Li Auto to hold event on Jul 5 to showcase its progress on smart driving

Li Auto will hold a launch event on smart driving in a week's time, expected to showcase its latest advances in the space as local electric vehicle (EV) makers scramble to show off their prowess in the field.

Li Auto will hold its summer launch event on smart driving on Jul 5, which will begin at 8 pm Beijing Time.

The company didn't reveal details about the event, but a poster hinted that it's expected to unveil new developments about its NOA (Navigate on Pilot) feature that doesn't rely on high-definition maps.

Earlier this month, Li Xiang, founder, chairman and CEO of Li Auto, told an industry forum that the company will roll out HD map-independent NOA functionality available nationwide in the third quarter.

Li Auto will also roll out a supervised self-driving system trained using 3 million pre-trained model clips to test users, Li said at the time.

By the end of this year and early next year, Li Auto will roll out a supervised autonomous driving system trained utilizing more than 10 million clips, he said.

As technology evolves and computing power increases, unsupervised L4 autonomous driving will be realized within three years, Li said in the June 8 presentation.

Li Auto announced its latest generation of assisted driving system, AD Max 3.0, on the first day of the 2023 Shanghai auto show on Apr 18, 2023, and said the software will be free for life.

On May 10 of this year, the company announced that it began opening up AD Max 3.0's HD map-independent NOA feature to beta testers, but limited to 1,000 spots.

On Jun 17, the company announced that it began pushing the feature to an expanded 10,000 testers.

On Jun 24, Li Auto said the feature update would be available to anyone who submitted a request.

As of Jun 24, users who have experienced the NOA feature, which doesn't rely on high-definition maps, are spread across more than 315 cities in China, Li Auto previously said.