Tesla<\/a> and a range of Chinese automakers and suppliers, including Xpeng.<\/p>\nDJI, which retains a stake in ZYT through an affiliate, has been operating under U.S. sanctions because of what U.S. agencies have described as national \u2060security concerns.<\/p>\n
ZYT’s rivals include Huawei’s smart driving unit and Momenta. The start-up is vying for the fast-developing market for AI-powered driving, where it also faces competition from Xpeng and Tesla among others.<\/p>\n
While the technology landscape is changing quickly, “if you can get six months of advantage, that’s already a huge thing,” Shen said.<\/p>\n
ZYT is targeting a Hong Kong listing as early as 2027, Shen said, as it seeks to capitalise on a string of \u200bcommercial \u200bpartnerships, including in China\u2019s trucking market, and a recent major investment from state-owned automaker FAW Group. “The potential quickest \u200bis somewhere sometime 2027,” Shen told Reuters.<\/p>\n
Story continues <\/p>\n
‘WE DON’T KNOW WHAT THE CAR IS \u200cTHINKING’<\/p>\n
The new ZYT AI already outperforms him behind the wheel, Shen said, including navigating narrow roads with oncoming traffic and children near schools in Shenzhen.<\/p>\n
“It actually drives better than me,” he said.<\/p>\n
When he took a test drive, his engineers also delivered a stark reminder of how different it is. “We don’t know what the car is thinking,” they told him, a sign of how advanced the latest versions of AI had become.<\/p>\n
“The model is thinking in its own internal brain.\u201d<\/p>\n
Shen said ZYT has partnerships with five of the six largest Chinese truck manufacturers, a group that controls more than 98% of the domestic market. In January, the company announced plans for highway-based truck driving systems with three Chinese truck makers, XCMG, SHACMAN and SINOTRUK in the first half of this year.<\/p>\n
ZYT\u2019s AI model trained on \u200cpassenger car data was adapted for heavy-duty trucks in about six weeks.<\/p>\n
The truck business, Shen said, offers a \u200bmore compelling financial case than passenger cars because advanced driving systems can generate immediate savings. The ZYT system, for example, \u200bhe said, can deliver \u201clow single-digit (percentage) savings\u201d on fuel.<\/p>\n
Late last year, automaker FAW Group bought a \u200b35.8% stake in ZYT from New Territory, a DJI-linked holding company that retains 34.85% ownership. Shen said the transaction would resolve any compliance issues for customers \u200coutside China, because it was no longer majority owned by the drone \u200bmaker. FAW now owns the largest stake in ZYT.<\/p>\n
WORKING \u200bON CHEAPER CHIPS FOR CARS<\/p>\n
ZYT\u2019s foundation model currently runs on expensive, high-powered computing hardware of the kind found in robotaxis and prototypes, not mass-market cars. ZYT is working to compress it to run on cheaper, mass-market chips, work Shen said is \u201cstill ongoing.\u201d The first passenger car to use the system is expected in 2027, he said.<\/p>\n
VW, whose China partner is \u200bFAW, was ZYT\u2019s first customer. Xpeng is also a VW partner for \u200cdriving systems with its VLA 2.0 system.<\/p>\n
ZYT has established an engineering and compliance presence near Volkswagen’s Wolfsburg headquarters, where it has been testing a prototype from FAW\u2019s Hongqi \u200bbrand on European roads.<\/p>\n
The United States is not on ZYT’s roadmap. “We will keep ourselves away from the market at this moment,” Shen said. “The rest of the world \u200bis already picking up.”<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Qiaoyi Li and Kevin Krolicki; Editing by David Dolan and Sonali Paul)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Kevin Krolicki and Qiaoyi Li SHENZHEN, March 20 (Reuters) – The chief executive of Chinese autonomous drive…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":361912,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[140378,163585,61,60,163583,80,163584],"class_list":["post-361911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-chinese-automakers","tag-driving-systems","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-shen-shaojie","tag-technology","tag-zyt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=361911"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361911\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/361912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=361911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=361911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=361911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}