Zhou supports Zhu's general theory-software defines cars and scale defines software!

In 2023, the water of automobiles was completely muddy, and all the electric vehicle manufacturers in committee of 100 "crossed the sea with eight immortals", and no one obeyed. Weilai Li Bin made it clear that it would not cut prices; BYD Wang Chuanfu declared that automatic driving is a gimmick; Zhu, a zero-running car, even shouted that smart electric vehicles would enter the era of 50,000 yuan ten years later. After this meeting, let alone the car circle, ordinary people don't know how to buy a car.

In this "chaotic" 100-member committee for electric vehicles, Zhu's speech made his peers "worried" the most. How is it possible to buy an intelligent electric car for 50 thousand yuan in the future? Not many people in the automobile circle are willing to believe this statement, but the IT circle has reached an understanding. Zhou is one of the representatives who support Zhu's views.

Zhu is an honest man. He doesn't understand and doesn't like the same iterative generalization theory of smart cars. There was an argument two years ago. At that time, the "IT car maker" was the first to shout out that "smart cars can't be built below15,000 yuan". The unyielding chairman of 360 retorted a week later that people who don't have smart cars below15,000 yuan don't understand intelligence, and there will even be smart cars of 50,000 yuan in the future.

Zhu and Zhou have two identical arguments: one is that the automobile market below 1.5 million yuan accounts for 70% of China, and the other is the era of software-defined automobile. The iteration of intelligent technology should follow Moore's law. The more people use it, the faster the iteration of intelligent software will be and the cheaper the price will be.

Zhu summed up Moore's Law in various industries in the past decade. TCL 55-inch TV will cost 7,000 yuan from 20 13 to only 1349 yuan in 2023, and the price has dropped by 4. 19 times. Nokia N9 mobile phone dropped from 2499 yuan in 20 13 to 2 16 yuan in 2023, and the price dropped by 10.57 times. Gree air-conditioning dropped from10.3 million yuan in 20 13 years to 6079 yuan in 2023, and the price dropped by 1. 13 times ... The higher the software definition ratio, the faster the product iteration and price drop.

Zhou told a story. At the beginning of Lei Jun's business, everyone said that Xiaomi was unsuccessful, because at that time, the market thought that smartphones could not be made below 4,000 yuan. Later, this sentence became a joke. Xiaomi's dual-core mobile phone 1999 yuan hit many people in the face. In Zhou's view, the greatest thing about Xiaomi is that it benefits everyone. Thousands of yuan mobile phones let more people enjoy the experience of smart phones. If smart cars do not rely on iteration to open up the market below 1.5 million yuan, accounting for 70%, they will overcharge consumers on the grounds of smart technology. At best, it is a niche product, which is difficult to support by maintaining a small number of consumers.

The same is true of Zhu's judgment on smart cars. He believes that electronic components are the core of intelligent electric vehicles, and the electronic architecture replaces the mechanical architecture, which is also applicable to Moore's Law. In recent years, the iteration of intelligent cockpit, intelligent driving and vehicle domain control has been accelerated, evolving once every 18-24 months. Taking the intelligent cockpit as an example, the Qualcomm 8953 chip of 14nm was adopted in the zero-run T03 in 20 19; 202 1, C 1 1, C0 1 in 2022, and Qualcomm 8 155 adopt 7nm technology; In 2023, a brand-new zero sports car will be equipped with a more advanced 5nm process Qualcomm 8295 chip. Another example is the intelligent driving system, the Xavier chip with NVIDIA 12nm technology mass-produced in 2020, and the AI ? ? computing power is 30TOPS； OPS; In 2022, NVIDIA's 7nm process mass-produced Orinx chip, AI computing power of 254TOPS；; The next generation Atlan chips manufactured by NVIDIA's 5nm process are expected to be mass-produced and loaded in 2025, with AI computing power as high as 1000TOPS.

In Zhou's view, smart cars in the future are first and foremost software-defined cars, networked cars and data-driven cars. Intelligence is the basic skill of smart cars, not a reason to charge consumers more. A real smart car should be one or several intelligent centers with four wheels.

Different from Zhou Hezhu's idea of smart car development, most smart electric car products are not iterative but eliminated. The market life cycle of an intelligent electric vehicle product is about 3-5 years. Once the software and hardware technology is backward, car companies will generally choose to stop production and replace the old products with new products or brands. Moreover, intelligent technology has become the main factor of high price of new products, and has not entered Moore's law.

Zhou is much more emotional than Zhu. He believes that some people are misinterpreting smart cars and clamoring that smart cars are only equipped with advanced software technologies such as laser radar, which is misleading to car consumers. According to the laws and regulations, only L2 can really realize automatic driving at present. In the field of smart cars, it is a competitive method to accumulate computing power and radar while ignoring experience, but it does not meet the market demand.

In Zhou's view, lidar is also a kind of chip, and the core of the chip industry is to maximize the number, thus reducing costs. If we blindly increase the cost, reduce the scale and turn smart cars into toys for a few people, it will only ruin the enterprise in the end. Zhou predicted that the price of lidar has dropped from several thousand dollars in the past to several hundred dollars. With the participation of more China enterprises, the price of lidar will drop exponentially in the future, even to 1,000 yuan. At that time, the car with 50 thousand yuan can also be equipped with lidar.

Zhu found that the price of lithium batteries has gone from 3.2 yuan /Wh ten years ago to 0.6 yuan /Wh now, and it is expected to reach 0.3 yuan/WH ten years later; Ten years later, the 2000kW electric drive system was reduced to 4000 yuan. At present, the cost of intelligent cockpit plus the cost of intelligent driving such as lidar, high pixel camera, high computing intelligent driving chip and high static map is 30,000 yuan. Ten years later, one chip may solve all the problems, and the software and hardware add up to only 6000 yuan. Including the automobile hardware such as the front double wishbone and the rear five-bar linkage that were only used in the past 400,000, and the air suspension that was only used in millions, now more than 300,000 products can also be equipped, and the future market will reach 6.5438+0.5 million yuan.

Zhou believes that the "intelligence" of smart cars is standard, and the experience can be different, but the functions are equivalent. Consumers of thousand yuan and ten thousand yuan mobile phones can use the same software, just as the functional systems of red rice mobile phones and Apple mobile phones should be consistent, so should smart cars. On the road of software-defined car, whoever makes the car more profitable will have a larger scale and the iterative speed of intelligent technology will be faster. If anyone still relies on software to raise the price, the smaller the scale, the higher the cost and the slower the efficiency of intelligent iteration. Once it reaches the critical point of software subverting the market, Pratt & Whitney Smart Car Enterprises will completely defeat the high-priced niche smart car enterprises.

Zhou gave a perceptual judgment, and Zhu made the answer clear this time. Two years is the iterative cycle of smart electric vehicles in the future. Ten years later, the battery 1.5 million+electric drive 4000 yuan+intelligent cockpit driving 6000 yuan+body, interior, chassis and other hardware 25000 yuan. 50,000 yuan smart electric car is not a dream.

Zhou said that the power of technology is to eliminate the difference in experience brought by price. In the future, smart cars will no longer be consumers' second cars, and car companies should do it in the direction of "consumers' first cars". Zhu not only sees it this way, but also does it this way. The zero-run car has set its sights on the smart electric vehicle market of 1.5 million yuan or even less than 50 thousand yuan.

This article comes from the author of Che Yi No.13 Automobile Company, and the copyright belongs to the author. Please contact the author in any form. The content only represents the author's point of view and has nothing to do with the car reform.