If you imagine a "city of the future" scenario, unmanned driving is an indispensable element. Today, such scenes have been staged many times on the streets of Shenzhen. At this year's high-tech fair, the once popular YuanRong Qixing driverless car and unmanned retail mobile milk tea truck were all unveiled. The innovative achievements of the automotive industry that continue to emerge in the exhibition make the new picture of the future intelligent transportation of the city clearly visible. The most familiar cars in daily life, mechanical products controlled by humans have become intelligent products controlled by electronic information, and simple "transportation tools" have become intelligent mobile spaces and application terminals.
Where will smart cars go in the future? Where are the opportunities for this track? At the theme forum of "Driving into the New Track of Intelligent Vehicles" held on the first day of the opening of the CHTF, experts from the automotive field and guests from leading scientific and technological enterprises discussed topics such as new car manufacturing, new pattern, new mission - electrification, intelligence, networking, open cooperation, technology empowerment, and creating a new ecology for the future of automobiles.
A variety of driverless products appeared at the high-tech fair
At this year's high-tech fair, Yuanrong started a driverless vehicle in Hall 4 of the Shenzhen Convention and Exhibition Center. Compared with the current autonomous driving solutions on the market, this autonomous vehicle no longer has a complex sensor structure, and the sensors are mostly embedded in the body, maintaining the streamlined design of the vehicle.
According to the on-site staff, the small "roof box" is composed of 7 on-board cameras, 3 lidar, GNSS and other types of sensors and corresponding communication and data synchronization controllers, which can collect accurate road conditions and positioning information for driverless cars, and lay a reliable foundation for vehicle perception and decision-making. According to the previous public evaluation video, the autonomous vehicle can have the performance of "old driver" in the complex road conditions of the city, not only can accurately identify traffic lights, various traffic participants, surrounding dynamic and static obstacles, but also complete continuous lane changes and avoid temporary roadblocks in the busy traffic flow.
Some time ago, an unmanned retail mobile milk tea truck appeared on the streets of Shenzhen, which attracted the attention of many people. Nowadays, this street "internet celebrity" has also come to the scene of the high-tech fair. According to Zuo Haibo, a staff member of Shenzhen Yiqing Innovation Technology Co., Ltd., the milk tea car is just a microcosm of the company's application of unmanned driving technology to daily scenes, and the company has developed unmanned vehicles for carrying objects and people at the same time.
According to its introduction, the company's research and development of the "Kwa father" series of multi-functional unmanned vehicles, with L4 level unmanned driving capabilities, can be transported point-to-point according to the planned route, the carriages can be functionally customized as express cars, logistics vehicles, retail vehicles, security vehicles, epidemic prevention and killing vehicles and other types, has now realized Foxconn, Mercedes-Benz Industrial Logistics, SF Express Logistics and other low-speed scene verification, operating time of more than 30 months, the cumulative safe driving of more than 360,000 kilometers. The Snow Lion series of manned shuttle unmanned vehicles can complete fixed line automatic rapid transit, connection, sightseeing, display, automatic stops and other operations in various parks and scenic spots, and has been put into operation in many scenarios such as Huawei headquarters in Shenzhen, Deqing Geographic Information Town, and Shandong Qi Culture Museum.
Electrification and intelligence are important directions for future automobiles
According to a set of publicly available data, there are about 800 autonomous driving-related companies in Shenzhen alone, accounting for 20% of the country.com. Among them, Huawei, ZTE, Tencent, BYD and other enterprises with different industry backgrounds have entered the intelligent automobile industry.
At the theme forum of "Driving into the New Track of Intelligent Vehicles", Yuan Chengyin, director and general manager of the National New Energy Vehicle Technology Innovation Center and secretary general of the China Automotive Chip Industry Innovation Strategic Alliance, said that the future automotive industry pattern will undergo tremendous changes, and vehicle companies will be transformed from product manufacturers to service providers. In this process, the technology used is more and more extensive, in addition to the traditional body chassis will also involve battery electrode electrician technology, big data software, chips and a series of cloud platforms and even biological health technologies, which will be quickly integrated into the automotive industry, the automotive industry ecology must be open and integrated. From the national level, new energy vehicles must be an important direction to achieve the goal of double carbon, in this process, digitalization, electrification will be an important path for the industrialization of electric vehicles.
Yang Hong, chairman of Shenzhen Hangsheng Electronics Co., Ltd., said that from the industrial level, the comprehensive integration of automobiles and related industries presents the characteristics of intelligent, networked and platform-based development. According to its observation, in terms of automotive intelligence, various car companies have invested in intelligent driving and iterative upgrades of cockpits. In terms of networking, the state is committed to building smart cities, while the rapid development of 5G provides support for cross-border interconnection between cars and people, cars and roads, cars and devices, and cars and vehicles.
Software-defined cars are a megatrend, and the market size will reach 1 trillion yuan
How to accelerate the landing of automatic driving? Yang Hong believes that three aspects of driving are needed. First, C-V2X key technical supports the coverage of cellular networks and ensures communication reliability. Second, the bicycle intelligent technology is not yet mature and the environment perception system has limitations; the third is that C-V2X has a clear evolution path and supports the evolution of 5G mode. From the technical point of view, it is necessary to quickly improve the processing power, software scale and data processing capacity of the chip.
As we all know, chips are one of the core technologies of automotive intelligence. Yang Hong introduced that the automotive electronic and electrical architecture represented by Tesla has taken the lead in adopting a centralized architecture, and major OEMs around the world have also recognized the trend of software-defined cars and have upgraded their own automotive electronics architecture. "Different OEMs have different schemes, but the direction of the centralized architecture is the same, which can bring about the improvement of high computing power and domain control chips."
Xu Yang, managing director of the Boston Consulting Group, global partner and head of the China region, also believes that if you want to get a piece of the pie in the automotive industry, software may be a big hand. Xu Yang believes that software will bring great changes and opportunities to the automotive industry, and 90% of automotive functions in the future can be realized through software and related hardware. According to its disclosure, in the past seven years, different OEMs, including parts companies, have actively invested in the construction of their own software strength, the cumulative R & D investment in this field has exceeded 140 billion yuan, the future automotive software market size will reach 1 trillion yuan.
Written by: Nandu reporter Zhang Yanli trainee reporter Fang Fang
Photo: Nandu reporter Zhao Yanxiong