Geely showed a promotional film of its new Galaxy E5 driving along Lanying Cliff Road in Wuxi County, Chongqing, at Wednesday’s launch event, the same road Nio’s Onvo L60 was filmed on earlier this month.
The event in Ningbo was built around Geely’s new AI-managed charging system and a 2.25-megawatt charger.
The film showed the fully electric SUV Galaxy E5 steering itself on the viral Lanying Cliff Road located in Wuxi County, Chongqing.
The Lanying Cliff Road is less than three metres wide and about 1,200 metres long, with drops of more than 1,000 metres.
“The LiDAR plus the front-view camera can perceive it very clearly,” the car occupants said in the video shown by Geely.
On-screen captions said the E5 drove “along the cliff face without lane markings,” passed “within centimetres of the wall” and “went around obstacles in blind spots.”
Geely has not released the unedited footage or said which software version the car ran.
Nod to a Rival
Kevin Chen, a member of Geely’s overseas communications team, posted the clip on X under a video by American YouTuber and Tesla FSD expert David Moss about driving Onvo’s L60.
Moss was invited by Onvo earlier this month to fly to China to test the brand’s autonomous driving system, following the company’s decision to equip its models with LiDAR sensors.
“Looks like we bring our car to the same place, the all new Geely E5 doing really well, @NIOGlobal not bad,” Chen wrote.
Moss’s video, posted on September 2, was billed “Better Than FSD?” The route included the Lanying cliff road in Wuxi County, Chongqing, and Moss drove it on Nio’s world-model driver assistance with no takeovers.
Tesla Owner Made it Famous
The road drew global attention in June, when a Chinese Tesla owner who posts as BigHu-L5 shared a video of his car driving it on FSD v14.
The car relied on the system throughout, handling a string of sharp bends and running along the cliff edge without the driver taking over, Sina Finance reported on June 7.
Elon Musk and Tesla’s official accounts reposted the clip, which reached more than 32 million views.
The owner said the video had first sat on his personal account without drawing much attention, and that Musk’s interest was “completely unexpected.”
He said the stretch was not especially difficult, and that the real test was the car’s driving rhythm and control through corners.
On Tuesday, Dongfeng Nissan published video of its new N7 sedan descending the Lanying road at night through patches of fog. The car used Momenta’s R7 driver-assistance model with LiDAR.
Sun Hao, Market Department Director of Dongfeng Nissan Auto Sales, rode the car down. Dongfeng Nissan described the run as having zero takeovers, no edits and no special effects.
The new N7 went on sale the same day at a limited-time price from 109,900 yuan ($16,400), against list prices of 119,900 yuan to 149,900 yuan.
Geely’s E5 film appeared a day later, making it at least the fourth brand shown on the road since June.
The Revamped Galaxy E5
The new Galaxy E5 went on sale on Wednesday at limited-time prices of 97,800 yuan to 137,800 yuan ($14,600 to $20,600), across six versions.
Only two versions carry a roof-mounted LiDAR, according to launch specifications reported by Chinese media. They pair it with Geely’s new G-ASD driver assistance and 27 sensors.
The rest of the range uses cameras and radar only.
The main versions switch to rear-wheel drive with a 245-kilowatt motor on an 800-volt platform. The new E5 is the first car with Geely’s 6C Short Blade battery.
In the film, the car’s displayed speed fell from about 28 to about 7 as the oncoming car approached. The film did not name the driver-assistance system.
