Xiaopeng Automobile's "wisdom" can evolve theory: safety is always the top priority

Since 2021, China's new energy vehicle market has ushered in a transformation under the continuous heating up. According to the data of the Association, the wholesale penetration rate of new energy vehicle manufacturers has reached 16.3% in July this year.

Tesla's monthly sales exceeded 30,000 units, and the single-month delivery volume of the three new chinese car-making forces exceeded 8,000 units. From January to July this year, NIO delivered 49,800 units, Xiaopeng Automobile delivered 38,700 units, and Ideal Automobile delivered 38,700 units, all of which have exceeded the delivery volume in 2020.

However, behind the eye-catching figures, the rights protection incidents of smart electric vehicle owners are frequent, accidents caused by owners enabling automatic driving functions occur from time to time, and spontaneous combustion of intelligent electric vehicles is often reported...

A new piece of paper has sounded the alarm bell of autonomous driving and data security in the automotive industry. Recently, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology officially issued the "Opinions on Strengthening the Management of Intelligent and Connected Vehicle Manufacturers and Product Access" (hereinafter referred to as the "Opinions"), consolidating the main responsibilities of enterprises, strengthening automotive data security, network security, software upgrades, functional safety and expected functional safety management, ensuring product quality and production consistency, and promoting the high-quality development of the intelligent and connected vehicle industry.

The "Opinions" put forward two core requirements, one is the guarantee requirements for the data security and network security of intelligent and connected vehicles, and the other is the safety management of products with auxiliary driving functions and automatic driving functions.

"We believe that the improvement of policies and laws is a good thing for the popularization of high-level intelligence, and it is a good thing for automakers that do full-stack self-research, which is conducive to better mass production and better standardization." On August 26, He Xiaopeng, chairman and CEO of Xiaopeng Automobile, said on the second-quarter earnings conference call.

Betting on smart driving, safety is a top priority

"The introduction of this policy is a very good thing for the entire industry, especially for Xiaopeng." In He Xiaopeng's view, in order to make the intelligent system conform to the specification is a step, the most difficult for example, the intelligent system is to other people can not see, such as security, such as manageable these can be done well, which requires the ability of full-stack self-development to do, and this itself is what Xiaopeng has always wanted to do and has been doing.

The development of new kinetic energy characterized by electric intelligence is building a new track for the next round of competition in the automotive industry. Xiaopeng Automobile adheres to the full-stack self-research and quasi-intelligent electric vehicle track, opens up the complete closed loop of the vertical integration mode of software and hardware, and builds a full set of intelligent car solutions from concept to product - this is what He Xiaopeng has been trying to do and has been doing" in his mouth.

In the second quarter of 2021, the software penetration rate of XPILOT3.0 increased from 20% in the first quarter to 25%, and the stickiness of users to intelligent assisted driving continued to increase. Of the nearly 35,000 P7s delivered by the end of June, nearly 8,000 were equipped with XPIRAT3.0. In June, high-speed NGP assisted Xiaopeng users to drive about 1.45 million kilometers of highway mileage, with NGP mileage penetration rate exceeding 60%, and NGP average monthly usage rate exceeding 65%.

"I believe that with the launch of XPILOT3.5 early next year, and the subsequent launch of XPIRAT4.0 based on the next-generation intelligent assisted driving hardware platform, we will be able to cover the end-to-end driving scenarios more extensively (including those without HIGH-precision maps), and users' dependence on and demand for intelligent assisted driving will be greatly increased."

The "Opinions" clearly pointed out that enterprises producing automotive products with driving assistance and automatic driving functions should clearly inform the vehicle function and performance limitations, driver responsibilities, human-computer interaction equipment instructions, function activation and exit methods and conditions and other information. Enterprises producing automotive products with combined driving assistance functions should also take technical measures such as off-the-hand detection to ensure that the driver is always performing the corresponding dynamic driving tasks. This requirement puts the safety of autonomous driving on the table.

At the conference call, He Xiaopeng also stressed many times that in the process of intelligent assisted driving landing, while constantly exploring scientific and technological innovation, safety is always the top priority. Xiaopeng Motors also continues to improve the safety of users using intelligent driving assistance systems through user safety education, hardware redundancy and software iteration.

For example, Xiaopeng Automobile is the first car company to require users to pass the exam before using the intelligent driving assistance system; Xiaopeng Automobile is the first car company to use lidar, starting from the P5 model to enhance the hardware redundancy of the perception system and enhance the ability to perceive various abnormal links; we will continue to improve the processing ability of various special scenarios to further ensure user safety.

The "intelligent" label of Xiaopeng Automobile has become more and more profound and advanced, which is inseparable from its in-depth full-stack self-research and continuous increase in research and development investment. In the second quarter of 2021, Xiaopeng Automobile's R&D expenses were 860 million yuan, an increase of 170.0% from 320 million yuan in the same period last year, and an increase of 61.4% from 540 million yuan in the first quarter of 2021. The R&D expense ratio was 23%, an increase from the previous two quarters.

Xiaopeng Automobile said that the increase in research and development expenses in the second quarter was mainly due to two reasons: one was the increase in employee compensation expenses due to the expansion of the number of research and development personnel; the other was the increase in expenses related to the development of vehicles and related software technologies.

It is understood that as of the end of the second quarter of 2021, Xiaopeng Automobile's R & D team has more than 3,000 people, an increase of about 50% over the beginning of this year, and it is expected to exceed 4,500 people by the end of this year. Among them, the total number of people in the software and hardware and supporting infrastructure teams for autonomous driving will exceed 1500.

Gu Hongdi, vice chairman and president of Xiaopeng Motors, revealed that with the funds raised by the Hong Kong IPO, Xiaopeng Motors has reached 46 billion yuan in cash, and the funds raised will be mainly used for research and development and market expansion. "This year we will speed up the use of R&D expenses, the annual R & D expenditure will reach 4 billion yuan, but also increase the cost of marketing and infrastructure, brand building and charging equipment costs."

In addition, Xiaopeng Automobile will accelerate the pace of product launch, from 2023 plans to launch at least 2-3 new models per year, especially stated that the new models will support the international market at the same time, whether it is hardware, software or services. Xiaopeng Automobile's main price range in China will also expand from 150,000-300,000 yuan to 150,000-400,000 yuan, covering a wider customer base. In the layout of the high-end market, in the future, Xiaopeng will enter the range of 500,000-1 million through cars that can fly or drive.

Automobile data security supervision is becoming stricter, escorting the high-quality growth of intelligent vehicles

With the rise of "software-defined cars", from traditional car companies to new car-making forces, the race with intelligent networking + automatic driving as the core has been fully rolled out. The core components of the car have gradually changed from the former engine, gearbox, and chassis to the "car brain" composed of chips, software and data.

Now every car with intelligent network function integrates a large number of cameras, radars, speedometers, navigators and other sensors, collecting massive vehicle data, user data, environmental data, etc. Through these data, car companies continue to improve their algorithms, thereby promoting the rapid iteration of products and technologies, which has become the underlying logic of smart cars.

Some insiders pointed out that intelligent networking has risen to become the national development strategy of many countries, and the next decade will usher in a golden period of rapid development, but intelligent networked vehicles have generated massive data, and their data security problems cannot be ignored.

Indeed, when automotive companies change from simple manufacturers and sellers to operator roles, they inevitably become data producers and service providers, and the importance of data security cannot be ignored. Research institutes estimate that a smart connected car will generate about 10 TERAbytes of data per day during use. In the face of massive data, compared with traditional cars, the development of intelligent driving cars is facing new challenges to data security.

At the same time, the penetration rate of intelligent and connected vehicles is increasing day by day. According to the "China Internet Development Report (2021)", in 2020, the sales volume of intelligent and connected vehicles in China was 3.032 million units, an increase of 107% year-on-year, and the penetration rate remained at about 15%. In the first quarter of 2021, the market penetration rate of L2-level (semi-autonomous driving) intelligent networked vehicles reached 17.8%, and the market penetration rate of L2-level intelligent networked vehicles in new energy vehicles reached 30.9%.

It is estimated that by 2025, China's L2, L3 (in a specific environment to achieve partially automated driving operation) intelligent networked vehicle sales accounted for 50% of all car sales, L4 (fully autonomous driving) intelligent networked vehicles began to enter the market, the new output value can reach 800 billion yuan.

The comprehensive promotion of intelligence means the use and sharing of massive amounts of data, and the privacy and security issues involved are undoubtedly the focus of industry attention. Speaking of data security, on August 26, He Xiaopeng said, "At present, Xiaopeng's model is in line with policy provisions, and our security data compliance is not only domestic, but also to refer to European and global standards." In addition, ensuring product consistency such as OTAs for regulated software is also more conducive to the long-term development of the industry. ”

In fact, as early as 2018, He Xiaopeng pointed out that when a car becomes a robot with perception and judgment ability from a tool, there will inevitably be a multi-level security control system composed of government, enterprises and locals. At this time, there will be new disputes, which are likely to reproduce the situation of the development and control of China's PC Internet and mobile Internet in the past 10 years.

In June this year, at the 2021 China Automotive Chongqing Forum, He Xiaopeng once again reiterated the issue of data privacy. In his view, in the future, Chinese automobiles will face two challenges to the global market, one is how to achieve "carbon neutrality" in the whole industry chain, and the other is how to make the whole industry chain do a better job of data privacy protection. "Data is a new energy source, manifested in the form of autonomous driving, smart cockpits or other automations, which will actually be more intense in the coming years."

It is worth mentioning that since the beginning of this year, various departments of the state have successively introduced a series of regulatory policies for automotive data processing. In addition to the above-mentioned Opinions, on May 12, the Cyberspace Administration of China formulated several provisions on the safety management of automobile data (Draft for Solicitation of Comments) and solicited public comments. On August 20, the State Internet Information Office, the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Public Security, and the Ministry of Transport jointly issued the Several Provisions on the Safety Management of Automotive Data (for Trial Implementation), which came into effect on October 1, 2021, aiming to standardize automotive data processing activities, protect the legitimate rights and interests of individuals and organizations, safeguard national security and social public interests, and promote the rational development and utilization of automotive data.

Gu Hongdi said that the new policies and norms will not affect the innovation of Xiaopeng Motors. "We very much welcome such regulatory changes and regulatory norms as a leading company, as we will benefit from higher standards and stricter requirements." At the same time, this will not slow down our innovation rate, nor will it affect profitability, and better regulation can create a deeper 'moat'." ”