Chinese electric car company will replace its original Mobileye Eye Q4 solution with the Journey 3, the latest chip from local chip company Horizon Robotics, in the new Li ONE. To analysts, this is not only a smart move by Li Auto, but also heralds the upgrade of China's auto industry chain.

CITIC Securities analyst Li Jingtao's team said in a research note released on Monday that the Journey 3 chip has excellent performance compared to Li Auto's previous Mobileye solution.

What's more, Journey 3 has a higher openness for custom development, the team said.

Journey 3 uses a 16nm process and is developed on Horizon Robotics' BPU2.0 architecture with 5TOPS of AI arithmetic and typical power consumption of just 2.5W. The chip enables high-level assisted driving, driver monitoring and automated parking assistance, the team noted.

Li Auto used the Journey 3 chip to replace the original Mobileye EyeQ4 solution in the Li ONE model, signifying the successful replacement of foreign manufacturers by local manufacturers, the team said.

(Source: Horizon Robotics)

As local car brands steadily improve their intelligent technology development capabilities, the gap between the product and technology strength of China's smart car supply chain and overseas giants narrows, they said.

Previously Li Auto and Horizon Robotics had announced a partnership at CES ASIA 2019.

Horizon Robotics equipped the Li ONE with "in-car multi-zone interaction technology," which supports up to four channels of human voice separation and six channels of zone detection.

This technology enables multiple pickups, human voice localization, noise reduction, echo cancellation and voice wake-up with up to 95 percent accuracy in sound source localization.

Li ONE is also equipped with Horizon Robotics' in-vehicle intelligent interaction system, which supports more than 30 wake-free command words.

Li Auto's new Li ONE will feature latest chip from Horizon Robotics