Wen 丨 Science and Technology New Knowledge, Author 丨 Gu Twenty, Editor 丨 Yi Page
As a high-frequency word in the capital market in 2021, "hard technology" is leading the current new wave of investment trends.
According to the statistics of the "Securities Market Red Weekly", as of the middle of October this year, the number of A-share listed companies participating in the survey by Hillhouse Capital during the year increased by 70% compared with the whole of last year, and the focus direction was also shifted from medicine to the new energy vehicle industry chain, photovoltaic and other fields.
Hillhouse has publicly stated that it is optimistic about the four major subdivisions of semiconductors, cutting-edge technologies, new energy, and intelligent hardware in the field of science and technology in the next two to five years, and called hard technology a "historic structural investment window period".
In the track of hard technology, as a new energy vehicle produced by the intersection of photoelectric chips, information technology, new energy and other fields, it is also known as the consumer-level product that best represents the comprehensive strength of hard technology.
The relationship between consumer-grade products and hard technology technology is that the former is the result of the commercialization of hard technology, which can play a role in feeding back the relevant industrial chain and increasing the corresponding investment in the field of hard technology; the latter is the technical support of consumer products, which determines the realization of cross-era product experience. However, although the two are complementary and indispensable, there is no deterministic linear positive correlation between the two.
Jobs, the pioneer of smartphone hardware, once believed that the reason for the success of Apple's products was not the use of hardware technology that was leading the industry, but the user experience that brought consumers a different experience. The reverse inference is that the simple stacking of hard technology accessories and the increase in the hardware parameters of consumer products cannot bring consumers a cross-era product experience.
However, this conclusion may not have time to ignore the current hot new energy vehicles.
In the face of an unprecedented intelligent "arms race", many new energy vehicles are using hard technology to define automatic driving through hard technology stacking, and hard technology accessories have also become ineffective stacking products in the mouths of consumers.
1, hard technology for the stacking of materials
On the first day of 2021, Xiaopeng Motors announced that it will launch a new car equipped with lidar this year. A week later, NIO released the ET7, a smart pure electric sedan, on NIO Day, which will also be equipped with lidar.
The heads of these two domestic new car-making forces, the former chose DJI's incubated Livox, and the latter chose Innovusion, which was invested by its own NIO capital. In a similar period of time, BAIC ARCFOX also announced that it will launch a mass production vehicle equipped with Huawei's lidar.
In the first half of this year, lidar officially entered the first year of mass production in China. Subsequently, the newly mass-produced lidar began to become the main "shell" of the new energy vehicle arms race, and was shipped to the forefront of the auto show competition.
"How many lidars do you have?" If you have less than 4 pieces, please do not talk. With a shout from the head of the salon mecha of the new energy vehicle brand of the Great Wall, at the Guangzhou Auto Show in late November, lidar was widely used on models priced at more than 300,000 yuan.
According to statistics, the number of models equipped with lidar this year has increased geometrically. Xiaopeng, Weilai, ideal, the three leaders of China's new energy vehicle brands, none of them are absent. Huawei-helped Avita and Polar Fox Alpha have also participated in the lidar arms race.
Behind the lidar from mass production to arms race within half a year is that various manufacturers have not occupied the intelligent highland after electrification, so it is necessary to continuously introduce accessories with higher hard technology content, improve the hardware parameters of products, and highlight product strength. After all, the number of lidar is easier to advertise than the intelligent experience that is difficult to quantify.
Before lidar became the main shell of the intelligent arms race, the number of cameras and central control screens was the main way to quantify the intelligence of new energy vehicles.
According to the monitoring data of The Institute of Intelligent Vehicles of Gaogong, from January to September this year, new cars in the Chinese market were equipped with more than 19 million cameras, an increase of more than 60%; in the same period, the number of central control displays 10 inches and above was 6.2614 million, an increase of 67.8%; the number of full-size LCD instruments was 4.5235 million, an increase of 79.06% year-on-year.
In the view of "new technology knowledge", according to the user anxiety marketing in different development periods, new energy vehicle manufacturers have roughly experienced four stages of competition in hard technology parameters:
Horsepower anxiety (motor hardware parameters under 100 km acceleration competition)
Range anxiety (battery capacity and battery life parameters under the competition of charging base stations)
Computing power anxiety (Tesla initiated chip computing power parameter competition)
Perceptual anxiety (external environment perception parameters such as radar and cameras that represent the level of intelligence ability)
Such a "stacking" intelligent experience publicity can be traced back to the electrification period in 2015, when the main point of competition was to compete with the power capability of fuel vehicles, and the hardware parameter capability can indeed reflect the power capability of automotive products. During this period, within a few seconds of 100-meter acceleration, charging parameters or endurance service capabilities can be intuitively quantified through parameters.
Today's hard technology stacking, mainly concentrated in 2020, new energy vehicles from electrification to intelligent stage, to the perception of anxiety under the configuration of external hardware, of which interactive screens, cameras, lidar and other equipment are equipped with the number of because of its hard technology content and interoperability, becoming the most competitive perception parameters.
02. Hardware defines autonomous driving?
However, the intelligent product experience, quantitative hardware parameters can not be truly reflected. In the field of new energy vehicles, it is often regarded as a different revolutionary from fuel vehicles: software-defined cars, but manufacturers who are difficult to run through intelligence in software have to try to go the old way of marketing hardware parameters for fuel vehicles.
For example, WM, once one of the top four new energy companies, launched the M7 model equipped with three lidars in late October this year. As the first model to carry 3 lidars among the quasi-production vehicles released in China, the keyword of the WM M7 is intelligence at the press conference.
Shen Hui, founder of WM brand, said: "WM has always paid attention to smart products and technologies that can be mass-produced and that users really need. The WM M7 has reached the top level of perception of the 2022 smart electric car, and the hardware has L5 level (autonomous driving) capabilities. ”
To put it simply, the hard technology of WM M7 product accessories has reached 2022, and according to the hardware parameters installed on these devices, L5 level automatic driving can be achieved.
However, as we all know, the L4 level automatic driving that can be mass-produced and fully on the road in the world and recognized by the traffic management department has not been realized, let alone the L5 level. Interestingly, the new energy vehicle revolution is called software-defined cars, and now by equipping more lidar, WM has achieved hardware-defined autonomous driving earlier.
Not only WM, but also found that whether it is Zhiji L7, or gaohe, GAC Aian, Feifan and other domestic new energy vehicle brands, almost all models equipped with lidar are all around the L4-L5 level of automatic driving mass production as keywords, trying to achieve hardware definition of automatic driving on the marketing topic.
Because one of the sayings in the industry is that to land L4 level automatic driving, look at lidar. It can generate a 3D model of the vehicle's surroundings, providing the system with deeper environmental data beyond the 2D camera. However, autonomous driving above L4 is by no means a challenge for lidar.
One of the key difficulties is that existing algorithms cannot accurately handle the infinite possibilities of long-tail scenarios in complex environments, and lidar is not powerful enough.
The solution is not nothing, the application of high-precision map information, compared with the ordinary electronic navigation map in advance to provide vehicles with more high-precision, high-dynamic, multi-dimensional information to cope with various types of emergencies, such as detailed lane models, road component information, traffic safety related to some road attribute information.
Because a lot of information involves national security, such as the core data in high-precision maps, road curvature, cannot be disclosed. Therefore, in order to commercialize high-precision maps, it is necessary for the state to take the lead, and it will also restrict the process of L4 landing.
Beyond marketing, there's a legitimate reason to pile up materials is hardware redundancy. This means that the hardware configuration of the development direction in the next few years will be fully packed first, but this is not a hardware pile, but in the future, through software upgrades, it can evolve itself and realize the intelligence of the sense of life growth. For example, Shen Hui believes that everyone can be redundant first, and it doesn't matter if the internal volume on the hardware is rolled.
To a certain extent, this can be understood as consumers who pay for the hardware parameters of high-end configurations, which is equivalent to buying intelligent futures of the corresponding brand.
So what is the progress of the intelligence level of new energy vehicles? You can refer to the leading Tesla cases abroad.
On December 9, some netizens left a message to Musk on foreign social media Twitter, saying that when he and his children sat in Tesla cars and waited for takeaways, they could also play animation columns on TV for their children. Musk responded that many people don't realize that you can watch almost all the shows on Tesla motors.
Through the car screen, that is, musk's car machine, watching anime in a non-driving state, which is the intelligence that Tesla users are surprised by the current smart car leader, but this function has been realized in 2018.
But does that mean Tesla isn't improving? Not. In the field of computing power that Tesla is proud of, Tesla can play games on the car screen recently by equipping it with a stronger car machine chip and a Model Y high-performance version using amD Ryzen processors.
The CPU and GPU performance parameters of this processor are the strongest of all cars on the market, and subsequent models are expected to use amD Ryzen 2 processors.
However, this is still complained about by the outside world as a chicken rib of intelligent stacking, because before the advent of software-defined car's ultimate goal of automatic driving, no matter what new energy vehicles or fuel vehicles, it is just a means of transportation.
As a means of transportation, it means that all the premise of intelligent establishment, it is difficult to achieve a car scene that is free of hands for a long time. In this case, the definition of automatic driving by stacking hard technology can only be a marketing product of intelligent futures.