Quick poll first: would you consider a Volkswagen if you were buying a car with advanced driver assistance? Among the old-guard legacy automakers, Volkswagen has embraced new technology faster than anyone. Over the past few years its new intelligent models have kept coming thick and fast. In earlier episodes we walked through Chery's ADAS line-up, and possibly left you a little confused. In this instalment of our smart-car primer, we break down Volkswagen's ADAS family tree. First, a basic question: why are the ADAS systems of the big groups so messy? The reason is very practical. For group automakers selling millions of cars a year - Chery, Geely, Changan, Volkswagen - supply chain security is the top priority. Without a mature in-house stack, putting all your chips on a single supplier leaves you wide open to being squeezed. And since the ADAS race has not converged yet, trying several different solutions is the only sensible move. Back to Volkswagen itself. Volkswagen's driver assistance falls broadly into two buckets. The first is the conventional set - basic cruise control, ACC and lane keeping - used mainly on classic petrol models such as the Lavida PRO and on entry-level EVs. The second is called Xingyun Intelligent Driving Assistance; the name evokes flowing clouds and running water. Anything carrying the Xingyun name has navigation-assist capability. But, as always, even though they all share the Xingyun name, the underlying solutions differ from model to model. Let's walk through them. First up is Volkswagen's own player: CARIZON. The company is a joint venture between CARIAD, the Volkswagen Group's German software and technology arm, and Horizon Robotics, China's leading ADAS chip company. The name CARIZON is a portmanteau of the two. At present, CARIZON is the main supplier for Volkswagen's Xingyun ADAS, and it offers three packages. The first is highway-only navigation assist, with memory parking, AEB and similar functions. It uses a Horizon J6M chip with 128 TOPS and six cameras, and is fitted to the earlier ID.UNYX 06 and 07. It was one of the first solutions to reach production. The second is city navigation assist without LiDAR. It keeps the 128 TOPS J6M chip but moves to 11 cameras. The recently launched ID.ERA 5S and the upcoming Jetta M6 use it on their top trims. This package is expected to go mainly into models in the RMB 100,000 class. The third is city navigation assist with a 192-line LiDAR, currently the mainstay solution in the RMB 100,000-200,000 bracket. It is found on the top trim of the recently launched ID.AURA T6, and is tipped for the upcoming ID.ERA 5X as well as the LiDAR versions of the UNYX 06 and 07. This package uses a Horizon J6H chip rated at 420 TOPS. Functionally it supports parking-space-to-parking-space operation and roaming, and its HyperSense 8 model is closely related to Horizon's HSD, making it the most capable of the three. Models fitted with it may also get some ADAS fallback cover. Beyond those three, CARIZON is also developing a C7H chip rated at 500-700 TOPS on top of Horizon's technology, for use in higher-end ADAS packages later on. A quick bit of background: Volkswagen currently has three joint ventures in China - FAW-Volkswagen, SAIC-Volkswagen and Volkswagen Anhui. FAW's models carry the infix AURA, meaning halo; SAIC's carry ERA, meaning era. And Volkswagen Anhui - 75% Volkswagen, 25% JAC - is the one where Volkswagen holds the most sway, which is why the company name puts Volkswagen first. Its models put more emphasis on individual, free-spirited design, hence UNYX, a play on unique. Its Chinese trademark is Yuzhong, and UNYX is the only one of the three with a Chinese-language model name. Alongside CARIZON, the second pillar of Xingyun is Momenta. Its models include the ID.ERA 9X and the just-launched ID.ERA 8X. As an SAIC product, the ID.ERA 9X was the first to adopt the Xheart X7 chip and the R7 model. Xheart is effectively Momenta's own chip: nominally around 300 TOPS, but better matched to its model. We recently ran a live test of the ID.ERA 9X - if you are interested, the summary video is on our channel. On the petrol side, some models also get Xingyun. The high-trim Passat Pro, for example, uses a solution based on Zhuoyu technology to deliver highway navigation assist and memory parking. Outside the Xingyun system, Volkswagen also works with XPeng. The UNYX 08 and 09 come standard with XPeng's VLA ADAS, using dual Turing chips rated at 1,500 TOPS. It is comparable to XPeng's own Ultra SE package and supports parking-space-to-parking-space, roaming and voice commands, making it arguably the strongest tier among joint-venture cars. It is also standard and free, with no optional extra, so the value arguably beats XPeng's own cars - the only catch is that version updates lag a little behind. A word on Audi and Porsche within the Volkswagen Group. The four-ring Audi's petrol cars use a customised version of Huawei Qiankun ADS, with a relatively conventional architecture and a stable style, as on the A5L and Q6 e-tron. The lettered AUDI brand is exclusive to SAIC and follows SAIC's approach: Momenta with a NVIDIA Orin-X chip rated at 254 TOPS, later moving to the R7 model. Representative models are the E7X and E5. Porsche has yet to settle on a route, though it has been linked with both Momenta and Huawei. Overall, Volkswagen keeps its ADAS tiers cleanly separated and its information transparent: the pricier the car, the more hardware, the more computing power and the richer the functions. There is little of the usual betrayal, or of entry-level cars punching above their weight. The bigger challenge facing Volkswagen now may be that its ADAS reputation is not yet established. Which brand's ADAS set-up would you like us to break down next? Leave a comment.