Autonomous driving is expected to catch up with Tesla, Huawei will mass produce L4 ADS in 2022

Wen Wang Pengyu

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Even as Tesla’s market value soared to US$600 billion, becoming the world’s most valuable car company, Tesla has never stopped being questioned.

In the eyes of many people, in addition to doing the right thing at the right time and establishing an insurmountable first-mover advantage, the main reason for Tesla’s “Rating Changhong” The reason is the control of the core technology of autonomous driving. After L0 "dominated" travel life for a long time, it was indeed Tesla that brought autonomous driving into the public eye, allowing travel life to gradually move from quantitative to qualitative changes.

However, one after another ghost brakes and "stall doors" like time bombs knock on everyone mercilessly again and again. Spectators with high expectations. This not only stimulates consumers' confidence in the "most future potential" technology, but also makes the imminent era of autonomous driving seem even more "distant."

In any case, the arrival of the "Fourth Industrial Revolution" as scheduled will not press the "pause button" for the automotive industry. In the digital age, the traditional role of cars as "people-carrying vehicles" has begun to weaken, and future images of scene algorithms and artificial intelligence replacing human labor are destined to be imprinted in reality. At this time of imminent transformation, Huawei, which is best at algorithms and connections, has quietly prepared to move forward.

Since the launch of Huawei’s smart car solution brand “HI” and its blockbuster product Mate 40 at the same time, Huawei’s every move in the automotive field has all become noticeable. From the outside world, Huawei's participation in "car manufacturing" can be described as extremely efficient, but from within Huawei's system, this "merging" into the new track of smart electric vehicles is still gradual.

In Huawei’s Shanghai R&D Center, a R&D team and a new office building have been established for the new smart car BU business. The Suzhou Technology Center can accommodate more people, with more than 3,000 people. The engineering R&D team is expanding rapidly at a speed visible to the naked eye.

These all illustrate a new trend: Huawei’s vigorous deployment of smart car solutions is well thought out and well prepared. Among the many areas that need to be tackled, intelligent driving covers a wider area and is the vane in the field of automotive intelligence. For this high-end technology that can change the travel ecology, Huawei places it at the highest weight.

This decision is not only in line with the current development trend of "smart cars", but also coincides with Huawei's expertise in the communications and IT fields that have been cultivated for decades. Su Qing, President and Chief Architect of BU ADS Intelligent Driving Product Line, who is responsible for Huawei’s autonomous driving business, said: “From the perspective of the top characteristics of the industry, autonomous driving has two characteristics. First, it is the crown of computer science and is currently the most advanced technology within computer science. The most complex problem; secondly, it is an ultra-complex embedded system, and this is what Huawei is good at."

Judging from decades of accumulation, Huawei All the full-stack experience can be used in the research and development of autonomous driving. The basic technology construction is sufficiently advanced and solid, and in terms of R&D strength, the huge Huawei system can easily cope with the high-speed iteration of the system for at least 15 years, and the complete industry chain of software and hardware can also appropriately control costs to "can Within the acceptable range", this is obviously something that no automobile company can fully devote to.

In a sense, it should not be Huawei's cross-border participation in "car manufacturing", but the evolution of future smart cars in an unexpected but reasonable way. This method "breaks into" the place where Huawei is best suited.

As we all know, since Huawei officially announced its entry into the automotive field, "Huawei does not build cars, but helps companies build good cars." "It's like a golden saying that circulates among all Huawei executives. From the outside world, this sentence can be a "reassurance" for traditional car companies that are in a period of transformation, but the deeper meaning and various "possibilities" behind it are still difficult to detect.

However, the experience of visiting Huawei’s Shanghai R&D Center told Brother Yi that the decision to “not build a car” stems more from Huawei’s love and persistence in the communications and ICT fields, and also It can be seen as an IT industry giant's "adherence" to business boundaries.

Wang Jun, President of Huawei Smart Car Solutions BU, believes that Huawei’s advantages are mainly in software, algorithms, and ecology. "Algorithm research is a collection of many sciences, including fusion algorithms and perception algorithms... It is highly technical and difficult, and requires long-term accumulation. Huawei has accumulated a large number of algorithm talents in the fields of wireless and artificial intelligence. ”

On the other hand, Huawei’s independently developed operating systems, including AOS and VOS, can better embody corresponding capabilities in the car, allowing third parties to Develop better applications.

In fact, what Huawei is doing is to bring the ICT technology accumulated over more than 30 years into the intelligent connected car scenario, which not only includes the "soft power" of software and operating systems. "Research and development, leveraging the technical strength accumulated in the communications industry and smartphone field, Huawei also has a leading hardware development process and corresponding technology.

As early as 2015, the "Internet of Vehicles Laboratory" was established to conduct research on key technologies such as in-vehicle interaction, intelligent driving, and electric components, extending the concept of "end, pipe, and cloud" ICT capabilities, such as 5G, AI, IoT, cloud computing, optoelectronics technology, etc.

For example, lidar. Although this technical barrier is high and the cost has remained high for a long time, which led to an angry Musk to wildly deny its "advancedness", this key core component that has been verified in other fields has been developed in Huawei's laboratory It has considerable technical competitiveness and mature cost control solutions.

Standard high-end autonomous driving uses three lidars, which can solve the application problems of autonomous driving in all scenarios. Once this technology is actually applied to mass production projects, it will become an indispensable and important component of high-end smart cars, and it is even very likely to overcome the insurmountable "blind spot of autonomous driving technology" of Tesla FSD.

On the road to advanced smart cars, car manufacturers understand cars better and users better, while Huawei is clearly targeting the ICT technology it is better at and will be serious and focused. Fully committed to the "complete transformation" of the automotive industry.

With its “inherent advantages” of sophisticated and rigorous solutions and a strong R&D team, Huawei has made great achievements in high-end autonomous driving. Progress in the field must exceed industry expectations. As an infrastructure provider that continues to lead in the ICT field, Huawei plays an increasingly important role - becoming a key booster for the automotive industry to move towards the intelligent era.

There is no doubt that the continuous iteration of intelligent experience, coupled with the beautiful vision of future autonomous driving, has become the long-term and great goal of every automobile company.

In addition to Tesla, Weilai and other Internet car companies that have "turned out" in the revolution of smart cars, whether it is Volkswagen Toyota Traditional automobile giants such as BMW and Mercedes-Benz are all increasing their deployment of intelligent software and hardware, and they hope to control the core technology in their own hands. However, no matter which camp they belong to, most of their experience must be dispersed into manufacturing, traditional machinery, and vehicle supply chain operations, making it impossible to concentrate on the core subdivisions of system development, software calibration, and computing platforms.

Who can take the lead in meeting users’ needs for a smarter, more efficient and safer travel experience? Huawei gave the answer at this time.

Wang Jun introduced: "HI high-level autonomous driving ADS is the best 'high-level autonomous driving system' in China's road scenarios. This full-stack solution design has passed the highest standards. Level ASIL D functional safety assessment. It adopts a design concept that starts with the end in mind, and is based on the L4 level autonomous driving architecture to provide a full-stack solution for L4-L2 level autonomous driving, with leading sensors, central supercomputing, and algorithms. ”

Especially in autonomous driving application environments and scenarios, Huawei’s full-stack solution not only covers all scenarios of highways, urban loops, and autonomous parking, but also solves Usage conditions in complex urban areas. Among them, AVP parking adds value to the last mile, breaking the "isolated island"-like fragmented and poor experience of the current systems on the market. It can also enhance the work logic of complex urban road conditions through the "self-evolving" intelligent learning model to complete the task. High-frequency application scenarios from home to office and office to home.

This high-end autonomous driving system can cover all driving scenarios of Chinese private car owners. Compared with Tesla’s success on the highway, it is not as good as in the city. The "partial science level" that is difficult to move on the road, who is more in line with the trend of transformation from "commuting tool" to "smart mobile terminal", the results will be judged.

To be honest, ADS, which will be fully mass-produced in Q1 2022, marks the true start of the mass production process of high-end autonomous driving. By then, it will be a truly high-end autonomous driving system that users can purchase on the market that can cover maximum daily driving scenarios.

At the 2020 Beijing Auto Show, the slogan of Huawei's booth was clear and clear - bringing the digital world into every car. In real life, Huawei has reached strategic cooperation in the field of smart electric vehicles with many domestic mainstream vehicle companies such as SAIC, Changan, GAC, and BAIC. The launch of mass production works has entered the final sprint stage.

In the process of cars evolving from passenger-carrying vehicles to "intelligent terminals on wheels", this well-known communications company has been wholeheartedly transforming into "intelligent terminals on wheels". The booster of the era of "intelligent terminals", the century-old transformation of the automobile industry, and the true "overtaking on corners" of Chinese automobile companies will soon present the most exciting scene in the "Fourth Industrial Revolution".