Edit the | Zhang Xiaoling
Robin Li, who was poured cold water at the Baidu AI Developer Conference two years ago and did not get angry, is still naïve.
At the 2021 Baidu AI Developer Conference, there is no sensational "cold water", more is Robin Li's fantasy of future urban transportation, and the loneliness of no one applauds.
Held on the meta-universe APP "Xi'an", which can accommodate 100,000 people at the same time, Baidu founder Robin Li appeared in a digital form, which is also in line with the theme of all in AI, Baidu AI Developer Conference fell into practice, and intelligent transportation became the focus of this conference.
A few months ago, Baidu released the car robot, L5 automatic driving, without steering wheel and pedals; this time, Baidu released the "automatic driving system at the end of the road" - AIR intelligent road system, which is to occupy the intelligent transportation track.
Robin Li threatened that Baidu's new goal is to stop restricting purchases and traffic in first-tier cities within 5 years, and basically solve urban congestion within 10 years. A tech company that started out as a search engine is now making smart transportation its next bet.
In the same month of the press conference, Robin Li released his third book on intelligent AI, "Intelligent Transportation: Major Changes Affecting Mankind in the Next 10-40 Years".
From the founding of Baidu at the age of 32 to the present, although he has continuously missed Internet opportunities such as e-commerce and social networking, Robin Li can be said to have not tasted the taste of real failure, Baidu has been dominating the world in the search field, and he has bet on Baidu's future on artificial intelligence and intelligent transportation.
However, to solve the congestion and traffic restrictions in China's big cities in just 5 or 10 years, is he too confident or naïve?
Rambled
In the past few years, Robin Li's enthusiasm and determination have been in intelligent transportation. Every time he appears, he is imagining how to solve traffic congestion, reduce the incidence of traffic accidents by 90%, how to help achieve the national "3060" double carbon target, how to manufacture and operate unmanned vehicles, and what the future city should be, etc., very futuristic.
"Intelligent transportation will be a major change that will affect the next 10-40 years, so that China's first-tier cities will no longer need to limit purchases and traffic within 5 years, and basically solve the congestion problem within 10 years," said Robin Li at the Baidu AI Developer Conference on December 27.
The first half of the sentence can still be understood, and the second half of the sentence sounds a little unrealistic.
Baidu's "automatic driving system at the end of the road" - AIR intelligent road system, simply put, is the Baidu AIR (AI Road) intelligent road system, through the intelligent upgrade of roadside equipment, can provide the amount of advance information to passing vehicles to avoid congestion and better planning.
Robin Li said that the air intelligent road system can increase the intersection pass rate to 99%, and at the same time can effectively reduce traffic accidents by 90%. Through the optimization of intersections and areas, the congestion of urban roads can be greatly reduced, and the traffic efficiency of more than 15-30% can be improved.
But in fact, the core of Baidu AIR intelligent road system is one of the applications of C-V2X technology. V2X, or "Vehicle to Everything", is an Internet of Things communication technology that connects vehicles with other things, and not only Baidu, Huawei, and SAIC Motor are currently studying this technology.
Similar to weilai, ideal, xiaopeng to take the route is bicycle intelligence, and C-V2X technology is to improve the road, and then through the establishment of a connection with the car, from another dimension to solve the problem of automatic driving and congestion.
However, the truth is not simple, the biggest contradiction in urban traffic congestion lies in the continuous increase of vehicles and fixed road capacity. With simple upgrades and drainage, traffic congestion can indeed be optimized, but radical change is a completely different topic.
Although Baidu has begun to upgrade smart roads in Guangzhou and other places, it is not a simple planning and upgrade to really solve congestion, but the need is that all vehicles on the road have the ability to communicate with smart roads and process information.
In Baidu's vision, all vehicles and roads use Baidu's technology, such a problem can not be solved in 5 to 10 years - how to let other manufacturers and software companies use Baidu? Moreover, baidu is used, which is suspected of monopoly.
Even WM, which it invests in, must be "de-Baidu", not to mention that all vehicles are equipped with Baidu's computing platform.
In addition, the diversity of regions and cities and the different geographical barriers make it impossible for Baidu to carry out large-scale foundation reconstruction throughout China.
It is true that as the CEO of a technology AI company, Robin Li has his own understanding and thinking about the future of intelligent transportation, and puts forward his own views, but his idea of "all cars use Baidu" is a bit naïve and a bit silly in the eyes of many people in the technology circle and the automobile circle.
On December 29, the day after the Baidu AI Developer Conference, although Baidu's stock price edged up 0.36% to close at $141 per share, the next two days were in a downward trend, closing at $133 per share on December 29, a price decline of more than 48% compared to $254 a share in early 2021. The capital market does not seem to have listened to Robin Li's "bold words" and did not believe too much.
Industry insiders said that the capital market still views Baidu's development and transformation process with a cautious attitude. After years of development, Baidu seems to have been at the forefront of technology in the field of intelligent transportation, and Baidu Apollo has some achievements and scene applications, but Baidu does not have a particularly large presence in the field of intelligent transportation, whether it is a car or a road.
Baidu makes cars
Intelligent transportation consists of two important parts, one is intelligent driving and the other is intelligent roads.
In fact, in addition to the smart road, Baidu cut into the track of intelligent driving earlier, but the result was not highlighted. In the current era of "rampant" driving assistance in Tesla, Weilai and Xiaopeng, it is difficult to hear baidu have automotive products.
Yes, Baidu did get up early on autopilot, but it rushed to a late set.
Baidu began to lay out autonomous driving in 2013, and formally established the Autonomous Driving Division (L4) at the end of 2015, with Wang Jin, then senior vice president of Baidu, as the general manager of the division; later, in 2016, it established the L3 Division (the predecessor of the Intelligent Vehicle Division).
In early 2017, Baidu released an open platform for autonomous driving to the world at the CES Consumer Electronics Show in the United States. In March of that year, Baidu gathered the Autonomous Driving Division (L4), the Intelligent Vehicle Division (L3), and the Internet of Vehicles business to form the Intelligent Driving Business Group (IDG). Subsequently, Baidu launched Apollo, the world's first open platform for autonomous driving.
However, in 8 years, Baidu's intelligent driving development has not been smooth, Yu Kai, Wu Enda, Wang Jin, Ni Kai and other industry-leading technical talents have left Baidu and started their own businesses; so far, its driving assistance system is difficult to get on the car.
Like Huawei, all Internet companies want a piece of the pie in smart driving, but the relationship between OEMs and Internet companies is no longer a traditional supplier and customer, OEMs want to maintain supplier relationships, but technology companies always want more.
Since the release of Baidu Apollo, only WM motors have been carried, and recently on the WM M7, it also said that it is gradually fading the shadow of Baidu Apollo. Just as SAIC motor rejected Huawei, Baidu has become the one who was "rejected".
After encountering bottlenecks, Baidu changed its direction again, not only developing software, but also planning to build its own components and cars.
In the first quarter of this year, IDG's employees and assets were all transformed from relevant main companies of Baidu Group to several wholly-owned subsidiaries of Baidu, officially beginning the process of landing and quantification.
Baidu's smart car products will be changed from main line research and development to large-scale delivery, that is, from the original customized production according to the needs of car companies to the production of standardized products with open SDKs.
Not only that, in May this year, Robin Li clarified for the first time in the letter of all employees three business models of Baidu intelligent driving:
The first is to provide Apollo automatic driving technology solutions for host manufacturers to help car companies quickly build automatic driving capabilities;
The second is Baidu car manufacturing, end-to-end integration of Baidu's innovation in automatic driving;
The third is to share unmanned vehicles.
When cooperation with OEMs becomes more and more difficult, Baidu car manufacturing has become a reality, which is similar to the logic of Huawei and Xiaomi car manufacturing. Perhaps, Baidu lacks a real car to be a real spokesperson.
Building cars, Robin Li is already in action. Baidu and Geely jointly formed Jidu Automobile was established in March this year, and Baidu and Geely are frantically chasing the people running in front.
When Jidu was established 207 days ago, ITMUCar was launched and the development of intelligent assisted driving and intelligent cockpit functions was launched. It is reported that the intelligent driving of Jidu is rapidly iterated in the unit of "week", and by the end of this year, SIMACar will be able to achieve intelligent auxiliary driving in the urban area and high-speed domain.
As a declining Internet "aristocrat", Robin Li had an extremely brilliant time. He was also one of the first Internet moguls to get involved in the automotive sector, whether it was smart driving or smart roads.
But as of now, the market and investors, ordinary consumers have not perceived this, which may be related to Baidu's more focus on research and development, Baidu's unmanned driving seems to stay in the experiment forever, every once in a while Robin Li will experience it himself, brush a wave of existence.
Of course, once Baidu's identity as a smart transportation leader is confirmed, the capital market's valuation pricing of Baidu will also change substantially, but at present, it is not, in everyone's cognition, it is still a search engine company.
And Jidu's research and development efficiency will continue to improve, accelerating the promotion of freely mobile car robots in 2023 mass production and listing, at that time, the market may look at Baidu differently, oh, Robin Li is really building cars, this is really an intelligent transportation company.