Step 3.5 Flash officially launches on a large scale; Zeekr 8X Super Eva, equipped with “Super Eva,” enters mass production and is now available for sale as of today

ME News message: On April 17 (UTC+8), 2026, Geely’s all-new flagship SUV, Zeekr 8X, is officially put into mass production and launched for sale. Equipped with multiple cutting-edge models including the Step 3.5 Flash, the vehicle intelligent agent Super Eva has officially completed the key transition from technical release to large-scale mass production, and is now starting to be delivered to consumers. This is also a milestone moment for Step 3.5 Flash, following its open-sourcing earlier this year in March to top the global leaderboard for OpenRouter weekly call volume, marking the next step as it moves from the open-source community to large-scale commercial deployment in end-user terminals.

The Zeekr 8X equipped with Super Eva is also China’s first mass-produced vehicle to deliver the “Grok+FSD” experience. Over the past year, China’s in-vehicle AI track has been full of noise about large-model deployment in cars, but moving from laboratory demos to mass production deliveries available for consumers has always been a hurdle that the industry has struggled to clear. The official launch of Super Eva today means that the vehicle intelligent agent, powered by the underlying model capabilities provided by Step, has obtained the ability to scale deployment for real users and real driving scenarios.

Super Eva is jointly developed by Step, Geely, and Qianli Technology. It is the first vehicle intelligent agent that integrates the smart cockpit, intelligent assisted driving, and digital ecosystem, and is natively fused with foundational control systems such as intelligent driving, chassis, and powertrain. Its technological philosophy closely aligns with the conversational control architecture represented by Tesla’s Grok, which is why it has also been dubbed as China’s first “Grok+FSD,” with the Zeekr 8X serving as the launch model.

Super Eva is equipped with three core model capabilities from Step. The Step 3.5 Flash inference model is designed specifically for Agent scenarios. With a maximum inference speed of up to 350 TPS per request, it can precisely understand ambiguous instructions and complete multi-step task planning in real time. For example, a user command like “Take me to pick up the kids after school, and stop by a McDonald’s as well—arrive at school before 5 o’clock” can trigger end-to-end autonomous execution such as route planning, waypoint arrangement, and assisted driving activation. Step’s speech large model breaks away from the traditional three-stage ASR-LLM-TTS architecture, delivering lower latency and more natural emotional expression, truly achieving “understanding tone and having personality.” The visual understanding large model, meanwhile, gives Super Eva the capability to perceive the indoor and outdoor environment of the vehicle—from judging road conditions to recognizing parking spots—making decisions more comprehensive and reliable.

It is understood that Super Eva’s capabilities will continue to be upgraded and will integrate more ecosystem services as well. It will no longer be just a companion in the car, but a seamless intelligent hub that can proactively understand scenario-based needs, such as booking restaurants, ordering takeout, purchasing flight tickets, and buying tickets. While you’re on the road, all you need to do is have natural conversations, and it can help you take care of everything.

Industry insiders believe that 2026 is a key year for general large models to “enter” end devices. The mass production and rollout of Super Eva validates the stable deployment capability of models such as Step 3.5 Flash in high-real-time industrial terminal scenarios, and also provides a replicable mass-production path for Step to deepen penetration into more hardware environments. In the future, Super Eva’s capabilities will expand without limits. It will not only serve as an AI companion inside the vehicle, but also become an intelligent hub connecting the physical world—connecting with Geely’s proprietary after-sales and car rental ecosystems (Geely Ecosystem) and fully integrating lifestyle services (Digital Ecosystem), doing away with the need to switch between apps back and forth and the cumbersome booking process.

On the road, users only need to communicate through natural conversation. Super Eva can proactively understand scenario-based instructions and handle everything, from restaurant reservations, takeout orders, and flight bookings to ticket purchases.

(Source: Ifnar)