Automotive intelligence has put forward new requirements for product research and development, and the development model, talent model and supply chain system of vertical integration in the past are rapidly changing. The picture shows the simulation test and visual aging test of DJI vehicle.
Smart cars often have four major characteristics - bit management watts, computing power to drive horsepower, software-defined functions, and software is deeply involved in the definition, development, verification, sales, and service process of the car. The picture shows an experimental vehicle undergoing the calibration of sensors.
"In the past year or so, we have developed about 300 partners in the field of smart cars, and the pace of development has exceeded expectations." Wang Jun, chief operating officer of Huawei's intelligent vehicle solution BU and president of the intelligent driving solution product line, said that smart cars will not only become a hot spot in the industry, but will also change the industry pattern in the next few years.
Even those who usually least care about the automotive industry must have seen more or less news related to smart cars in 2021.
From Changan, Dongfeng, Geely and other traditional car companies have successively launched their own high-end brands of new energy vehicles, to Xiaomi, Baidu and other Internet technology companies announced their entry into the intelligent electric vehicle track; from ICT technologies such as 5G communications playing an increasingly important role in the automotive industry, to vehicle-road collaboration being included in national strategies such as "new infrastructure" and "carbon neutrality"... This year, the role of smart cars in the national economy can not be described as unimportant.
"The automotive industry is undergoing the biggest change in a hundred years, and the era of electrification, networking and intelligence has arrived." As Fu Yuwu, honorary chairman of the Society of Automotive Engineers of China, said, in order to seize the historical opportunity of the restructuring of the automotive industry, it is necessary to build a more competitive supply chain, industrial chain, innovation chain and ecological chain around the key elements of scientific and technological innovation.
Recently, in the "2021 Huawei Intelligent Vehicle Solution Ecosystem Forum" held online, vehicle enterprises, industry organizations, parts suppliers, application service providers and Huawei's intelligent vehicle solution team "Huashan On the Sword" discussed how to create a prosperous ecosystem of intelligent vehicles open and win-win.
"I've never seen the auto industry as lively as it is today." An industry insider who has been working in the automotive industry for more than 20 years admitted at the end of the forum that this hilarity is not only caused by the birth of new technologies, new products and new business models, but also by new and old players in the industry.
Expand the ecosystem of smart cars
"Alone is fast, everyone is far away." Over the past year or so, we have developed about 300 partners in the field of smart cars, and the pace of development has exceeded expectations. Wang Jun, chief operating officer of Huawei's intelligent vehicle solution BU and president of the intelligent driving solution product line, said that this year's automotive industry has shown a good momentum of rapid growth, especially smart cars have become a hot spot in the industry, and it will also change the industry pattern in the next few years.
"After practice and summary in recent years, we believe that smart cars have four major characteristics - bit management watts, computing power-driven horsepower, software-defined functions, and software-defined functions, while the software is deeply involved in the process of car definition, development, verification, sales, and service, and constantly optimizes each process to bring users a continuously optimized experience." Wang Jun analyzed that this change mainly comes from the blessing of digital technology, communication bandwidth, computing power and software code scale has increased by hundreds or even thousands of times, "Of course, how to develop these systems efficiently and high-quality is a huge challenge that everyone must face." Only when the whole industry works together can we strive to solve it. ”
The reporter of China Youth Daily and China Youth Network learned that in order to better respond to the new demand for product research and development of automobile intelligence, the traditional vertical integration development model, talent model and supply chain system are rapidly changing.
Wang Jun said that under the new industrial division of labor and cooperation model, Huawei adheres to the development strategy of "platform + ecology", "We focus on ICT technology, build an ecosystem around the three major platforms of iDVP, MDC and HarmonyOS smart cockpit, and work with partners to help car companies build good cars." ”
He said that Huawei has a deep technical accumulation in the fields of communications, computing and operating systems, "We adhere to the principle of 'doing something and not doing something', building a platform with technological innovation, promoting cooperation with openness, and accelerating development with win-win results." It is revealed that Huawei has launched the OpenHarmony open source project and the Euler open source operating system project. Some analysts believe that this is expected to provide a more powerful digital base for the automotive industry, "through the AI lessons on four wheels, the car will more quickly embrace the intelligent era of the Internet of Everything." ”
"Intelligent connected vehicles can not only provide a better driving experience, but also create a new entrance to the digital economy." Pan Helin, executive dean of the Digital Economy Research Institute of Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, said that intelligent networked vehicles involve interdisciplinary, cross-field, cross-system and cross-regional collaboration.
For example, the intelligence and networking of automobiles need to be integrated with related industries such as information communications and artificial intelligence big data. He believes that smart cars will give birth to more research and development projects and market opportunities.
In fact, software-defined cars require an industry-wide effort. Previously, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers and 22 start-up members established an SDV working group in order to cooperate with automakers and parts companies to promote the standardization of software and hardware interfaces for intelligent vehicles, reduce the complexity of intelligent vehicle research and development, and strengthen the intelligent automobile industry chain. So far, more than 70 companies have joined the working group.
Continental joined the CAAM SDV Working Group in March 2021. Lu Nan, Director of Innovation and Strategic Cooperation In China at Continental Investment (China) Co., Ltd., said: "Software-defined vehicles will inevitably reconstruct the value chain of the automotive industry and become a key technology for the future smart mobility ecosystem. ”
"Promoting the standardization of software and hardware interfaces for smart cars will greatly simplify the application development of diverse devices." Wang Jun revealed that as one of the important members of the SDV working group, Huawei has completed the system pre-integration with 20 devices from 10 manufacturers. "After completing the pre-integration, we and our partners developed typical multi-device linkage scenarios such as one-click rest and welcome mode, and the development efficiency was increased by nearly 10 times."
"Compared with traditional cars, the essence of smart cars has changed, computing and software have become the core of cars, the scale of software code has increased by hundreds of times, and the complexity of development has increased greatly, which requires the industry chain to work together to solve problems." Yu Chengdong, managing director of Huawei, CEO of consumer business, and CEO of smart car solution BU, firmly said that openness can quickly promote scientific and technological progress, and "in this era, ecological enterprises are most needed."
Beware of the "Great Leap Forward in Technology", automatic driving should keep the bottom line and then talk about development
Although the roles played by new and old players in the era of smart cars are different, intelligent driving with the goal of high-level automatic driving has become a strategic highland for everyone to compete for layout. After all, as the world's largest automotive market, China is also expected to become the world's largest intelligent driving market.
"Intelligent driving is a brand new industry, as the standard-bearer of the intelligent driving industry platform standardization, I often think about the standardized division of labor, technology development paths, business models and other regularity issues in the industry." Li Zhenya, general manager of Huawei's intelligent vehicle solution BU MDC field, told reporters that he firmly believes that only platform standardization, collaborative innovation and the establishment of an industrial ecology can make the intelligent driving industry "wider and wider, faster and faster, and farther and farther away".
According to reports, Huawei's MDC intelligent driving computing platform can provide developers with a tool chain and rich SDK covering all scenarios, support the software development and porting of partners, and meet the core requirements of intelligent driving applications for vehicle regulations and safety. Li Zhenya revealed that more than 70 partners have joined the MDC ecosystem to jointly promote the pilot and commercialization of intelligent driving scenarios such as passenger cars, ports, mining cards, and parks.
Looking back at 2021, as more and more smart cars go to the market, new features such as software online upgrades (also known as OTA upgrades) and intelligent assisted driving allow consumers to experience a more intelligent and personalized travel experience than ever before. But at the same time, problems such as over-hype of autonomous driving technology have gradually been exposed.
On the one hand, there are high expectations for breakthroughs in autonomous driving technology and the early realization of large-scale commercial applications; but on the other hand, some people are pessimistic about the market prospects of advanced autonomous driving, believing that autonomous driving will never solve safety problems.
"Since the official announcement of DJI's vehicle business, we have been in contact with many vehicle companies. It can be seen that every car company hopes to launch a new car with a higher level of autonomous driving function to meet market demand. However, what capabilities should be possessed by autonomous driving and what kind of technical standards should be adopted are actually not understood by everyone. Xie Khotan, director of public relations at DJI, told reporters bluntly, "DJI hopes to convey a concept that L2-level autonomous driving with a better experience is the key to higher-level automatic driving and even unmanned driving." ”
According to reports, at present, DJI is focusing on L2 level automatic driving. Unlike traditional parts suppliers, DJI Vehicle provides hardware such as binocular camera visual perception systems and related software systems, as well as intelligent driving solutions that integrate hardware and software.
In recent years, due to several traffic accidents at home and abroad that are suspected of "automatic driving technology troubles", how to ensure the safety of intelligent networked vehicles, especially automatic driving technology, has become the focus of attention of the whole society.
"We call on consumers to look at new products and new technologies rationally, and relevant manufacturers must also stop excessive publicity about autonomous driving." Fu Yuwu suggested that at this stage, everyone should still focus on intelligent assisted driving, and should not talk too much about automatic driving or even unmanned driving. "Frankly speaking, autonomous driving and unmanned driving can be the first to land in special scenarios such as ports and closed parks, but the era of large-scale application has not yet arrived."
"It should be said that for a long time to come, L2 level assisted driving and L4 level autonomous driving will play a role in different application scenarios." Cao Guangping, an independent researcher of new energy and intelligent networked vehicles, said that there is currently an "L3-level intelligent driving trap" in the field of intelligent driving in automobiles, and believes that L3-level intelligent driving is difficult to industrialize and popularize, because L3-level intelligent driving requires "drivers to take over the vehicles in the process of automatic driving that have problems at any time", which is obviously difficult.
Unmanned distribution accelerates the landing, and more space is waiting to be unlocked
Despite the difficulties, what is different from bicycle intelligence is that when smart cars are combined with intelligent infrastructure such as smart roads, smart ports, and smart parks, it can not only make automatic driving safer and more efficient, but also bring more imagination space.
The robot car brand "Zero-load Car" unveiled at this forum, and the L4-level express unmanned logistics vehicle "Pioneer" are the products of this logic. According to reports, the "zero-load car" was released by Huawei's MDC partner - Matrix Data Technology (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Matrix Data Technology"), which is also the first robot car brand in China.
"This is a landing practice of Huawei's MDC intelligent driving computing platform in the field of unmanned delivery vehicles at the end of express delivery." Gu Zulin, president of Matrix Data Technology, said that for industries such as e-commerce and express delivery, unmanned delivery is a better solution.
On the one hand, high distribution costs have always been a difficult problem, in recent years, the logistics and distribution industry labor costs have risen, while manpower distribution will also be affected by the weather, it is difficult to achieve 7× 24 hours of service; on the other hand, in the front line of the fight against the new crown pneumonia epidemic, thanks to the advantages of "zero contact, multi-functional, all-weather", unmanned delivery vehicles can significantly reduce crowd contact and complete key material distribution.
It is understood that the "Trailblazer" is the first L4-level express unmanned logistics vehicle equipped with Huawei's MDC intelligent driving computing platform and the latest unmanned driving technology. The mileage of the car has reached 240 kilometers, which meets the needs of unmanned delivery scenarios between "express delivery outlets - stations", and is expected to complete the delivery target of more than 3,000 parcels per day.
What makes Gu Zulin feel more expectant is that with the reduction of technical costs such as lidar and AI chips and the maturity of mass production solutions, the cost of unmanned distribution is significantly reduced.
In 2021, all kinds of autonomous vehicles, including unmanned delivery vehicles, driverless trucks, and driverless taxis (Robotaxi), have ushered in a wave of launch boom. Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Suzhou, Changsha and other places have also accelerated the demonstration and pilot work of autonomous vehicles.
In addition, autonomous driving has also received great attention from the capital market. According to incomplete statistics, in 2020, there were 39 financing incidents in the global autonomous driving industry, with a financing scale of 43.162 billion yuan, an increase of 30.19% over 2019. In January 2021 alone, the industry has announced about 14.4 billion yuan in financing.
"L4 autonomous driving can liberate drivers' hands and eyes, which may trigger a qualitative change in the automotive industry." Pan and Lin believe that after the realization of high-level autonomous driving with free hands and eyes, private cars have a better chance to become like smartphones, becoming super network entrances and digital economy entrances. In closed parks such as ports and mines, advanced automatic driving and unmanned driving can greatly improve work efficiency and reduce logistics costs for the whole society.
He suggested that car intelligence can not only stay on one car, ten cars, a hundred cars, nor should it always be limited to some fixed areas, but should gradually adapt to more and wider ranges.
"In the process of building a digital economy and building a high-quality development pattern in China, the intelligent automobile industry has ushered in a historic opportunity." Cao Guangping reminded that due to the long industrial chain and many links in research and development and production, smart cars have the opportunity to drive greater development of related industries such as AI artificial intelligence, 5G communications, and green energy.
China Youth Daily, China Youth Network reporter Xu Yajie Source: China Youth Daily
Source: China Youth Daily Travel Weekly