The joint venture, Carizon, is headquartered in Beijing and plans to recruit more than 300 experts by the end of 2023.
Volkswagen Group’s software subsidiary Cariad has formally launched a joint venture with Chinese AI chip company Horizon Robotics, after the two announced the plan a year ago.
The joint venture is called Carizon, a combination of the Cariad and Horizon names.
As part of a partnership agreement announced in 2022, Carizon will integrate Horizon Robotics’ hardware and software integration capabilities with Cariad’s experience in vehicle and systems integration to develop ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance System) solutions, according to a press release today.
Carizon is headquartered in Beijing and plans to recruit more than 300 experts by the end of 2023, Horizon Robotics said.
The joint venture will focus on developing self-driving solutions based on Horizon Robotics’ Journey family of chips and is planned for Volkswagen’s battery electric vehicle (BEV) models in China.
On October 13, 2022, Horizon Robotics said Cariad would form a joint venture with it, in which Volkswagen planned to invest about €2.4 billion for a 60 percent stake.
On November 24, local media outlet Jiemian reported that Horizon Robotics CTO Huang Chang led a team to join the joint venture.
Following last year’s announcement of the two companies’ plans to form the joint venture, reports surfaced that former Huawei self-driving business veteran Su Jing would join the joint venture.
Instead of joining the new company, Jiemian said in the report that Su has joined Horizon Robotics to lead high-level smart driving projects, including the Journey 6 project.
Horizon Robotics previewed the Journey 6 chip at the Guangzhou auto show in late November, with a computing power of 560 Tops, higher than the 128 Tops in the Journey 5.
($1 = RMB 7.1565)
BYD ramps up smart driving R&D efforts, forms chip design team, report says
