GWM revs up efforts to offer smart vehicle functions

China's largest SUV maker Great Wall Motors has unveiled its latest smart vehicle solutions, expecting 40 percent of its vehicles sold in 2025 to be preinstalled with high-level autonomous driving functions.

A chassis-by-wire the carmaker unveiled on Tuesday would facilitate the goal, said Song Dongxian, vice-president at Great Wall Motors.

Such a chassis is a prerequisite to autonomous driving because it is controlled by electric signals to steer or brake and thus saves drivers the trouble of doing the job themselves through mechanical linkages in the traditional chassis.

The chassis-by-wire, which will be put into commercial use in 2023 and capable of Level 4 autonomous functions, is part of the latest version of the carmaker's Smart Coffee solutions.

The Smart Coffee brand was first unveiled in 2020 as Great Wall Motors stepped up its transition into a mobility technology company.

Besides the chassis-by-wire, the upgrade unveiled on Tuesday also involved a new electric and electrical architecture as well as improvements in on-board functions, smart driving and smart services.

"The Smart Coffee 2.0 can enable vehicles to think, make their decisions and get upgraded," said Mu Feng, another vice-president at the carmaker.

Great Wall Motors is ready to launch its fourth-generation architecture in 2022. It will feature three major computing units and thus have better computing efficiency compared with the currently mainstream architecture mainly composed of a bigger number of smaller electronic control units.

It will unveil the fifth-generation architecture in 2024 with one central computing unit, which will make vehicles built on it resemble computers on wheels.

Great Wall Motors also launched a operating system for its vehicles on Tuesday, and announced an alliance of over 80 companies which will develop apps that can be installed in the system.

The number of its partner companies will grow into 150 in 2022 and more will join in coming years. By 2025, they will offer apps in almost all areas of life ranging from health and tourism to finance and sports, said the carmaker.