The development marks a significant milestone in building up in-house development competence for core technologies that are in high demand among Chinese customers. Already today, a quarter of all newly registered vehicles in the Chinese market are equipped with a Level 2 driving system for highway scenarios. By 2030, Level 2+ is expected to be in use in more than 80 percent of vehicles in the market. Level 2++, which covers both highway and urban traffic scenarios, is then expected to be installed in 75 percent of new vehicles.
In line with this outlook, Volkswagen Group established CARIZON a joint venture between its software lighthouse CARIAD and Chinese tech company Horizon Robotics, in November 2023 as part of its “In China, for China” strategy. The joint venture specializes in highly advanced automated driving systems for the Chinese market. Over the past 18 months, more than 500 software experts across the company's Beijing and Shanghai locations have driven the development of the new ADAS technology forward.
Ralf Brandstätter, Volkswagen AG Group Board Member for China and CEO of Volkswagen Group China: “With our new ADAS system, we are demonstrating what is possible when strengths of Volkswagen are combined with local innovation. The system has been developed at ‘China speed’, fully tailored to the needs of our Chinese customers and will set a new benchmark in the market for driving performance, safety and quality. The rapid progress we have made reflects the outstanding capabilities of our joint venture CARIZON and the successful implementation of our ‘In China, for China’ strategy.”
GAIA: AI-powered data platform accelerates development cycles
The system transforms Intelligent Connected Vehicles (ICVs) into predictive driving companions with human-like driving experience that can avoid dangerous situations before they arise. The key to this is “GAIA”, CARIZON's proprietary AI-driven data platform for intelligent data collection and analysis. With two terabytes of data collected per vehicle per day and over 100,000 kilometres of test driving daily, GAIA enables highly automated AI training of the vehicle software.
Compared to conventional data platforms without an AI Big-Data technology, GAIA accelerates data analysis sixfold and reduces the verification cycles of AI solutions to just one-twentieth of their original duration.
This enables CARIZON to generate and validate hundreds of thousands of real-world driving scenarios with exceptional speed and accuracy— accelerating the development cycle, reduces costs, and ensuring a particularly seamless and safe driving performance.
Marcus Hafkemeyer, CEO of CARIZON, said: “With a team of 500 local ADAS experts and the consistent integration of AI in the development process, we have built an advanced ADAS system in a very short time—one that will deliver outstanding performance in driving performance and safety. This year, we will bring Level 2+ ADAS to the road. Level 2++ ADAS with Urban Navigate on Autopilot (NoA) is in advanced testing and will be launched in 2026. This will also enable us to lay the technological foundations for a fast-track evolution towards Level 3.”
Auto Shanghai: Group showcases Next-Gen Smart EVs for China
Volkswagen Group is accelerating its transformation by consistently implementing its “In China, for China” strategy. The company is strengthening its local development capacities in e-mobility, digitalization, and intelligent driving, while also accelerating its decision-making and development processes in the region. This enables rapid responses to market-defining trends in China and fully leverages the growth and innovation potential of the market.
Auto Shanghai 2025 marks a key milestone in this transformation. For the first time, Volkswagen Group will present an entirely new generation of smart electric vehicles from Audi and Volkswagen brands—developed exclusively in China for Chinese customers. The Volkswagen Group will launch over 20 fully electric and electrified NEV models by 2027 as part of its broad product offensive. By 2030, the Group brands will offer around 30 fully electric models.