Zeekr Announces World-First Mass-Produced Purpose-Built Robotaxi

While mainstream automakers like BMW have been adapting how regular cars like the X3 will operate in the near future, there’s also been a renewed interest in autonomous vehicles this year at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2025, mainly off the back of the huge leaps in AI over the past few years. The Chinese “global premium electric mobility technology brand” Zeekr showed up this year with three examples of its forward-moving technology as well as the Zeekr RT, and announced that it’s preparing to deliver mass-produced Zeekr RTs to Waymo for further testing this year, and in readiness of RT becoming part of Waymo’s commercial fleet.

We’ve Seen Zeekr’s Self-Driving Robotaxi Before But Without A Real Name

If you’ve spent any time in San Francisco recently, it’s likely you’ve seen the Waymo-Zeekr robotaxi prototypes on the road mixed in with Waymo’s Jaguar fleet. In this timeline, Waymo and Zeekr’s partnership will get robotaxis on the road way ahead of Tesla. Unlike Tesla, though, the RT isn’t cutting costs by throwing out the back seat and only using cameras as sensors. It uses 13 cameras, four lidar units, six radar units, and an array of external audio receivers to move around the city without a driver.

Despite no (at least current) intention of launching them in the US, Zeekr also put three other vehicles on display – the Zeekr 001 FR shooting brake, the luxurious four-seat Zeekr 009 Grand MPV, and the family five-seat Zeekr MIX SUV. However, Zeekr also wanted to show off its all-new self-designed intelligent driving domain controller using the Nvidia Drive AGX Thor system-on-a-chip (SoC) and Nvidia’s DriveOS. Zeekr will be rolling that out in 2025, giving its vehicles the ability to “handle multiple intelligent driving scenarios and parking capabilities.”

Strap In For Tech

Nvidia’s Drive OS is purely for the automated systems controlling the physical presence of the car, so in addition, Zeekr announced that it’s extending its partnership with Qualcomm Technologies to keep building an immersive infotainment system. Zeekr models will use the more powerful Qualcomm SoC, claiming it will be able to give users a richer and smarter cockpit experience at a high efficiency level. While Qualcomm’s Snapdragon SoC (as seen in the Polestar 3 last year) takes advantage of AI, it doesn’t go head-to-head with Nvidia. Rather, its AI capability is aimed towards things like facial recognition, natural language recognition as a voice assistant, augmented reality, and driver monitoring.

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Zeekr, One Of Tesla’s Biggest Chinese Rivals, Is Coming To America This Month

Here’s the catch, though: The brand will only be stateside for a few days, exhibiting three of its most interesting models at CES 2025.

On top of all that, Zeekr also announced it is expanding its Chinese charging network to become global. Starting in Thailand and Australia, Zeekr plans to deploy thousands of branded ultra-fast charging stations around the world. Its chargers are designed to be able to handle Zeekr’s 800V ultra-fast charging e-powertain. The Geely-owned brand is going to be one to watch as it’s an ambitious company that only started delivering vehicles in October 2021, yet already has six models on the Chinese market with 420,000 units delivered and is planning to expand its vehicles globally along with its charging network.