From a policy point of view, there is no trend of liberalizing L3 regulation in China, and Mercedes-Benz and Honda may need to adjust their marketing skills if they want to sell cars in China.
Author | Xiao Ying
Chinese and American car companies have been at the forefront of autonomous driving applications, and in the near future, Japanese and German car companies are catching up quickly, and Mercedes-Benz and Honda have announced that models equipped with L3 level autonomous driving are about to land.
In March of this year, Honda launched the Honda Legend with an L3 level autonomous driving system, priced at 11 million yen (about 658,000 yuan), and the first batch of 100 vehicles was limited to production and sales.
In early December, the German Federal Motor Transport Authority approved the launch of the Mercedes-Benz L3 level autonomous driving model, and the Mercedes-Benz L3 level automatic driving system Drive Pilot will be the first to be installed on the Two Models of Mercedes-Benz S-Class and EQS, and is scheduled to officially land in 2022.
The concept of L3 level automatic driving mass production has been rarely mentioned in China, replaced by pilot assisted driving and other functions, so what is the difference between Honda, Mercedes-Benz L3 and pilot assisted driving? Which is stronger?
01
Domestic companies avoid L3 autonomous driving
L3 level is defined as conditional autonomous driving, where the driver can free his hands and feet when the function is turned on, but requires that it be kept ready to take over.
This concept has rarely been mentioned in domestic mass production models. There are two main reasons, on the one hand, there are safety hazards in the cross-takeover of man and machine, on the other hand, it is difficult to define responsibility for accidents, and China's road traffic management policy has not yet given L3 legal status.
In fact, the earliest product to mention the L3 concept in the production car is Audi. In 2017, Audi launched the Audi A8, a mass-produced model equipped with L3 level autonomous driving, which was also equipped with lidar.
Subsequently, due to policy factors, when the car was delivered to consumers, it failed to open the L3 level automatic driving capability. In April 2020, Audi officially announced that it would abandon the installation of L3 level autonomous driving systems for the new generation of A8. Confirming the difficulty of landing on L3 level autonomous driving, some pioneers have become martyrs.
Tesla once also frequently mentioned automatic driving in marketing words, meaning L3 level, and then due to Autopilot caused a number of traffic accidents, Tesla was subject to regulatory constraints, before adjusting the speech to automatic assisted driving.
In August this year, a Nio ES8 owner died in an accident due to the opening of the NIO Pilot automatic assisted driving system, and domestic companies took this as a warning and were more cautious about the call of automatic driving capabilities. They have abandoned the name of autonomous driving, and instead called it intelligent driving.
At present, domestic enterprises are competing upwards to lay out L2++ intelligent driving, also known as high-end intelligent driving, which means infinitely close to L3.
There are not many products with high-end intelligent driving capabilities, mainly Tesla, as well as Xiaopeng, Weilai and other new car-making forces. In addition, Huawei's model Jihu Alpha S Huawei HI version, and Baidu's WM and WM W6, which are cooperated by Baidu and WM, also claim to have high-end intelligent driving capabilities, but the former has not yet been delivered, and although the latter has been delivered, the relevant functions have not been opened.
In addition, im zhi has, salon and other updated brands, also announced that their models will have high-end intelligent driving capabilities, but these companies generally want to achieve delivery in 2022.
02
Honda and Mercedes-Benz L3 features are not prominent
What is the difference between Honda and Mercedes-Benz's L3 products and domestic high-end intelligent driving?
In terms of sensor configuration, honda Legend is equipped with binocular cameras, 5 lidar, 5 millimeter-wave radars, and 16 ultrasonic radars.
In this sensor configuration, millimeter wave radar and ultrasonic radar are conventional configurations, and many other companies have also adopted such a configuration scheme, and the 5 lidars are more luxurious, which is a strong configuration in the current mass production car products.
At present, Honda has not announced the calculation platform information of this model, and the computing power situation is not clear.
Mercedes-Benz's Drive Pilot is also equipped with sensors such as lidar, millimeter wave radar, ultrasonic radar and cameras, as well as road humidity detection sensors and driver monitoring cameras.
Mercedes-Benz Drive Pilot sensor configuration
Mercedes-Benz did not disclose the specific number of sensor configurations in this set. But with reference to the autonomous driving solution released by Nvidia not long ago, we may be able to see the direction of Mercedes-Benz's subsequent autonomous driving solution.
In June 2020, Mercedes-Benz and Nvidia reached a strategic partnership with the two companies aiming at in-vehicle computing systems and AI computing infrastructure. It also said that from 2024, Mercedes-Benz will carry this configuration in its next-generation models to achieve L2-L4 autonomous driving.
In November, NVIDIA founder Jen-Hsun Huang unveiled hyperion 8, an autonomous driving solution, at the autumn GTC event, and showed off a Mercedes-Benz S-Class with the solution in a promotional video.
Hyperion 8's sensor kit includes 12 cameras, 12 ultrasonic radars, 9 millimeter wave radars and 1 front-mounted lidar, along with 4 Orin chips, and the final force can reach 1016TOPS.
This configuration is comparable to the configuration of the next generation of new car-making forces such as Xiaopeng X Pilot3.5 and NIO NAD. It is speculated that the subsequent evolution direction of the Mercedes-Benz Drive Pilot may be close to that of the Hyperion 8, and the current version is weaker.
Equipped with Nvidia Hyperion 8 tested Mercedes-Benz S-Class
From the perspective of function realization, Honda's Honda Sensing Elite can be used in three main use scenarios: automatic driving on designated high-speed sections, automatic driving in congested sections within 30km/h, and automatic emergency pull-over function when the driver loses consciousness. It has the ability of adaptive cruise, lane keeping, lane change and overtaking.
Mercedes-Benz can turn on L3 autopilot on specific highways supported by high-precision maps, but requires speeds of no more than 60km/h. Mercedes-Benz announced that 13,200 kilometers of highways can already be supported in Germany.
In contrast, the pilot auxiliary driving capability proposed by Tesla, Xiaopeng and Weilai can already realize automatic cruise driving in highways and urban elevated roads, including functions such as entering and exiting ramps, automatic speed regulation, and automatic overtaking. The difference is that the former does not rely on high-precision maps, while the latter two need to rely on high-precision maps.
Urban pilot assisted driving is a new direction for the technical competition of various car companies, Xiaopeng is expected to achieve this function in the first half of 2022, and models such as Jihu Alpha S Huawei HI Version, Zhiji L7 and Salon Mecha Dragon are basically running towards this goal, basically locking the landing time in 2022.
It can be seen that Honda's Honda SENSING Elite is similar to the high-end intelligent driving ability of the current generation of new car-making forces in terms of functional realization, and the use scenario of Mercedes-Benz Drive Pilot is relatively single, and the conditions are more numerous, which is not as good as domestic high-end intelligent driving products in terms of function realization.
From the configuration to the function, Honda and Mercedes-Benz's L3 is not stronger than the domestic high-end intelligent driving, but the name is different. From a policy point of view, there is no trend of liberalizing L3 supervision in China, and Mercedes-Benz and Honda may still need to adjust their marketing skills if they want to sell cars in China.
03
The intelligent driving market has great potential
Although high-end intelligent driving is becoming the main direction of competition among car companies, at present, the overall level of intelligence of automotive products in China's passenger car market is not high. According to data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in September, the market penetration rate of L2 passenger car new vehicles is 20%. The market potential is still very large.
At present, Global parts suppliers still occupy the main body of the ADAS market, especially in joint ventures and luxury brands.
These companies continue the advantages of in-depth supporting OEMs, including the cost advantages brought about by scale, as well as the experience advantages of system integration and functional safety.
However, there are also certain drawbacks in the supply model of Global parts suppliers, such as the cooperation model is not open enough, and the feedback mechanism is poor.
In this context, domestic suppliers usher in development opportunities, and a number of suppliers are rising.
The intelligent transformation of the automotive industry will reshape the industrial chain pattern. At present, it can be seen that there are three main modes of automatic driving in the layout of the main engine factory:
First: Tier1 cooperates with chip manufacturers to do integration solutions and package them for sale to OEMs.
Second: some powerful OEMs full-stack software and hardware self-research, including chips, operating systems, middleware, domain controllers and other core hardware and software.
Third: the main engine factory and Tier1 division of labor cooperation, the former is responsible for the automatic driving software part, the latter is responsible for hardware production, intermediate layer and chip solution integration.
The first is the model provided by Global Tier1, but at present, it is increasingly difficult for OEMs to accept this cooperation model.
The second is the route taken by a small number of car companies at present, represented by Tesla and Xiaopeng, this model has outstanding advantages, which is conducive to controlling product functions, improving research and development efficiency, and higher safety and security, but at the same time, the investment is also huge, and there should be a small number of powerful enterprises to take this route in the future.
The third model may become the main cooperation model, with car companies controlling the parts that can bring about user experience differentiation, and the basic software and hardware development work is left to the supplier.
To sum up, in the context of drastic technological changes, automotive industry chain enterprises will face greater challenges and opportunities, what is the future industrial pattern? How will players from all sides seize the opportunity?
On December 18th, the 2022 Conference will be held soon, and we invited Yuan Wenbo, partner of Roland Berger and expert in the field of automotive industry strategy consulting, and Liu Feilong, founder and CEO of Hongjing Intelligent Driving, an autonomous driving innovation company, to share the theme of the commercialization of intelligent driving.
They will separately discuss the "Intelligent Driving Accelerates the Landing, How Will the Automotive Industry Pattern Be Reshaped?" And "How to work with car companies to create a reliable intelligent driving experience?" " to share.
Scan the QR code below to enter the live broadcast page of the 2022 Electric View Conference and make an appointment to collect the live broadcast page.
Attached: Agenda of the event