【Watch Friends】

Chinese electric vehicle maker Zeekr on Watch FriendsTuesday unveiled its refreshed 001 hatchbacks and 007 sedans with a major upgrade for its driving assist technology, or Navigation Zeekr Pilot (NZP). The Geely-owned and New York-listed EV brand said its level 2 autonomous system would enable the cars to navigate by themselves under the driver’s supervision on fixed routes in big cities for daily commuters starting September. This will be followed by another release via over-the-air update to all users by year-end when the cars will be able to carry out some driving functions automatically on most urban streets nationwide, making the system somewhat similar to Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) software.

Zeekr is also aiming to offer users what it calls a “door-to-door” automated driving experience in all Chinese cities in the second half of 2025, as it looks to revamp the system with more reliance on artificial intelligence neural networks rather than programmers’ coding. Rival Huawei on August 6 boasted about its prowess in this area while Xpeng Motors in July said it expected to provide similar capabilities in the fourth quarter of this year, TechNode reported.

Zeekr’s in-house developed advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) will become a standard feature on all redesigned 007 variants, which also boast the fastest charge in the world and have been launched at a price range of between RMB 209,900 and RMB 299,900 ($29,354-$41,941). Zeekr said its second generation of lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery needs only 10.5 minutes to go from 10% to 80% at a 5.5C charge rate.

Meanwhile, the company introduced a new entry-level 001 featuring Mobileye’s chips and software and priced at RMB 259,000, but shifted to Nvidia DRIVE processors for the rest of the 001 variants as part of a strategy to develop its own ADAS. [TechNode reporting]

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