in real-world conditions.

This means development will evolve on a single technology stack, rather than having L4 in experiments and L2 in production as separate paths, he said.

Su added that the HSD is the first-generation product, which still has room for improvement and will achieve that in the next two to three years.

Meanwhile, the company is committed to delivering L4 autonomous driving to users at the same price point. "This is the purpose driving decades of hard work by us," Su said.