Dialogue with Lin Je: Intelligent Assistant Driving Must Target "Safer Than Human Driving"

Each reporter, Sun Tongtong, edited by Pei Jianru, internship editor, Yu Tingting

Recently, Geely Automobile Group and its technology partner, Starry Technology Co., Ltd., jointly participated in the 2025 World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) and the Global AI Governance High-Level Meeting.

The conference showcased various new products, including the Extreme K9X, Roewe RX10EM-P, Geely Galaxy A7, and Geely Galaxy M9, as well as the "Full-AI" technology system developed by Geely's own research team. Among them, the full-stack self-developed intelligent driving assistance system received widespread attention.

"In intelligent driving, there are many subtle nuances, but Geely has always insisted on self-research and development. Only by doing so can we quickly meet users' demands. If we just buy in, the technology will be controlled by others, and the costs of post-sales maintenance and upgrades will be very high, making it difficult to make changes later," said Lin Je, Senior Vice President of Geely Automobile Group.

"Smart driving" must target "safer than human driving"

In the field of smart driving, Geely places high demands on hardware. For example, this new model, Extreme K9X, is equipped with the Thousand Miles AI H9 solution, featuring dual Thor chips and a super-strong 1400TOPS computing power, capable of achieving L3-level intelligent driving assistance.

"Why do we need to elevate the hardware configuration? Because we want to leave some buffer for future requirements. We hope that our users can not only have a new experience next year but also in two or three years, so we must ensure that the hardware performance has some redundancy," said Lin Je.

It is learned that all Geely's currently available models are equipped with dual NVIDIA DRIVE AGX Orin-X chips and computing power of 508TOPS, as well as a laser radar-based intelligent driving solution.

"In the era of smart cars, buying a car is just the starting point. We need to look at it from a growth perspective. Whether one car's intelligence can continue to evolve in the future and become an important aspect for assessing whether a car enterprise can win over users' satisfaction in the long run. For Geely, our 'Thousand Miles' technology has basically achieved the highest computing power configuration compared to many of our competitors," said Chen Qi, Chief Scientist of Intelligent Driving at Geely Holding Group.

Chen Qi revealed that this autumn, Geely's Thousand Miles will launch a new L3-level technical architecture, cloud-based WM+ big model, and car-side VLA+ end-to-end security model, realizing AI training AI, AI verification AI, and more.

In terms of sensing hardware, this technical architecture can achieve four 360-degree all-sensing capabilities, including ultrasonic radar, millimeter-wave radar, visual sensing, and laser radar. Among them, to achieve the 360-degree full-sensing capability of laser radar, this architecture adopts a five-laser-radar layout scheme, including one long-range laser radar and four dToF (direct flight time technology) complementing laser radars, which not only enables high-speed and urban fast-road L3-level intelligent driving but also prepares for city-to-city and parking lot-to-parking lot L3-level intelligent driving.

However, some industry insiders questioned this architecture's excessive redundancy in visual sensing and laser radar configuration. In response to these concerns, Lin Je said: "Intelligent assistant driving must target 'safer than human driving.' If the intelligence of smart assistant driving and human driving are on the same level, it won't be meaningful. We need to use various technologies to make it more advanced and safer for users." Such a move will certainly require some costs, but we are willing to sacrifice our profits to ensure safety."

Smart driving technology is becoming the foundation of whole-AI

Chen Qi believes that no human-machine shared driving will be an important development direction in the near future. By integrating intelligent driving with seat, bottom plate, and other domains, we can achieve, for example, lightweight steering wheel control, voice-controlled car, or even eye-controlled car. Cross-domain fusion smart driving can realize real-time understanding of user intent based on surrounding environment, controlling the vehicle, and enhancing user convenience and comfort.

"Smart driving technology is becoming a foundation for whole-AI, empowering intelligent assistant driving to rapidly move towards L3 or even L4 levels, while also empowering other areas of the car, such as smart car 2.0," said Chen Qi. In this process, Geely chose self-research and development of intelligent driving, which not only allows us to better respond to users' needs and achieve differentiated competitive advantages but also lays a solid foundation for whole-AI fusion."

In reality, Geely has been laying out its AI strategy early on and has made rapid progress. As early as 2021, Geely announced the "Smart Geely 2025" strategy, targeting the development of a comprehensive AI ecosystem through big computing power, big data, big models, satellite constellation, etc., to build a solid technology foundation.

On January 25, 2025, Geely officially released its industry-first "Smart Car Whole-AI" technology system, which not only applies AI to the architecture, powertrain, bottom plate, and seat of smart cars but also deepens AI into product research and development, production, sales, and after-sales service across the entire chain, making it the world's first car enterprise to complete whole-AI layout.

Currently, Geely has become a major player in widespread implementation of AI smart bodies on vehicles. The Thousand Miles AI intelligent safety assistant driving system, the Laoshan AI electric hybrid 2.0 powertrain, the AI digital bottom plate, and the AI intelligent architecture, all of which have been mass-produced and available to users, bringing unprecedented smart safety driving experiences.

Furthermore, during WAIC 2025, Geely also released a next-generation Agent OS (preview version) designed for AI agents, providing users with more natural, more personalized, and more emotional interaction experiences. At the same time, based on the latest Step 3 foundation big model from Starry Technology Co., Ltd., Geely will continue to push forward the full-scale upgrade of smart car experiences.