Behind the exaggerated autonomous driving is the overt and covert struggle between major car companies

Autonomous driving, as an area that will always be touched by human travel in the future, has always been a good card for major host manufacturers and car companies to compete in differentiation. Different from the previous era of sports control, modern car companies Instead, they put their own self-driving technology in the C position of primary development. Regardless of what level it reaches, if they announce that their own models do not support self-driving at the current new car launch conference, they will definitely be labeled as technologically backward. .

But looking at the entire industry, L0~L2 is the foundation, and the price of vehicles equipped with L2 level autonomous driving has been reduced to the 100,000 level. Moving up, L2 and even L3 levels are beginning to emerge, including the Audi A8L , Changan UNI-T, GAC Aian LX and the new generation of Mercedes-Benz S-Class released not long ago all claim that they can achieve L3 level autonomous driving. If 2018~2019 is the hot spot for ADAS systems, then 2020 is the year of autonomous driving.

Will autonomous driving become the “standard feature” of new forces?

Regardless of whether what the major car manufacturers say is true or false, since I said it, it means that I can do it. It’s just that each company has its own restrictions on the conditions of use, and there are also some There are objective problems such as regulations, technology, ethics and morals. On the one hand, manufacturers want to differentiate, and on the other hand, the country does not have sound laws and regulations to measure the boundaries of autonomous driving, so a particularly embarrassing situation has formed. According to domestic regulations, autonomous driving exceeding the L3 level is not allowed on the road in China. Therefore, in order to increase brand gimmicks, many new domestic car-making forces release new cars in the circle of new car-making forces that are almost L3 per capita.

Take Tesla as an example. Tesla CEO Musk made a bold statement at the 2020 Artificial Intelligence Conference: We will release L5 level autonomous driving within this year. As a leader in the electric vehicle circle, Musk is destined to be a man with his own traffic, which has created a leader effect: a major car company, led by Tesla, is using exaggerated self-driving slogans to attract consumers The attention of readers is that it confuses the public’s understanding of the concept of autonomous driving. Secondly, it is the failure to enjoy the services that should be enjoyed after spending a lot of money. The key point is that people lose their lives due to autonomous driving on the road.

Cadillac: Being honest starts with me

Recently, Cadillac has modified the slogan related to its Cadillac Super Cruise assisted driving system. The content before the modification was: " "Cadillac Super Cruise - Experience Autonomous Driving" was revised to read: Cadillac Super Cruise - The Future of Driving.

Although only a few words have been changed, the overall meaning has completely changed. Cadillac has done a good job of changing the affirmative sentence of experiencing autonomous driving into a euphemism for future trends. In response, a Cadillac spokesperson said: This mistake was an honest mistake. The ad in question was posted in error and has been deleted. At the same time, he once again emphasized that Cadillac's Super Cruise is a driver assistance function.

After many real-life evaluations by professional evaluators, it was concluded that the Super Cruise assisted driving system currently installed on the body of Cadillac’s flagship sedan CT6 can achieve L2 level automation as a whole. Driving, this system mainly relies on two key points, one is the driver monitoring system and the other is the blessing of high-precision maps. With the support of the above conditions, vehicles equipped with this system can achieve hands-free driving on specific highways.

Compared with Tesla's Autopilot? automatic assisted driving, Cadillac's Super? Cruise? system only has an additional driver status monitoring, while Tesla integrates its own driver monitoring in When turning on assisted driving, users need to hold the steering wheel at all times in order to take over the vehicle in time.

However, it is worthy of recognition that GM is the first car company to take the initiative to modify its promotional slogans and also emphasize that the Super Cruise system can only play an auxiliary role. In comparison, there are Many car companies make corresponding changes only after being interviewed by regulatory authorities or receiving administrative penalties. Looking at Tesla's approach, the wording seems too radical, and it is one of the first car companies to announce that self-driving vehicles can achieve autonomous driving. , many years ago claimed that it could achieve autonomous driving without a driver through its own hardware algorithms and body-mounted cameras.

Until 2016, a Model S with the autonomous driving function turned on crashed into a large white truck while driving at high speed, causing the entire roof to be flattened. The owner of the car must have died. This is also The world's first self-driving fatality case. During the subsequent accident investigation, Tesla stated that the Model S first mistook the white truck in front of it for a white cloud, and then judged it as a truck paved on the ground because the truck's surface was very flat. The road sign eventually led to tragedy. Subsequently, Tesla issued a statement on this, admitting that the car system at that time was prone to errors in judging white objects. To this end, it modified the conditions for turning on the automatic driving function. The driver must always hold the steering wheel and detect the road conditions, and be ready at all times. Take over the vehicle.

Obviously, Tesla’s autonomous driving is contrary to our understanding of autonomous driving. After the official publicity of the fully autonomous driving system many times, many consumers were brainwashed under a hypnotic-like brainwashing. Choosing to rely too much on vehicles ultimately led to tragedy. Therefore, in 2018, Tesla removed the self-driving slogan that Tesla was proud of from its official website. In response, Tesla CEO E. Ron Musk responded: "This option has caused a lot of confusion for customers and does not guarantee that the driver is in the center position. We have decided to temporarily remove this word from the menu."

There is no unified market, everyone is the same

In fact, among the models that have been mass-produced in the entire market, 99% of the autonomous driving models under the SAE standard belong to L2 ~L3, although many manufacturers have begun to build momentum for their own L3-level autonomous driving, the words used in the promotion are often the difference between life and death in reality. Just like the hot news these days, Baidu announced the launch of APollo Lite ?The L4 level autonomous driving system adopts a full vision solution, integrating 10 cameras in one go, with a maximum detection distance of 240 meters. Is it realistic? Only after the test of time will we know, but for now, autonomous driving without lidar is a very big shortcoming.

In such a century-old transformation of the automobile industry, the regulatory authorities on the one hand play a role in guiding development; on the other hand, the regulatory authorities need to play a restraining role on major automobile manufacturers. Especially after a period of chaotic development, the autonomous driving industry needs the entry of supervision to ensure the orderly development of the autonomous driving industry.

Not long ago, Germany and South Korea issued bans on Tesla, prohibiting Tesla from using exaggerated self-driving slogans in these two countries. This purpose is to standardize the company's relevant promotional terms. In March this year, China released the country's first "Vehicle Driving Automation Grading", which clarified the clear meaning of each grade and provided a well-documented rating standard for major OEMs.

And this week, the World Economic Forum (WEF) released a report saying that regulatory agencies that lack the ability to fully understand technology need to quickly get rid of the current chaotic state of "safety" without a clear definition. , shift to a pragmatic and feasible orderly stage. The report's main recommendation is to develop scenario-based functional safety assessments to reflect the current challenges that autonomous driving technology will face in specific environments, and to set safety baselines based on a scenario library.

In general

Only with the strong intervention of the regulatory authorities, the word "standard" will not be a general talk

Supervision has entered the market strongly At the same time, consumers also need to keep up with basic education. In fact, Tesla frequently plays this kind of word game, which is essentially bullying ordinary consumers who "do not understand". "That is, they have no relevant knowledge reserves and few relevant knowledge." Source of information”.

To address this problem, on the one hand, we can choose a wide range of science popularization; on the other hand, we need to establish an authoritative and fair test platform to use data to intuitively reflect the degree of intelligence of the car.

This article comes from the author of Autohome Chejiahao and does not represent the views and positions of Autohome.