Xiaomi Announces Enhanced Edition of ‘HAD’ Assisted Driving Feature With Improved Safety

Xiaomi has officially introduced its HAD (Hyper Autonomous Driving) Enhanced Edition suite of features at the Guangzhou Auto Show. Xiaomi Auto President Lu Weibing addressed a press conference on the first day of the show, recapping the company’s recent achievements and introducing the new assisted driving features. Xiaomi SU7 and YU7 owners will see a notification in the Xiaomi Auto app when a HyperOS 1.11 update is available.

According to the company, HAD now has 473,000 active users, or 90 percent of Xiaomi car owners, since its debut in July this year, covering 300 million kilometres cumulatively. Weibing also claimed it has helped prevent 4,57,000 potential collisions, and parking assist has been used 30,964,000 times.

The biggest improvement to the HAD capability is reinforcement learning, which means it can learn from interactions with the company's extremely accurate real-world maps, even accounting for detail such as real-time weather and changing light conditions. In heavy traffic, cars can now slow down and then accelerate again anticipating how the vehicle ahead will move. Lane changes, merging, and rerouting are also said to be smoother and more decisive now. 

HAD also now handles complicated intersections and roads with multiple lanes more smoothly, showing information in advance so that drivers can intervene if necessary. Object recognition is improved, with better support for pillars, walls, and water-filled barriers. The update also includes automatic emergency steering (AES) as a last resort to prevent crashes, plus improvements to automatic emergency braking (AEB). There’s also improved forward and rear collision avoidance, which works with bikes, cars, and pedestrians at low speeds, depending on available space and other conditions. 

Other capabilities and improvements include misacceleration correction, forward and backward crossing warnings, emergency lane keeping, blind spot avoidance, speed warnings, traffic light reminders, and better adaptive anti-glare headlights.

Xiaomi claims HAD Enhanced Edition will improve the user experience for both straight-line driving and lane changing. The software is also said to be able to assess road conditions better, on the fly. However, in line with China’s current regulations, drivers must still stay focused on the road and be ready to override HAD manually at any moment.

The presentation also drew attention to Xiaomi’s “world model” being recognised by major academic institutions and journals. 

The HAD system runs on the Nvidia Drive AGX Thor processor in every Xiaomi car, leveraging LiDAR hardware as well as 4D mmWave radar, 11 HD cameras, and 12 ultrasonic sensors. 

Highlighting Xiaomi’s long-term ambitions, Weibing announced that it will have invested over 7 billion RMB in AI research and development by the end of 2025. It operates three major research facilities in Beijing, Shanghai, and Wuhuan. The company’s Intelligent Driving team currently has 1,800 staffers, of whom 108 hold PhD degrees. 

The company just yesterday confirmed that it has manufactured its 5,00,000th vehicle in just under 20 months. It also expects to exceed its goal of 3,50,000 cars sold in 2025 more than a month before the year ends, and has set a new stretch goal of 4,00,000 cars. In addition to the earnings results announced earlier this week, Weibing also announced that the Xiaomi SU7 is now the best-selling sedan priced above 2,00,000 RMB (approximately ₹24 lakh) in mainland China and offers the highest one-year residual value for EVs, while the YU7 was China’s top-selling electric SUV in October.