China-based Huawei Technologies and carmaker Arcfox have launched their first electric car with a full suite of autonomous driving features. This development comes as Huawei is facing a slew of issues because of the sanctions by the United States.

The car, named Arcfox aS HBT is the first to come with Huawei HI which is a complete intelligent automotive solution that is powered by HarmonyOS. It also comes with a lidar chip and 5G connectivity support.

This is different from the HiCar Smart Screen that is already being used in vehicles from China-based carmaker BYD. Comming on the launch of this new car, the company’s spokesperson said that “it is a next-generation, intelligent and purely electric luxury sedan jointly built by Arcfox and Huawei.”

It has also been revealed that the car will be available for purchase from 17th April. The car is capable of level-3 autonomous driving, which allows drivers to safely take their attention off the road under certain conditions.

The Lidar sensor, which is short for light detection and ranging, is supposed to help in this area. It is similar to radar but uses light instead of radio waves, and thus offers higher precision in certain environments owing to the shorter waves.

Do note that Huawei has no plans of making its own car and is only interested in supplying its technology to existing carmakers. On the other hand, its competitor Xiaomi is working on making its own electric car.

After the imposition of restrictions by the United States for the smartphone and telecom business, Huawei started building its alliance in the auto industry last year. So far, the company has signed up with 18 carmakers for a “5G automotive ecosystem”, utilizing Huawei’s HiCar system.

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