The fact that Vietnam’s VinFast has partnered with Israel’s Autobrains to deploy L2++ autonomous driving with AI semiconductors at its core in mass-produced EVs is an important move that shows the reality of automotive semiconductors and autonomous driving.
🟧VinFast and Autobrains jointly develop L2++ autonomous driving starting from VF 8 and VF 9
VinFast announced a strategic partnership with Autobrains, an Israeli autonomous driving AI company, for the research and development of enhanced Level 2++ (L2++) autonomous driving technology.
This technology is being validated, starting with the company’s flagship SUVs, the VF 8 and VF 9. VF 8 is a mid-size electric SUV mainly for the North American and European markets, while VF 9 is a larger, high-value-added full-size electric SUV and is the core model of VinFast.
- Highlights
of the announcement: Pilot
testing of L2++ autonomous driving system with VF 8/VF 9 begins – “Robo-Car” concept using 7 cameras and approximately 20 TOPS of AI semiconductors - Technical and strategic features
: Camera-centric design
that does not use LiDAR or high-precision HD maps, and adopts an efficiency-oriented AI SoC (System on a Chip) that does not rely on high computing performance. - Expected market, application
, advanced driver assistance (ADAS)
for mass-produced EVs, and future development to Level 4 (L4) autonomous driving
🟧 Semiconductor-led design transformation against the backdrop of higher costs of autonomous driving
In the field of autonomous driving, methods equipped with a large number of LiDAR and radar and using high-performance semiconductors in the hundreds of TOPS class have been attracting attention in recent years, but rising vehicle costs and increased power consumption have become issues for mass production.
The initiative between VinFast and Autobrains is characterized by the fact that Autobrains’ unique Agentic AI (Agentic AI) aims to achieve advanced driver assistance even with relatively compact AI semiconductors of about 20 TOPS, based on the premise of efficient AI processing that executes only the necessary inferences.
This is different from NVIDIA’s ultra-high-performance SoC route, and is in the same direction as Mobileye and Qualcomm’s low-power, production-oriented ADAS semiconductor strategy.
🟧 Conclusion
The partnership between VinFast and Autobrains is an attempt to bring autonomous driving into a “realistic price range” by integrating AI semiconductors and algorithms to optimize the mass-produced EVs VF 8 and VF 9.
We will pay attention to whether this approach will spread to other EV manufacturers and predict the mainstream of automotive semiconductors and autonomous driving technology in the future.
