A Sept. 9 roundup from Chinese outlet D1EV highlighted two developments in the country’s automotive technology sector: Huawei’s in-car systems reaching a new installation milestone and the departure of Xiaomi’s L3 autonomous-driving lead. Huawei car-business CEO Jin Yuzhi said the QianKun driver-assistance system, HarmonyOS cockpit and QianKun app each passed 2 million. The driving system has recorded 14.9 billion kilometres of assisted driving, while vehicles equipped with it have travelled 42.7 billion kilometres in total; Huawei also reported 6.4 million collisions actively avoided by the system.
Huawei’s first million installations took 44 months, while the next million took 12 months, according to the report. The figures point to faster deployment of its technology across vehicles, rather than installations being limited to a small number of flagship models.
Wang Naiyan, who led Xiaomi’s L3 intelligent-driving work, has left the company to pursue an embodied-AI venture focused on a robot “brain,” according to sources cited by 21st Century Business Herald. The project is seeking funding. Wang spent nine years at TuSimple as its China CTO and joined Xiaomi in May 2024 to lead L3 development.
The roundup also reported that Pony.ai CEO Peng Jun said the core technical challenges of autonomous driving were largely solved, while emphasizing the complexity and cost of operating a large fleet. Separately, XPeng opened a humanoid-robot production line with more than 80% automation in core processes and said it aims to begin mass production by the end of 2026.