Yin Tongyue, the head of Chery Group, once remarked that by closely shadowing BYD, one can leave competitors in the dust. In the domestic market, Chery is not alone in aiming to cross the river by touching BYD.

In February, BYD fired the opening salvo in the race for intelligent driving by announcing the extension of its cutting-edge "Heavenly Eye" intelligent driving solution to new vehicles priced at just 70,000 yuan. In March, Geely officially unveiled its "Boundless Miles" intelligent driving solution. Moving forward, all new products under Geely's Yinhe series will be equipped with Boundless Miles, standardizing advanced intelligent driving capabilities.

On the surface, "Boundless Miles" directly targets "Heavenly Eye" as a competitor. However, the technical routes and parameters revealed at the press conference highlight the divergent paths taken by the two companies in popularizing advanced intelligent driving. Notably, the Heavenly Eye solution relies extensively on NVIDIA Orin series chips, whereas Boundless Miles downplays the significance of chips and emphasizes its supercomputing power and AI ecosystem during the press conference.

Can intelligent driving for all be achieved without relying on stacking configurations?

Geely has categorized the Boundless Miles solution into five classes: Boundless Miles H1, H3, H5, and H9. Currently, the H1 solution is already integrated across Geely's Yinhe Xingyao 8 and the all-new Yinhe E8. Geely announced that by the second half of this year, all new and updated models under the Geely Yinhe brand will be equipped with intelligent driving solutions at varying levels.

When compared to BYD's Heavenly Eye C, Geely's Boundless Miles H1 and H3 solutions, which are both popularizing advanced intelligent driving, are purely vision-based, enabling high-speed NOA functionality. In terms of hardware configuration, Heavenly Eye C utilizes a 12-camera solution, while Boundless Miles H1 employs a 10-camera setup.

In previous reports, we mentioned that to popularize intelligent driving for all, BYD has placed an order for 4 million NVIDIA Orin chips. At yesterday's press conference, Geely did not disclose which intelligent driving chips with what computing power they would use. A source familiar with the matter informed Luca Auto that the Boundless Miles H1 and H3 solutions primarily use domestic chips from Black Sesame Technologies and Horizon Robotics. In contrast to BYD's most basic Heavenly Eye C, which already employs NVIDIA Orin chips, Geely does not seem to be positioning itself to win by stacking hardware configurations.

Also present at Geely's AI Smart Technology press conference was Yin Qi, chairman of Qianli Technology, which has developed "Boundless Miles" in deep collaboration with Geely.

Shortly before the press conference, Qianli Technology, Geely Auto Group, and Jieyue Xingchen jointly announced that they would further strengthen their existing technical partnership. Geely has established the "Intelligent Automobile Computing Power Alliance" - Xingrui Supercomputing Center 2.0, boasting computing power resources exceeding 10,000 cards and comprehensive computing power increased to 23.5 EFLOPS.

Algorithms, data, and computing power are known as the three pillars of intelligent driving. In terms of computing power, Lei Jun recently stated publicly that Xiaomi's intelligent driving department has reserved 11.45 EFLOPS of high-performance computing power and accumulated over 10 million high-quality scene clips in the past year.

At the press conference, Geely boldly proclaimed itself as "Number One Among Chinese Automakers" with 23.5 EFLOPS. In terms of data training, Geely announced at the press conference that its base model has accumulated 1 billion video clips of data. To put it simply, in this battle for intelligent driving for all, Geely is constructing a leading cloud-based supercomputing capability. This is also the approach taken by Musk with Tesla's FSD, where powerful cloud computing power mitigates the dependence on high-computing-power automotive chips.

In popularizing intelligent driving, BYD's advantage lies in being China's top-selling automaker, allowing it to leverage economies of scale to reduce costs, thereby creating a price advantage and fostering positive feedback in market share. Therefore, for Geely, striking a balance between cost and performance is crucial.

Judging from the Boundless Miles technical solution, it emphasizes powerful cloud computing power. As for the actual experience and capabilities, it is currently impossible to judge. However, in the long run, Geely is expected to tie with BYD while enjoying a cost advantage.

Can the price of advanced intelligent driving be further reduced by another 10,000 yuan?

BYD's initiative to popularize intelligent driving for all means that no automaker, whether joint venture or domestic, can afford to remain indifferent. The stakes are clear for all to see. With a large number of mid- and low-end models, BYD stands to significantly influence consumer perceptions once intelligent driving is fully deployed.

This is indeed evidenced by the fact that just days after the announcement of "Heavenly Eye," BYD's store orders surged. February sales data revealed that BYD's sales exceeded 320,000 units, a year-on-year increase of 164%; Great Wall Motor's sales exceeded 77,000 units, a year-on-year increase of 9.65%; Geely Auto's sales exceeded 204,000 units, a year-on-year increase of approximately 84%; and Chery's sales exceeded 180,000 units, a year-on-year increase of 26.4%.

Judging from the two new models unveiled at Geely's press conference yesterday, the Yinhe Xingyao 8 and the all-new Yinhe E8 directly target BYD's Han. The upgraded intelligent driving version of the BYD Han has a starting price of 168,800 yuan. The official guide price of the all-new Yinhe E8 starts at 153,800 yuan, with a limited-time starting price of 149,800 yuan. Compared to the 2024 model of Yinhe E8, the new model offers increased range and comes standard with the Boundless Miles H1 intelligent driving solution, with a starting price reduced by 12,000 yuan. The starting price of the Yinhe Xingyao 8 has not yet been announced, but it is expected to be above 150,000 yuan.

When the two largest automakers compete fiercely in the 150,000 yuan market segment, the results are bound to be brutal.

The 150,000 yuan new energy vehicle market includes models such as the Shenlan L07, ZERO 1 C01, Xpeng MONA M03, and the upcoming pre-sale of the all-electric Nissan N7 sedan.

Earlier this year, the recently updated Shenlan L07 not only saw a price reduction compared to the previous model but also comes standard with an advanced intelligent driving system across the board. The 2025 Shenlan L07 offers two versions: Shenlan AD Pro and Huawei Kunlun Intelligent Driving, with the Shenlan AD Pro version priced starting at 151,900 yuan and the Huawei Kunlun version priced starting at 163,900 yuan. This further brings Huawei's intelligent driving technology to new vehicles in the 160,000 yuan range. In 2024, the Huawei Kunlun SE version will be equipped on high-end Shenlan models priced above 180,000 yuan.

It cannot be denied that the downward trend in prices for advanced intelligent driving systems is inevitable, but the speed of the decline has exceeded expectations. It is not an exaggeration to say that in this market segment, new vehicles without advanced intelligent driving capabilities may be abandoned by consumers. Hence, the upcoming pre-sale Nissan N7 has chosen to collaborate with Momenta to complement its advanced intelligent driving capabilities. The 150,000 yuan market segment has always been a hotly contested area, with both Chinese and joint venture automakers taking practical actions to drive down the prices of advanced intelligent driving systems.

Now that BYD and Geely, the two automakers with the highest sales, have clearly stated their intention to popularize intelligent driving for all, how will other automakers respond?

Chery has previously announced that it will release its latest intelligent strategy this month. Rumors suggest that Chery will bring advanced intelligent driving capabilities to products priced at 50,000 yuan. Even during the Chinese New Year holiday this year, Chery's Starway brand allowed dealers nationwide to experience the upcoming Extera ES range-extended version in advance, with a pre-sale price of just over 160,000 yuan. Some dealers have tested data showing over 1,000 kilometers of hands-free driving. This happened even before BYD announced its plan to popularize intelligent driving for all.

Consumers are thrilled to see automakers competing to drive down the prices of intelligent driving systems. "We feel inexplicably nervous whenever we see another company is about to hold a press conference," said a product manager from a Chinese automaker. All competition ultimately boils down to a battle of costs. If Geely popularizes advanced intelligent driving with a lower-cost solution, other automakers will have to follow suit, even if it means incurring losses.