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write an article / wu jing

edit / yellow road

design / zhao haoran

on september 22, the results of the guangzhou city noa competition, the eighth leg of the second china intelligent driving competition, were announced: jiyue 01 won the championship in guangzhou, while xpeng g6 and smart world s7 took second and third place respectively.

this is not the first time that jiyue 01 has won the championship. so far, the second china urban intelligent driving competition has held a total of eight stops, and jiyue has won four championships and one runner-up.

a fledgling new brand has won multiple championships in a challenge involving high-end smart driving models from multiple mainstream brands. obviously, xia yiping, ceo of jiyue automobile, could not suppress his excitement. he said on weibo that in the era of smart driving, the first echelon is worthy of the name "hua xiaoji".

the same road, the same rules, fair and open competition, who is the real first echelon of smart driving can make a judgment. in xia yiping's words, "looking at bba in the era of oil trucks, new energy cannot avoid 'wei xiaoli', but now in this era of smart driving for all, 'hua xiaoji' seems to be going against tiangang."

compared with the familiar titles such as bba and "wei xiaoli", the public may not agree with the term "hua xiaoji". but it is undeniable that with the advent of the era of universal smart driving, when ai gradually becomes the core competitiveness of a car company in the future, the order of new car manufacturing will also face a new round of reshuffle.

those who have "wisdom driving" will win the world

"in the next ten years, there will be only seven mainstream automobile companies in china, and xpeng motors will become a global ai automobile company."

on august 27, the remarks of he xiaopeng, chairman and ceo of xpeng motors, attracted widespread attention. he xiaopeng believes that in the next 10 years, the competitive landscape of the domestic automobile industry will be like that from the spring and autumn period to the warring states period. in the end, there will be only 7 mainstream domestic automobile brands left, and annual sales of more than 1 million vehicles are just the ticket for this competition. with strong ai-system cars and global markets are the way to survive in this ten-year war.

at the nio in 2024 nio innovation and technology day event held on july 27, nio ceo li bin made it clear that a successful smart electric vehicle company must be a successful ai company. he also emphasized that ai will become the core basic capability of smart electric vehicle companies.

in the future competition in the automobile market, the importance of ai is self-evident.

new user demands are forcing the automotive industry to continue to innovate. roland berger's survey report shows that chinese consumers are increasingly paying attention to and preferring intelligence and intelligent driving, which has become one of the main factors attracting consumers to purchase vehicle products. more importantly, due to technological advantages and the long-term market education of new energy vehicle companies to consumers, intelligence and electrification are constantly strengthening the bond, evolving towards smart electric vehicles in the minds of consumers.

this directly leads to changes in consumers’ car purchasing decisions.

according to the 2023 china new car purchase intention study released by jd power, a consumer insight and market research institution, among consumers who plan to purchase a car in the next six months, the intelligent experience of the car has become the third largest decision-making factor for car purchase, and the weight of the influence has increased. to 14%, second only to car quality and car performance.

"once you use smart driving, you really can't go back." some car owners said after tasting the benefits of smart driving, "if you are used to smart driving, when you change to the next car, you will definitely we will consider brands that are more powerful in smart driving, because this thing is very sticky, which will also lead to brands that are more powerful in smart driving, and their user stickiness will be higher.”

in just a few decades, changes in consumer preferences have caused major changes in the technological development, business models and even the competitive landscape of the chinese automobile industry.

in the 1.0 era when joint ventures were first making money, bba and joint ventures, the leaders in the era of fuel vehicles, occupied the center of the stage. they are not only benchmarks, but also targets for chinese car companies to strive to catch up with. in the market competition dominated by engines and transmissions, the development of china's own brands has been tightly strangled.

with the advent of the new energy era, the chinese automobile market has opened up a new competitive track. with the transition from traditional internal combustion engines to batteries, motors and electronic controls, the chinese automobile market has also entered the car manufacturing 2.0 era in which competition is dominated by new energy drives.

entering the 3.0 era, intelligence determines who can stay in the first echelon in the new round of industry reshuffle. the view that "ai is the winner or loser in the second half of car manufacturing" has become an industry consensus.

products in the 3.0 era provide an experience that is almost unmatched by the 1.0 era. in addition to promotion on the consumer side, on the corporate side, facing fierce market competition, car companies have also regarded high-end smart driving as the core competitiveness of their products, constantly improving their brand image and creating product differentiation. the decline in hardware costs brought about by technological progress and large-scale mass production has gradually brought smart driving to the masses, turning smart driving from a function into a "universal lifestyle." for example, if you encounter a traffic jam when returning home from get off work, you will find that it is indeed much easier if you occasionally use intelligent assisted driving.

are there objective standards?

recently, cctv had a live conversation with wei jianjun, chairman of great wall motors. wei jianjun said: "great wall motors' intelligence has been tested internally. great wall's comprehensive level of intelligent driving ranks first in the industry."

the host asked, in terms of high-end intelligent driving, huawei and others have been researching for so long but they still don’t dare to say that they are number one. why does great wall dare to say that it is number one?

but in fact, huawei has publicly stated that it is the first in the industry. at this year’s china electric vehicle hundreds forum 2024, yu chengdong, huawei’s managing director, chairman of terminal bg, and chairman of smart car solutions bu, said bluntly, “in the past, we have done the best in smart parking and smart driving in this field. it’s xpeng. after huawei came, we rewrote this history. our ads should be recognized as the best.”

why do car companies compete for the label of no. 1 smart driving? because smart driving has become the key point of competition for car companies in the second half. who really represents the first echelon of smart driving? is there an objective standard for this?

being able to win first place in china's smart driving competitions many times, perhaps ji yue is the underrated dark horse.

first of all, algorithms, computing power and data are the three key elements that constitute the autonomous driving technology system.

what smart driving ultimately strives for is computing power reserves and high-quality data. the accumulation of high-quality raw data lays a solid foundation for the ultimate pure visual solution. apollo's l4 autonomous driving safety mileage has accumulated to more than 100 million kilometers, and there has never been a major casualty accident. its autonomous driving travel platform "luobo kuaipao" has completed more than 6 million travel services and has a global scale of autonomous driving orders. first.

huawei and xiaopeng, both in the first camp, also performed well. as of august 2024, huawei's total smart driving mileage has reached 460 million kilometers, double the 220 million kilometers in may. xpeng motors has traveled more than 848 million kilometers.

secondly, the ultimate intelligent driving experience requires strong technical strength. although huawei and xpeng have their own merits in the field of smart driving, jiyue has joined forces with baidu and based on baidu apollo's l4 autonomous driving atomization capabilities and safety system, it has been able to realize a complete technical system of "bev+occ+transformer" to achieve china's the only and only pure visual high-end smart car in the world.

when the ai ​​algorithm is not strong enough, lidar + high-precision map can be used as two "crutches" for smart driving to make up for the algorithm and help improve system capabilities. but with the rise of pure vision and large ai models, the development of intelligent driving has entered a new era. whether it is technology iteration, data closed loop, capability growth, user experience, etc., pure vision has huge advantages. in the future, the lidar + high-precision map transition plan will be gradually replaced.

huawei, xiaopeng, and letao will also enter the purely visual route one after another. as of now, the pure visual high-end smart driving of the above brands is still limited to high-speed, and urban high-end smart driving is not yet available. but at this time, ji yue, which has focused on the visual route early, has a first-mover advantage. at the end of june this year, ji yue's pure visual high-end intelligent driving was launched in 300 cities. "pure vision" high-end intelligent driving will soon be "available nationwide."

the frequency of use by consumers is also an important factor in measuring the smart driving level of a car company.

as of august 18, the jiyue user with the longest total smart driving mileage in the country has traveled 28,600 kilometers, and the average smart driving mileage of the top 10 users is 22,500 kilometers. smart driving travel has become a high-frequency choice for users. the top 10% of users in the country in terms of smart driving mileage penetration rate account for an average of 82% of their smart driving mileage.

previously, huawei smart car solutions bu ceo jin yuzhi disclosed a set of data. huawei ads 2.0 smart driving has a total mileage of 66.81 million kilometers, with smart driving mileage accounting for 33%, and parking daily active users accounting for 68%.

whether a smart car is easy to use and drive, data can best illustrate the facts.

why “hua xiaoji” leads?

in the field of smart driving, where does the advantage of "hua xiaoji" come from?

first of all, for smart driving, rome was not built in a day.

baidu, the company behind huawei, xpeng and jiyue, is the first company to invest in or target the intelligent track. huawei began investing in the research of intelligent driving systems as early as 2012 and established an internet of vehicles laboratory. since its establishment, xpeng motors has labeled intelligence and technology and is committed to making smart driving its core competitiveness. baidu's efforts were even earlier. in 2010, baidu began to invest in the field of artificial intelligence and became one of the first companies in china to deploy artificial intelligence.

before competitors are aware of how ai will change the world in the future, they have already started taking action. behind this is the company's keen insight and decisiveness, which is unmatched by other brands. and this has also created their current position in the field of smart driving.

secondly, huge capital investment.

baidu has been deeply involved in the field of ai for more than ten years and has invested more than 150 billion yuan. it has a strong first-mover advantage in algorithms, computing power and data. as a new force in car manufacturing, xpeng motors has not yet made a profit, but in 2024, xpeng invested 3.5 billion yuan in smart driving. in the past three years, xpeng’s r&d expenditures were 4.114 billion yuan, 5.215 billion yuan, and 5.277 billion yuan respectively. since its establishment, huawei smart car solutions bu has invested more than 30 billion yuan in r&d, and its r&d team has reached 7,000 people.

let me ask, how many players can afford such a heavy investment?

finally, when data + computing power become the core competitive factors, leading players in the field of intelligent driving will only show a situation where the strong get stronger.

once a company gains a first-mover advantage in the field of smart driving, the follow-up will be continuous iteration of data and algorithms. the gap between leaders and latecomers will not disappear as time goes by, but will even get wider. unless the company's own strategic positioning and operations deviate, it will be difficult for newcomers to surpass it.

write at the end:

the electrification of new energy has been in full swing in the first half and has achieved considerable results, but the wave of intelligence in the second half seems to be even more powerful.

the trend of smart driving cannot be reversed. under the new world order established by hua xiaoji, a grim fact is that car companies that cannot keep up will face elimination.

as xiaopeng said, in the next 10 years, the competitive landscape of the domestic automobile industry will be like that from the spring and autumn period to the warring states period, and most automobile brands will face existential risks. ai and smart driving are the trump cards to help car companies break through.

perhaps, the era of bba and wei xiaoli will pass, and a new story will begin in the focus of competition in the chinese automobile market.