news

한어Русский языкEnglishFrançaisIndonesianSanskrit日本語DeutschPortuguêsΕλληνικάespañolItalianoSuomalainenLatina

author | yang lu

editor | li guozheng

the new round of competition among automobile companies has come to the field of intelligent driving.

"in the next 1-2 years, as regulations open up and technology matures, true autonomous driving within a specific range should become a reality."

recently, at the 2024 china automotive industry development (teda) international forum held in tianjin, liu zongcheng, vice president of seres platform technology system, put forward this view. seres and huawei have joined hands to revive the automotive industry with the "intelligent driving" brand, and have repeatedly sparked debates on intelligent driving.

in addition to seres, many automobile companies and industry chain companies expressed their views on the development of intelligent driving at this teda forum.

you zheng, deputy general manager and member of the party committee of dongfeng motor corporation, said: "intelligence level will become the key to differentiated competitive capabilities and creating popular products. by completing and strengthening intelligence, dongfeng motor is accelerating the realization of independent control of single-vehicle intelligent technology."

gu huinan, general manager of gac aion, said, "we want to do high-end intelligent driving. in addition to being the leader in high-end intelligent driving, we must also be the popularizer. this is one of our policies. we hope that in the short term, vehicles priced in the rmb 140,000 or 150,000 range will also be equipped with laser radar as standard, so that high-end intelligent driving can truly be popularized in china."

"intelligent driving on urban roads is still in the stage where it can be used but not necessarily easy to use. it is expected that by the end of 2025, the data and engineering implementation capabilities of some car companies will make intelligent driving truly easy to use," said ren fan, deputy general manager of changan automobile intelligent driving.

from spending money to tell stories to mass production, the development of intelligent driving has become the key to the second half of the battle for new cars.

on the technical side, since tesla proposed "end-to-end" in early 2023, the entire industry has been planning and researching it, and "end-to-end" has become the current mainstream technology.

on the product side, urban noa (navigate on autopilot) has been implemented at an accelerated pace, but the focus is still on high-end brand models, and car companies are competing in terms of evolution speed and cost reduction capabilities.

on the consumer side, users’ awareness of smart driving is improving, and many users say bluntly that “once you use it, you can’t go back.”

at present, the industry and the market have reached a consensus that "whoever wins the smart driving will win the world". competing in the smart driving track is an inevitable trend. at present, there are basically three factions on this road: the first category is the self-developed system represented by "nio, xiaoli, and li auto" (especially xiaopeng motors), the second category is the technology provider represented by huawei, and the third category is the "self-developed + cooperation" multi-legged walking model represented by traditional car companies.

among them, the first two are in full swing and can be called hot, while traditional car companies seem to be the most dangerous group. under the hurricane of the first two, do traditional car companies that want to develop their own cars still have a chance to catch up and not be knocked down by the leading intelligent driving companies?

seeking external cooperation, most of them rely on huawei

recently, the chengdu auto show, teda forum and world power battery conference were held almost at the same time, with multiple rounds of information bombardment and new news about intelligent driving coming one after another.

on september 1 this year, at the 2024 world power battery conference held in yibin, sichuan, yu chengdong, huawei's executive director, chairman of the terminal bg, and director of the intelligent automotive solutions bu, delivered a speech, saying that in the second half of the development of new energy vehicles, the key is intelligence. by 2026, huawei's ads (advanced driving system) 4.0 version will be able to achieve high-speed l3 commercial use.

in terms of intelligent driving, huawei is leading the way and is the supporter that many car companies are seeking to cling to.

the day before, on august 31, at the 2024 chengdu auto show, yin tongyue, secretary of the party committee and chairman of chery holding group, and yu chengdong appeared together to jointly promote the new car zhijie r7. this is the second car jointly launched by the two parties and will use huawei's ads3.0 intelligent driving system.

yin tongyue said frankly: "we must follow huawei... cooperation with huawei is the top priority."

before the chengdu auto show, lantu auto released the new dreamer in chengdu. the car uses huawei qiankun intelligent driving and received over 10,000 orders within 3 hours of its launch. previously, lantu free's intelligent driving system used baidu's solution.

the deepblue l07, which debuted at the chengdu auto show, is also equipped with huawei's qiankun intelligent driving system, which belongs to the qiankun ads se version. this system was earlier installed on the deepblue s07, and it is the first time that huawei's intelligent driving system has been installed on a car priced below 200,000 yuan.

with yu chengdong's repeated shouts of "far ahead", huawei intelligent driving has also won the heart of byd. on august 27 this year, byd fangchengbao and huawei qiankun intelligent driving officially announced their cooperation, and its intelligent driving solution was first installed on the fangchengbao baobao 8, which is about to be launched.

in the view of these car companies, by catching the express train of huawei's intelligent driving, they will not fall out of the queue of intelligent transformation.

in addition, those car companies that neither fully develop their own nor approach huawei choose other intelligent driving solution suppliers, such as saic + momenta, saic-gm + dji (zhuoyu technology), jistone auto + pony.ai...

self-research: funding and time are daunting

"while relying on allies to put out fires, we still do not forget to forge ahead." this sentence said by the netizen refers to aion and great wall.

aion's intelligent driving development path is also self-developed plus external cooperation. in terms of self-development, according to gu huinan, aion now has a team developing pure vision and another team developing technology with laser radar, and the two technical routes are running in parallel. "we have obtained l3 access qualifications, we use huawei's mdc chips, but the software is self-developed."

"at the chengdu auto show, we lowered the price of the tyrannosaurus rex with lidar to 160,000 yuan. we currently estimate that in the next 1-2 years, lidar will be standard equipment for vehicles in the 150,000 yuan price range," gu huinan said in a speech at the teda forum. "gac aion also plans to launch l4 robotaxis on a large scale next year."

in late august this year, great wall motors launched its new wei-branded blue mountain. wei jianjun appeared at a product launch conference for the first time in six years, shining the spotlight on intelligence. wei jianjun said, "they (the great wall team) said that we are now in the first echelon of intelligence. i think we should remove the word 'echelon' and just say first."

shortly after the new blue mountain was launched, wu huixiao, then vice president of great wall intelligent, said: "we are the first company in china to abandon the high-precision map route." she said that great wall's intelligent driving team has about 1,200 people and has some cooperation with some external algorithm companies, but the overall computing power architecture and algorithm model are dominated by great wall.

however, the pressure is enormous for those who develop their own products.

first of all, the cost.

on august 28 this year, jiyue ceo xia yiping stated at a press conference that baidu has been engaged in research and development in the fields of ai and autonomous driving for more than 10 years and has invested more than 150 billion yuan.

he took tesla as an example, saying that tesla had just built a computing center, which cost 28 billion yuan, not including the cost of daily operations, such as the annual electricity bill alone is 1 billion yuan.

since the establishment of the intelligent automotive solutions bu in 2019, huawei has invested a total of 30 billion yuan in research and development (approximately 6 billion yuan per year) and has 7,000 r&d personnel.

yang dongsheng, director of byd automotive new technology research institute, said in an interview with the media that in mid-2022, the institute's intelligent driving team had only more than 100 people. the team has now increased to 4,000 people, which is five times the size of tesla's intelligent driving team and is comparable to the size of huawei's intelligent driving team.

however, not all car companies have the financial strength and investment determination like them.

the second is time.

industry insiders generally believe that 2024 will be the first year of intelligent driving, and next year will usher in more intense competition.

wu huixiao predicts that in the next 2-3 years, intelligent driving will enter an end-to-end large model, thus finding a path to driverless driving. the value will be further enhanced, and the industry will become polarized.

this year, tesla fsd has been rumored to be introduced to china many times, and recently it was revealed that it will be introduced to china as early as the end of 2024. tesla fsd is an industry trendsetter. these rumors alone are urging relevant chinese automakers and technology companies to speed up the progress, and the competitive landscape of the intelligent driving industry is accelerating.

on august 28, at the horizon advanced intelligent driving technology open day, horizon founder and ceo yu kai said that in 2025, urban noa will enter a competitive window period to truly cross the gap.

finally, the level.

obviously, those car companies that are determined to develop their own systems and have not yet entered the leading intelligent driving market have encountered daunting obstacles in terms of both cost and time. even if they overcome these two pressures and work hard to develop their own intelligent driving systems, their level is hard to match that of the leading intelligent driving x.0 that has evolved for many generations, and it is difficult to say that they are truly successful.

leading intelligent driving is very popular and has developed very far. so, how much opportunity do car companies have for self-development?