"Intelligent second half", how does autonomous driving become a new outlet?

There is a knowledge in the automobile circle-"the transformation of the automobile industry is the first half of electrification and the second half of intelligence." Nowadays, the development of automobile electrification has become a common practice. Although there are still new players entering the market, the market structure of the whole new energy vehicle has basically taken shape, and the competition has entered a white-hot stage. So many players began to pay attention to intelligence and prepare to enter the second half.

Why does intelligence have to be in the "second half"

The popularity of smart phones has been a long time, and it has developed to an unprecedented height. With the advent of the 5G era, smart phones have gradually entered a new era of intelligence. However, it is only in recent two years that automobile intelligence has been paid attention to. This not only makes people curious: why did cars that have been developed for hundreds of years fail to keep up with the development of mobile phones, but instead began to talk about intelligence after the formation of new energy vehicles?

In fact, from the perspective of technical maturity, the first pure electric vehicle was born as early as 1834. With the increasing influence of environmental pollution and energy crisis, governments and car companies around the world pay more and more attention to new energy vehicles and accumulate a lot of technologies. By 20 1 1, new energy vehicles have gradually become the protagonists of major international auto shows, and in the past two years, At that time, the development of both smart phones and "artificial intelligence" was still immature.

In addition, from the industrial point of view, the development of smart cars involves not only the automobile industry, but also the electronic information industry, software and hardware fields, as well as car networking, communication enterprises, internet enterprises, and even car-road coordination, road test unit transformation, and traffic construction enterprises. Only when all the links have reached a certain level can automobile intelligence have a corresponding foundation.

Moreover, from the product itself, it is difficult for the mechanical structure of the traditional fuel vehicle to respond to the instructions in time and accurately, while the new energy vehicle represented by the electric vehicle takes the three-electric system as the core, and the extensive use of electrical signals can adjust the vehicle state more finely, which provides a new foundation for the development of automobile intelligence.

Moreover, the structure of the electric vehicle is simpler, and the electronic and electrical architecture presents the characteristics of centralized distribution, which can realize the decoupling of software and hardware, and the main engine factory can realize the dominant position of architecture design and software development, which is convenient for the "OTA" upgrade of the whole vehicle in the future. In the environment of accelerating automobile upgrading, it is very necessary to bring a common and brand-new experience to car owners through OTA upgrade. This can also explain why in the first half of 2022, about 40.6 new energy vehicles were equipped with L2-class autonomous driving technology, while the proportion of fuel vehicles was only 29.6%.

To sum up, "electrification" actually laid the foundation for the development of "intelligence", which also made it difficult for electrification to go ahead.

The intelligent competition has begun, and the runners have established an advantage.

Although "intelligence" is generally regarded as the second half of the automobile revolution, some "runners" take the lead in preparing for the development of intelligence. Automobile intelligence can be roughly divided into two aspects: automatic driving and intelligent cockpit. Among them, the intelligent cockpit has developed rapidly, and now it has become one of the necessary propaganda points of many automobile companies, while the development of autonomous driving is relatively backward, which has become the main direction of all "entrants". According to the "TOP 15" list released by Yiou think tank, Tesla ranked first; The independent brand Xpeng Motors followed closely, ranking second.

Tesla's outstanding intelligent performance is mainly due to its early start. It was founded in 2003. In 2008, it launched its first automobile product, Roadster, and then released a series of products, namely Model S/X/Y/3. As early as 20 16, when Tesla put forward the second chapter of the grand plan, it mentioned that it was necessary to develop autonomous driving, which was far ahead in car-machine interaction experience and assisted driving experience.

However, many new domestic brands are still in the "crawling" stage. Because autonomous driving needs a lot of algorithms and mainland data as support, Tesla, which started earlier, has accumulated great advantages in this respect.

Because of its positioning, Xpeng Motors wanted to be "the leading intelligent electric vehicle company in China" at the beginning of its establishment. Most of the team members came from well-known Internet technology companies such as Alibaba, Tencent, Xiaomi, Samsung and Huawei, and they had a good foundation in artificial intelligence.

According to the report released by Toubao Research Institute last year, thanks to earlier research and long-term investment in intelligence, Xpeng Motor has gradually formed its own intelligent technical barriers. In the current new power camp, Xpeng Motors has always been in a leading position in the research of assisted driving function.

Autopilot: A new exit has arrived.

In addition to Tesla and Xpeng Motors, which have established intelligent advantages, there are many brands that are constantly preparing to enter the "smart electric vehicle" track, such as Xiaomi, Apple, Google, Baidu and so on. Many people have questioned that Xiaomi and Apple have not produced cars so far. Now they have missed the new energy outlet. Will it be too late? In fact, behind many companies preparing to enter the market, there is a new outlet-autonomous driving.

According to the standards formulated by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, driving automation is divided into 0-5 levels. Among them, L3 level means that the vehicle itself can complete tasks such as steering, acceleration and deceleration, road condition detection and response under the operating conditions specified by the automatic driving system, which is a leap on the road of automobile automation. In recent years, the market scale of China autonomous driving industry is also growing rapidly. The data shows that the market size of the autonomous driving industry is 9.37 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of15.3%; In 20021year, the number of driverless related enterprises in China reached 1564, up 35.5% year-on-year. (Data from China Research Network)

In the past two years, the sales volume of new energy vehicles in China has risen sharply, and it has become the largest new energy vehicle market, and new energy vehicles have a highly bound relationship with intelligence. Among them, the advanced intelligent driving assistance function is considered to be an important embodiment and key component of automobile intelligence. Therefore, some organizations predict that "China has the potential to become the largest autonomous driving market in the world", and the corresponding market scale will be further expanded.

Since 20 15, China has continuously introduced relevant policies to guide the development of autonomous driving, and carried out pilot projects in several cities to promote the development of intelligent transportation. According to Toubao's forecast, by 2030, the smart transportation market in China will reach11732.7 billion yuan, with a compound growth rate of 12.6% from 2022 to 2030. Under the huge market scale, a large number of self-driving enterprises will enter the market, covering the C-end market and the B-end market.

Advantages and potential problems of autonomous driving

Autopilot technology is what all players are pursuing at present. New forces such as Tesla and Wei Xiaoli are mainly aimed at individual users. It is hoped that through autonomous driving technology, users will get a simpler travel experience and enhance their competitiveness. Baidu is facing the B-end tourism market. Last year, Baidu "Radish Run" announced the start of demonstration operation in Chengdu, covering 10 square kilometers, and * * * set up 20 boarding and alighting points, similar to taxis and buses.

Mature autonomous driving technology is widely used, which can effectively improve traffic safety and traffic operation efficiency. According to the statistics of the National Traffic Safety Committee of China, in 20021year, there were traffic accidents 1 1495, resulting in 5799 deaths and 80 18 injuries. Moreover, autonomous driving can eliminate the factors such as inattention, fatigue/drunkenness of human drivers, provide multiple redundancy guarantees, and significantly improve safety.

At the same time, based on the landing operation of self-driving vehicles, citizens can choose a variety of efficient and convenient travel modes such as Robobus and Robotaxi to alleviate road congestion.

However, the arrival of autonomous driving technology has also worried many people-will a large number of drivers lose their jobs? In fact, changes in the industry mean that someone needs to make sacrifices. If autonomous driving is really mature, it is very likely that the former "coachman" will be eliminated by the car.

However, from the current point of view, this time is still far away. Taking Rapunzel Run as an example, high-level autonomous driving needs to reach a higher level of bicycle intelligence, but at this stage, bicycle intelligence still needs to be improved by stacking materials, which cannot be completely solved. Therefore, it is still in the pilot stage, and the boarding and alighting points are fixed, which cannot achieve the same experience as taxis. Moreover, it needs to be equipped with a security officer, which makes it not fundamentally different from taxis and online cars, but the experience is quite different. Therefore, the profession of "driver" will not be unemployed in a short time.

Write at the end:

Autopilot technology still faces many questions. Last year, Tucki and Tesla caused a number of car accidents because of the driver assistance system, so most consumers are reluctant to hand over the steering wheel that determines their own destiny to AI. In addition, due to stacking and hardware embedding, the cost of the whole vehicle is rising, and consumers have resistance, which is why although new outlets have arrived, they have not caused much response.

In a word, although this "cake" is very attractive, it is not easy to win it. After all, product accessories can be bought, but technology can't be bought. The improvement of the threshold may also lead to competition in the second half of the year, which may not be as fierce as in the first half.

This article comes from the author of YicheNo. Zhidian Automobile, and the copyright belongs to the author. Please contact the author for any form of reprint. The content only represents the author's point of view and has nothing to do with the car reform.