SAE Level 3 assistance system with ZF expertise goes into production in 2026

Götz Fuchslocher Götz Fuchslocher

17 November 2025 - 14:00

1 min

ZF and Horizon Robotics are working towards market launch in 2026 with a Chinese vehicle manufacturer.

ZF Group

ZF and the Chinese company Horizon Robotics announce the production launch of a driver assistance system (ADAS) that supports SAE Level 3 and the Chinese Urban Navigate on Autopilot (Urban NOA).

At ZF, the system is seen as an important milestone in the strategic collaboration in the field of automated driving with Chinese technology companies in their home market. The assistance system is set to go into series production in 2026 on an electric vehicle platform of a Chinese car brand. The jointly developed driver assistance system is based on ZF's ProAI computing platform with a computing power of over 1,000 TOPS and includes the latest Journey 6P hardware from Horizon Robotics. This features industry-leading efficiency to support the neural network architecture 'Transformer' and also enables seamless processing of advanced large models, including Vision Language Models (VLM) and Vision Language Action (VLA), as well as end-to-end models.

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The collaboration enables more precise capture of market trends and 'integration of world-leading technologies with local application scenarios to offer customers high-quality products that combine technological advancement and market adaptation,' says Christian Brenneke, head of the Electronics & ADAS division at ZF. Yu Kai, founder and CEO of Horizon Robotics, adds: 'ZF has profound expertise and resources in the areas of chassis, electronics, and ADAS. By deepening our strategic collaboration with ZF, we can bring our local innovations into the global industrial chain.'

This article was first published at automotiveit.eu