Swedish electric vehicle maker Polestar wants to bring Mobileye’s Chauffeur, a hands-off, eyes-off autonomous driving technology to its Polestar 4 electric SUV coupe.
The Polestar 4, which launched Friday in China and will hit global markets in 2024, comes standard with Mobileye’s SuperVision advanced driver assistance system (ADAS). Polestar plans to add in Chauffeur at a later date, but did not specify when.
SuperVision is a camera-based system that runs on Mobileye’s EyeQ5 chips. It includes highway automated driving features like autonomous lane changing, highway and traffic jam assist, evasive maneuver assist, front and rear collision avoidance and adaptive cruise control.
Porsche in May also tapped Mobileye to integrate SuperVision into future EVs.
Chauffeur builds on the SuperVision tech by adding in a layer of radar and lidar sensors, and will run on Mobileye’s EyeQ6 chips.
When Chauffeur officially launches, it’ll offer “point-to-point autonomous driving on highways, as well as eyes-on automated driving for other environments, in identified operational design domains,” according to Mobileye.
“Other environments” can mean arterial roads, freeways, rural or urban streets. Mobileye says expansion to new operational design domains (ODDs) will depend on the sensor and compute power chosen by each OEM — Chauffeur won’t work without lidar integration. The combination of lidar, radar and cameras allow cars equipped with Mobileye technology to continuously map a region to ensure accurate coverage and extensive online and offline validation.
“Whether the ODD comes online city by city or an entire broader area at once depends on our customer choices,” Justin Hyde, director of Mobileye’s corporate communications, told TechCrunch. “And our system is designed to work day and night, without time restriction.”
Polestar previously announced that its Polestar 4 will include an in-cabin camera-based driver monitoring system (DMS) to ensure the driver doesn’t overly rely on SuperVision or fall asleep at the wheel. The company has not yet confirmed if it will add onto that DMS once it integrates Chauffeur.
More details about the Chauffeur integration will come closer to launch, like how much either the system itself or the Polestar 4 equipped with lidar will cost.
Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving” software, which features automated driving capabilities on highways and urban streets, relies only on cameras and costs $15,000.
