Great Wall Motors announced today that it has completed a strategic investment in Horizon Robotics, an automotive chip company, which means it has officially entered the chip industry.

Great Wall Motors said that it will develop in the chip industry through strategic investment, strategic cooperation and independent research and development.

Since the end of last year, many car companies have been caught in the situation of chip shortage, Great Wall Motors became another car company to enter the chip manufacturing industry after BYD.

According to the strategic cooperation framework agreement signed by both parties, they will focus on the direction of advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS), high-level autonomous driving and intelligent cockpit, and jointly explore automotive intelligent technology and develop intelligent car products.

They will also layout intelligent core technologies such as autonomous driving and intelligent network connection to accelerate the development and mass production of intelligent vehicles.

Wei Jianjun, chairman of Great Wall Motors, said that with the development of automotive intelligence, the importance of chips for the automotive industry is increasingly prominent.

"I believe Great Wall Motors and Horizon can give full play to their respective core R&D capabilities in the future, jointly build a full chain of self-driving AI core technologies, and focus on promoting in-depth cooperation in the direction of front-end mass production," he stated.

Horizon founder and CEO Yu Kai said that the two sides will be committed to promoting the construction of smart car ecology and jointly building future-oriented smart car products.

The vice president of Great Wall Motors had previously said, "Chip is the core component of intelligent development, and Great Wall Motors is very concerned about this area."

Horizon is the only technology company in China that has achieved front-end mass production of automotive smart chips, and already has chip solutions for L2-L3 , and will launch chips for L3/L4 autonomous driving in the future.

Currently over 45% of Great Wall Motors' models are equipped with L2 smart driving and will achieve China's first fully redundant L3 autonomous driving this year.

Great Wall Motor aims to achieve China's first L3 autonomous driving with full vehicle redundancy by 2021

(Source: Great Wall Motors)