At the end of 2021, Google's Waymo self-driving company suddenly announced a blockbuster news, they will be in-depth cooperation with Chinese auto giant Geely in the field of Robotaxi (self-driving taxi), Geely will create the first Robotaxi model designed specifically for Waymo.
As soon as the news was released, it caused a double boiling of the technology circle and the automobile circle, after all, one is the number one enterprise in the world's well-known Robotaxi field, and the other is the car company with the highest sales volume among China's own brands, no matter what decisions they make, they will attract public attention, not to mention joining forces to announce cooperation in the field of Robotaxi.
However, unlike most people who are optimistic about the cooperation between Geely and Waymo, Electric Technology believes that the cooperation between Geely and Waymo is likely to have no future, and the alliance relationship between the two is not only very fragile, but also will not succeed in the Robotaxi market in the end.
But before explaining why the cooperation between the two will not succeed in the end, let's first talk about why Geely and Waymo, two seemingly "eight rods can't beat" companies, can reach a cooperation.
Geely, which is weak in pure electric vehicles, and Waymo, which is in urgent need of commercialization
Like other business collaborations, the collaboration between Geely and Waymo in the field of Robotaxi is naturally based on their own needs, so what do they each hope to gain from this collaboration?
For Geely, although China's pure electric vehicle market achieved an average annual growth rate of 51% between 2015 and 2020, becoming the world's largest pure electric vehicle market, it has nothing to do with the fact that it accounts for only about 3% of China's new energy market, and the sales of pure electric vehicles launched are far behind BYD and Tesla, and even some new car-making forces are not comparable, and the performance in the pure electric vehicle market is quite weak.
With the era of smart cars approaching step by step, Geely, which frequently loses pure electric vehicles, has obviously realized the crisis and hastily launched a high-end extreme krypton pure electric vehicle brand, but the negative scandals that have appeared repeatedly in extreme krypton have obviously made Geely fail to achieve its desire to turn over.
Therefore, in order to achieve a breakthrough in the sales volume of pure electric vehicles as soon as possible, Geely chose to cooperate with Waymo and chose to solve the problem of low market share and small sound in the pure electric vehicle market by entering the Robotaxi market and playing a flanking war, and also to accumulate research and development experience in pure electric vehicles.
For Waymo, choosing to work with Geely is a focus on its manufacturing capabilities. Judging from the waymo book data in recent years, Waymo is currently facing very severe commercial pressure, although many people think that Waymo is backed by the technology giant Google and does not have to worry about revenue at all, but the opposite is true.
Autonomous driving is a very expensive technology, from Waymo's establishment in 2009 to 2015, a total of 1.1 billion US dollars burned in just six years, and the rich Google can not afford such a money-burning project, and can not bring much revenue, so it rarely relaxed Waymo's financing restrictions, allowing Waymo to seek external investment.
So at the moment, Waymo can no longer bury its head in research and ignore the revenue. Therefore, in order to be able to fully commercialize Robotaxi technology, Waymo must find a partner with strong car manufacturing capabilities to build a car, and Geely is Waymo's best choice.
Geely, which has experience in car manufacturing, can provide Waymo with reliable and durable cars, and because Geely's voice in the pure electric vehicle market is weak, Waymo can also make Geely, which has in-depth cooperation with it, build cars in strict accordance with its requirements and be in a strong position in the relationship, so as to reduce the operating costs of the Robotaxi market as much as possible and obtain higher profits.
Vehicle-to-road collaboration is the future of the Robotaxi industry
Although from the current in-depth cooperation between Geely and Waymo, the two have formed a very strong cooperative relationship similar to the "Wintel" alliance, in fact, their relationship with each other is not so strong, but very fragile.
According to the information officially released by Waymo, Geely's role in this cooperation is more like a foundry manufacturer similar to Foxconn, whether it is a demand proposal or the actual operation of the Robotaxi market after delivery, It is the responsibility of Waymo and has nothing to do with Geely.
With waymo's continuous expansion in the Robotaxi market, in order to reduce the cost of expansion and reduce the oem cost paid to Geely is not difficult to predict, in the long run, as a leading domestic automobile company, Geely is willing to continue to build cars for Waymo is also an unknown, so the relationship between the two is not stable.
However, even if Geely and Waymo can continue to cooperate, Waymo, which is almost "stubborn" in the field of Robotaxi, insists on taking the smart route of cycling, it will be difficult to succeed in the market.
First of all, the current autonomous driving technology of bicycle intelligent routes is not enough to support the commercialization of Robotaxi. From the perspective of technical reliability, the current commercial automatic driving level recognized by most countries is also L2 level, and it still needs manual intervention to ensure safety in economic conditions; secondly, the industry analysis report points out that under the current level of technology, in order to achieve L4 level and above automatic driving level, in addition to the need to be equipped with multiple millimeter wave radar and cameras, it is also necessary to be equipped with at least 3 laser radars, so high cost also leads to the want to mass-produce robotaxi single-vehicle intelligent routes It's a fantasy.
Secondly, Robotaxi's e-hailing attributes provide timely and stable information exchange between operating vehicles and operating platforms. Only by being able to grasp the traffic conditions in the city and the real-time environment around the operating vehicles in real time can the operating platform effectively mobilize and direct the operating vehicles and improve the operational efficiency of the platform. However, Robotaxi, which takes the intelligent route of bicycles, not only has difficulty in building a stable network link with the platform to obtain the information issued by the platform, but also has difficulty in reporting the current roadside environment to the platform in real time.
In contrast, Waymo's biggest competitor, Baidu, is different from Waymo, which takes the bicycle intelligent route in the Field of Robotaxi, Baidu Apollo's research and development direction fully takes into account the current level of technological development and the actual needs of the Robotaxi market, and gives a set of highly available and mature solutions.
Faced with the problem that the current level of automatic driving is not enough to meet the commercialization needs of Robotaxi, Baidu Apollo chose to take the road-to-road collaborative route, and applied V2X technology to work both the car end and the roadside, greatly improving the vehicle's perception of obstacles on the actual road, and increasing the success rate of Baidu Apollo autonomous vehicles in complex urban road delivery to 99.99%.
In addition, Baidu Apollo in order to realize the vehicle-road collaboration technology deployed on the roadside of a large number of roadside units can also play a role in efficient transmission of information with the platform, compared to the bicycle intelligent route of the Robotaxi car can obtain a more stable link, because although the current 5G technology has been able to achieve a very low information transmission delay, but compared to the more stable underground wired optical fiber transmission still has many unstable factors interference.
Because of so many technical advantages, Baidu Apollo can take the lead in commercializing its technology in smart buses, smart freight and other scenarios with its self-developed vehicle-road collaboration platform while Waymo is still troubled by difficult to achieve stable commercialization.
Therefore, we can boldly predict that as Baidu continues to obtain "positive feedback" in the field of Robotaxi, its technical level will also be able to have a "snowball" effect of continuous growth, and eventually completely occupy the Robotaxi market, while its current competitor Waymo will be difficult to survive in the future outbreak of robotaxi market.
Overall, while Waymo and Geely are nearly second to none in their respective fields, it is unlikely that they will succeed in joining forces to enter the Robotaxi space. Not only is the cooperative relationship between the two very fragile, it is difficult to achieve long-term stable and reliable cooperation, and Waymo's choice of bicycle intelligent route in the field of Robotaxi is also difficult to meet the market demand, in the long run, it must be that the autonomous driving technology that adheres to the vehicle-road collaborative route is more suitable for the Robotaxi market, so the cooperation between Geely and Waymo will eventually or most likely go quietly or even fail.