Chinese automaker WEY - Great Wall Motor’s premium luxury SUV brand — recently unveiled its Mocca DHT-PHEV lidar version at the Chengdu Motor Show. Automakers continue to push the capabilities of Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) in their cars, and the Mocca, which utilizes the Snapdragon Ride Platform, signals the first commercial launch of a production vehicle offering full scenario urban driving functions in China. This is a significant milestone for WEY and Snapdragon Ride — proving that Mocca is capable of autonomous driving on freeways and navigating complicated urban driving scenarios.

To enable these extremely challenging urban autonomous driving functions, the Mocca is equipped with an impressive array of multi-modal sensors: two lidars, five millimeter-wave radars, 12 cameras, and 12 ultrasonic sensors. That’s a staggering 31 sensors in all — each of which creates a considerable amount of data. To process all that data, the Mocca requires a significant amount of computing power and extreme AI. That’s where the Snapdragon Ride Platform comes into play. The scalable and customizable Ride platform allows automakers to develop powerful and efficient designs that meet their specific needs. Snapdragon Ride efficiently provides the necessary compute horsepower via an industry-leading 5 nm ASIL-D compliant ADAS SoC and an adjunct Accelerator SoC, supplying the Mocca with 360 TOPS of computing power. This SoC also supports the extremely high-bandwidth I/O interfaces (multi-Gbps) required to take in the data that this sensor suite generates.

The Mocca’s fully updateable and upgradeable ADAS software was developed by Haomo, a Tier 1 subsidiary of WEY, and highlights one of the many flexible engagement models the Snapdragon Ride Platform provides OEMs for ADAS development. Haomo also utilized the Board Support Package (BSP), autonomous driving middleware, and the comprehensive toolchain and allied framework provided by Qualcomm Technologies. This workflow ensures streamlined development and optimal implementation of the various AI software workloads — complex multi-head neural networks, notably — on the Snapdragon Ride ADAS SoCs and accelerators in a functionally safe environment.

How did WEY get here?

Supporting automated driving functions in an urban environment has many unique challenges. Objects that need to be reliably detected are numerous: traffic cones, fading lane markings, unexpected construction zones, complicated intersections, roundabouts, and vulnerable road users (VRUs) like pedestrians, bicyclists, and two-wheelers, to name just a few. Challenging weather and environmental conditions like rain, snow, and dimming light — as well as nighttime driving — add more hazards to this already challenging problem.   

Multi-modal sensing is critical to supporting such complex driving scenarios. While cameras are certainly foundational to ADAS systems and provide the first set of eyes, they must be supplemented in several situations. For example, radars help significantly in challenging weather conditions like heavy rain that may compromise camera-only sensing. But radars predominantly help with moving objects, so they don’t solve every problem. On the other hand, lidars can help in fading light and other weather-compromised situations that involve both moving objects and static ones. This sensor fusion modality, combined with advanced AI capabilities, allows for higher levels of automated driving capabilities in expanding operational design domains (ODD).

While significantly enhancing safety, comfort, and convenience, the hardware and software in the Mocca combine to provide drivers and passengers with support for a variety of complex driving use cases, such as:

• Collision avoidance
• Automatic lane changes
• Traffic light recognition
• Unprotected left turns
• Right-turns
• Busy intersection crossing
• Highway off-ramps
• Night driving
• Self-parking

A sophisticated ADAS system also requires an upscale cockpit display to convey what the car is sensing in a visually appealing, intuitive, yet attention-capturing way. The Snapdragon Cockpit Platform provides a rich and immersive cockpit experience in the Mocca, supplementing the ADAS system while providing all the usual multi-media experiences like multi-zone audio, rear-seat video, and gaming, typically associated with the cockpit.

Every well-designed ADAS system should include a Driver Monitoring System (DMS) to ensure that the driver is always engaged — even as the car is executing driving maneuvers autonomously. The Mocca implements this DMS capability with the Snapdragon Cockpit Platform, closing the loop between vehicle and driver in the ADAS domain. Such a collaborative environment enabled by a DMS system makes for a safer environment for everyone in the vehicle.

The Mocca is also equipped with the Snapdragon Auto Connectivity Platform, which provides seamless wireless connectivity outside and within the vehicle. This enables updates and upgrades to the car’s capabilities, allowing for a long-term relationship between OEM and the owner.

Taken together, the Mocca represents a modern, 21st-century vehicle that embodies the Snapdragon Digital Chassis. Mocca is no doubt at the vanguard of the auto industry’s digital transformation. But as the decade continues to unfold, consumers will have many more choices for safe, comfortable, autonomous vehicles powered by the Snapdragon Ride Platform.