D is reportedly targeting 2027 for A3 chip launch

According to the news of Chinese outlet LatePost, D plans to equip a mass production model under the Denza brand, which has not yet been announced, with the Xuanji A3 smart driving chip developed in-house for the first time in 2027. Introduced in May 2026 as China’s first mass-produced automotive-grade processor built on the 4nm process, the chip has already entered mass production, but D has not announced a timeline for its mass deployment in vehicles. The gap between the chip’s reveal and its first claimed vehicle application is the latest example of the verification burden facing automotive semiconductors, regardless of whether they are production ready. Typically, the transition from tape release to distribution takes at least a year; The chip, its algorithms, and vehicle integration each undergo separate verification processes. Tesla faces similar wait times for commercial deployment of its next-generation AI5 chip; In November 2025, the chip was pushed back to mid-2027, two years later than originally predicted. D has boasted many times about the prowess of the Xuanji A3 chip: It claims that a single unit can deliver more than 700 TOPS of processing power. Therefore, the combination of all three can exceed 2,100 TOPS. In contrast, Sony’s Pro model version of the Playstation 5 offers around 300 TOPS of AI processing power, making a full-fledged tool around seven times more popular than its consumer electronics counterparts. D also said the chip consumes 20% less power per unit than similar products, and pairing the hardware with its algorithms doubles effective usage. However, this claim has not been externally verified and remains unverified at production scale. The chip closes what D calls the last significant gap in its vertical integration strategy. Over the past decade, the automaker has built a sprawling network that covers nearly its entire supply chain, from lithium extraction and battery production to owning its own cargo ships. It designs and manufactures power semiconductors, e-motors and vehicle electronics, as well as its own proprietary battery technology. In regional markets such as Brazil, it prefers its own production and turns to local component supply. It’s little surprise, then, that D’s in-house research and development capacity is quite large: its chip team alone now numbers more than 7,000 people across four research bases and five wafer fabs. Cumulative investments in semiconductor research and manufacturing have now exceeded CN¥100 billion (US$14.7 billion). Due to pressure to become independent from Western-linked wafer mills, the development and production of cutting-edge automotive silicon has become a necessity among Chinese automakers. Nio, Xpeng and Li Auto also introduced their own proprietary smart driving chips. It’s hard to be completely independent, though: D’s current God’s Eye ADAS system relies on chips from Nvidia and Horizon Robotics, along with algorithm support from Momenta and Huawei. Even if mass production is underway, realizing D’s semiconductor goals will not be easy. The automaker’s latest restructuring, which sees the automaker consolidate intelligent driving software, cockpit systems and domain control hardware into a single technology institute, reveals an awareness that vertical integration in software and vehicle intelligence is a materially more difficult problem than the manufacturing integration it has already mastered in batteries and power electronics.

Information: This content was prepared and published using AutomobileMagazine’s artificial intelligence-supported publishing system, in line with the information shared by international automotive manufacturers and reliable press sources.