In 2021, it will surely leave a strong mark in the history of autonomous driving development.
This year, we have witnessed countless "firsts" and "firsts", both the repeated ice-breaking of policies and regulations, and the "same frame entry" of cold epidemics and hot capital; this year, leading enterprises began to grow wildly, and tail enterprises continued to be bitterly cold; this year, it is not only the inflection point of the continuous expansion of the industry's territory, but also the year when car companies accelerate the "inner volume" of the beach...
How to rate 2021? Standing at the beginning of the year at the end of the year, we screened out the top ten "keywords" with significant influence in the autonomous driving industry, reviewed the hot topics and major events in 2021, and "looked through" the development opportunities and industry trends in 2022 in the grass snake gray line.
Keyword one: policy breaks the ice
In 2021, policies and regulations related to automatic driving have been intensively implemented, and a number of reform measures have broken through the ice. In March, the Ministry of Public Security issued the Road Traffic Safety Law (Revised Draft) for public comment, clarifying the relevant requirements for road testing and passage of autonomous vehicles, as well as the provisions on sharing responsibility for vehicle violations and accidents, so that automatic driving can be realized for the first time .2 In July, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Public Security and the Ministry of Transport jointly issued the "Management Specification for Road Testing and Demonstration Application of Intelligent And Connected Vehicles (Trial)", which clarified the requirements for road testing of intelligent and connected vehicles, and for the first time proposed demonstration application management specifications to promote the expansion of autonomous driving from road testing to demonstration applications. In August, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the "Opinions on Strengthening the Management of Intelligent and Connected Vehicle Manufacturers and Product Access", requiring the strengthening of automotive data security, network security, software upgrades, functional safety and expected functional safety management to ensure product quality and production consistency; subsequently, the State Internet Information Office and other five departments issued the "Several Provisions on Automotive Data Security Management (Trial)" to further standardize automotive data processing activities, reflecting the importance attached by the competent authorities to industrial safety and data security. In September, the State Administration of Market Regulation (Standards Commission) issued the national standard of "Automobile Driving Automation Classification", which stipulates the principles, classification elements, definitions and technical requirements framework of automobile driving automation classification, and solves the normative problem of automobile driving automation classification in China. In December, the Ministry of Public Security issued the newly revised Regulations on the Registration of Motor Vehicles, which for the first time incorporated the road testing and demonstration application of intelligent and connected vehicles into the management norms.
Figure | The Ministry of Public Security issued the Road Traffic Safety Law (Revised Draft) for public comment
At the same time, local governments are also conducting moderately advanced policy exploration. In March, Shenzhen used the legislative power of the Special Economic Zone to draft the Regulations on the Administration of Intelligent and Connected Vehicles in the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone (Draft for Solicitation of Comments), and took the lead in institutional innovation in terms of opening up unmanned testing of automatic driving and the exemption system for access conditions. In May, Beijing issued the Implementation Rules for the Administration of Unmanned Delivery Vehicles and implemented license plate management to break through the problem that unmanned delivery vehicles are restricted by current laws and regulations and cannot be on the road. In July, Beijing issued the first commercial vehicle autonomous driving test license and opened up high-speed test scenarios, allowing Baidu, Xiaoma Zhixing and other first companies to obtain highway test notices to carry out pilot tests, taking a key step in the intelligent networked car from manned road testing to commercial application.
Keyword two: independent brand upwards
In 2021, the rapid development of autonomous driving technology has provided new opportunities for independent brands to move upwards. Leading enterprises closely follow the development trend of electrification and intelligence, seize market opportunities in the new round of industrial revolution, and promote brand sales and price system to continue to rise. On the one hand, with the accelerated penetration of intelligent networked vehicles, the market share of independent brands began to stabilize and rise in 2021, gradually coming out of the "shadow" of three consecutive years of market share decline in 2018-2020. On the other hand, the monthly delivery of WEILAI, Ideal and Xiaopeng has gradually exceeded 10,000 vehicles, and the sales volume and average selling price of some models have exceeded that of the traditional luxury brand BBA; the average price of bicycles of Geely Lynk & Co, BYD and other brands has also exceeded that of traditional joint venture brands.
At present, independent brands show two major trends: First, traditional car companies incubate high-end sub-brands and attack the high-end market. Following Geely Kr, GAC Aegean, BAIC ARCFOX, Dongfeng Lantu and SAIC Feifan Automobile, during the Shanghai Auto Show in November, Great Wall Motors released a new high-end brand salon car, the first model of the Mecha Dragon priced at 488,000 yuan; Changan Automobile, Huawei and CATL jointly released a new high-end brand Avita, and unveiled its first model , Avita 11, priced at about 300,000 yuan. The two models have cut into the mainstream price range of traditional luxury brands, and both use automatic driving and intelligent cockpits as product selling points to achieve brand differentiation competition.
Figure | The first model of the Salon brand, the Mech Dragon
Second, the new forces of car manufacturing are accelerating the launch of high-end products to seize the traditional fuel vehicle market. Since 2021, WEI HAS released two sedans ET7 and ET5, Xiaopeng Automobile has launched the second sedan Xiaopeng P5, Ideal updated the 2021 Ideal ONE and OTA to open navigation assist driving functions, and WM also released the medium-sizeDUV W6 and the first sedan M7. The above models mostly take lidar, automatic parking and other autonomous driving related functions as the core selling point, and the products cover the high-end market segment of 150,000-500,000 yuan, becoming the "backbone" of its brand or sales breakthrough.
Keyword three: cross-border car manufacturing
Cross-border car manufacturing is one of the keywords of the "hottest" in 2021. Since the beginning of January, Baidu officially announced the car, dozens of well-known technology and manufacturing companies such as Xiaomi, DJI, Huawei, Skyworth, ByteDance, Foxconn, and Xiaoniu have announced their entry into the field of smart cars, opening a new round of "cross-border car manufacturing fever".
Figure | Xiaomi announced its entry into the smart electric vehicle industry
Compared with traditional car companies, technology companies have higher awareness and sensitivity to intelligent trends, and have certain intelligent technology reserves and ecological accumulation, and based on a strong new supply chain system and a huge user group, technology companies can quickly open up a differentiated competitive route with intelligent advantages. In addition, technology companies do not have the historical baggage of traditional car companies, and are good at using new models and new ideas, which is also one of the important reasons why the outside world is generally optimistic about their "cross-border car manufacturing".
From the perspective of entering the automotive industry, the focus of each enterprise is different, such as Alibaba, Tencent, OPPO, etc. to the intelligent cockpit; Xiaomi, Apple, Huawei are mainly advanced intelligent driving technology, but their goals are to build intelligent terminals and control the future traffic entrance. In addition, in the landing mode, "cross-border" car manufacturing is mainly divided into two types: one is to cooperate with traditional car companies, including Baidu and Geely, Alibaba and SAIC, Foxconn and Geely, etc. all use this model; the other is to build its own factories, such as Xiaomi's choice to build a vehicle factory in the Beijing Economic Development Zone.
In fact, although the entry points are different and the models have not yet been unified, "cross-border car manufacturing" has formed a new force that cannot be underestimated, or will rewrite the competitive pattern of smart cars in the next development.
Keyword four: autonomous driving listing boom
After the "capital winter" of 2019 and the "slight recovery" of 2020, the autonomous driving industry ushered in a listing boom for the first time in 2021. In April, Tucson Future officially landed on nasdaq and became the world's first stock of autonomous driving; in May, Zhijia Technology was listed on the New York "backdoor"; in July, Xiaopeng Motors officially landed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, becoming the "first stock of smart electric vehicles" in Hong Kong; in October, Cyngn, an autonomous driving technology company, was listed on the NASDAQ; in November, autopilot company Aurora and self-driving truck company Emmark were listed in the United States; on December 30, SenseTime was successfully listed on the main board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Completed the world's largest IPO in the field of artificial intelligence, and has launched intelligent driving products including ADAS systems and L4 level autonomous driving solutions. In addition, Intel has planned to spin off its self-driving car subsidiary Mobileye to go public, and it is rumored that Argo AI, Waymo, Cruise and other companies are also considering IPO plans.
Figure | Tucson Future officially landed on the NASDAQ
At the same time as the listing boom is bursting, the financing scale of the autonomous driving industry is also gradually expanding, and the amount of financing has reached the highest peak in the calendar year. According to incomplete statistics, the "gold absorption" of the autonomous driving track in 2021 has exceeded 150 billion yuan, which is more than three times that of 2020. Among them, Horizon, Hesai Technology, Zhijia Technology and other companies have completed more than C round financing in 2021, with a financing amount of more than 300 million US dollars; Momenta also completed a C+ round of financing of more than 500 million US dollars in November, with a cumulative financing of more than 1 billion US dollars in the C round, becoming the largest financing in China since 2021 in the field of autonomous driving.
With the acceleration of the commercialization process of autonomous driving, autonomous driving companies are accelerating financing and listing to supplement the capital chain. It is not difficult to see from the frequent financing events in 2021 that the financing of autonomous driving has entered the middle and late stages, and some companies have a clear business model and profitability, and are about to enter the listing stage. It is not difficult to foresee that in 2022, the field of automatic driving will usher in a new wave of larger-scale listing.
Keyword five: data security
In 2021, data security will become the focus of global development, and countries around the world are accelerating the construction of their own data protection solutions.
In China, on June 10, the 29th meeting of the Standing Committee of the 13th National People's Congress passed the Data Security Law of the People's Republic of China (hereinafter referred to as the Data Security Law), which for the first time upgraded the overall decision-making and coordination of data security to the central national security leading agency, which is consistent with the National Security Law and reflects the important position of data security in the national security system. At the same time, the Data Security Law plays a programmatic role in the legal supervision of automobile data. On August 20, the 30th session of the Standing Committee of the 13th National People's Congress voted to pass the Personal Information Protection Law of the People's Republic of China (hereinafter referred to as the Personal Information Protection Law), which provides a clear legal basis for protecting personal information rights and interests, standardizing personal information processing activities, and promoting the rational use of personal information. The successive implementation of the Data Security Law and the Personal Information Protection Law marks that China's data security and personal information protection have entered a new stage in the development of the rule of law.
In addition to China, other countries are also speeding up data protection law legislation. In January, the Korean Personal Information Protection Commission issued the Personal Information Protection Law (Draft Amendment) to the public; in March, the Russian Ministry of Digital Industry revised the draft legislation of the federal law "On Personal Data"; in May, the Japanese Diet passed six digital reform bills, including the "Act on the Improvement of Relevant Laws for the Formation of a Digital Society", requesting a review and revision of the personal information protection system; in October, the Ministry of Science and Information and Information technology (MSIT) of the Republic of Korea announced that the State Council passed the "Draft Law on Personal Data"; in October, the Ministry of Science and Information and Communication Technology (MSIT) of the Republic of Korea announced that the State Council passed the "Draft Law on Personal Data". The Basic Law on the Promotion of the Revitalization and Utilization of the Data Industry is the world's first basic legislation to regulate the data industry, requiring overall arrangements for the development and utilization of data.
Keyword six: Robotaxi "inner volume"
With the increasingly clear commercialization path of autonomous driving, the significant reduction of transformation costs, and the acceleration of the liberalization of autonomous driving commercialization pilots in Beijing, Shanghai and other cities, Robotaxi has shown a clear trend of accelerating landing, and has gradually become a new track that technology companies, travel platforms and OEMs are scrambling to chase.
Since 2021, autonomous driving technology companies such as Baidu, AutoX, Wenyuan Zhixing, and Xiaoma Zhixing have been accelerating the layout of Robo-taxi, and travel companies such as Didi and T3 Travel have also begun to launch Robotaxi-related deployments. In December, SAIC's Boomaxi was officially put into operation, becoming the first L4 level autonomous mobility platform in China with the technical endorsement of an automobile manufacturer. Immediately after that, GAC Group, Wenyuan Zhixing and Ruqi Chuxing reached a strategic cooperation to build a Robotaxi fleet in 2022 and launch autonomous driving mobility services for the public. In addition, Xiaopeng Motors also announced that it will enter Robotaxi in 2022.
Robotaxi accelerates the "inner volume", on the one hand, it has a huge application scenario. IHSMarkit predicts that by 2030, the total market size of shared mobility in China will reach 2.25 trillion yuan, and Robotaxi will account for 60%, with a scale of 1.3 trillion yuan. On the other hand, Robotaxi will inevitably trigger a "head effect" in the process of commercialization. IHS Markit believes that in the future, the main players in Robotaxi will be concentrated in 2-3 service providers, head service providers or more than 40% of the market share.
Keyword seven: dual-intelligence collaboration
The coordinated development of smart city infrastructure and intelligent networked vehicles (hereinafter referred to as "double wisdom") is an inevitable trend and has gradually risen to a national strategy. In February 2021, the Cpc Central Committee and the State Council issued the "National Comprehensive Three-dimensional Transportation Network Planning Outline", which specifically pointed out that it is necessary to promote the coordinated development of intelligent networked vehicles and smart cities, and clarify the strategic direction of the integrated development of "double intelligence".
In May, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued a notice identifying Six cities in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Wuhan, Changsha and Wuxi as the first batch of pilot cities for the coordinated development of "double wisdom"; in December, the two ministries and commissions identified 10 cities such as Chongqing, Shenzhen, Xiamen, Nanjing, Jinan, Chengdu, Hefei, Cangzhou, Wuhu and Zibo as the second batch of pilot cities for the coordinated development of "double wisdom", expanding the coverage of the pilot and ensuring that the pilot work forms replicable and replicable experiences.
As the first country in the world to systematically carry out the coordinated development of "double intelligence", China now has a first-mover advantage at the practical level. The first batch of pilot cities have made a series of progress and positive results in intelligent infrastructure, communication networks, Internet of Vehicles, Car City Network Platform Application Demonstration, Standards and Specifications, etc., forming a good pilot demonstration effect. The second batch of pilot cities will combine local characteristics and industrial foundations, dig deep into urban needs with application orientation, and clarify the special projects that are planned to develop, such as Chongqing's car city network + smart bus to help the tourism industry, Shenzhen to focus on policies and regulations to try first, Xiamen to focus on BRT bus application wide coverage, Jinan to highlight urban and rural bus and agricultural logistics special themes.
Keyword eight: chip supply cutoff
In 2021, under the influence of "natural disasters and man-made disasters", the automotive industry ushered in an unprecedented chip shortage crisis. Since the beginning of the year, the new crown epidemic, the North American blizzard, the Earthquake in Japan, the TSMC water shortage accident, the Renesas Electronics factory fire, the continuous shutdown of the Malaysian packaging plant, and the abnormal behavior of enterprises such as rushing goods and hoarding have further aggravated the imbalance between global chip supply and demand.
In March, Toyota, Volkswagen, General Motors, Ford and other big-name car companies announced that production cuts and production restrictions due to chip shortages. According to the latest data from AutoForecast Solutions, due to chip shortages, the cumulative production reduction in the global auto market in 2021 was 10.12 million units; of which the cumulative production reduction in the Chinese auto market has reached 1.981 million units, accounting for 19.6% of the total production reduction.
In the "life and death gate" of automotive chips, the current import rate of domestic automotive chips exceeds 95%, such as ESP, ECU, new energy three-electric system and high-end chips of automatic driving systems, which are basically monopolized by developed countries and have become the "card neck" link of domestic automobile manufacturing. In this context, domestic traditional car companies and new car-making forces began to accelerate their entry into the "core". Following BYD, geely, Dongfeng, Changan, Great Wall and other traditional car companies have begun to march into the field of automotive chips in 2021, and new car-making forces such as Ideal, Weilai, Xiaopeng and Zero Run are also accelerating the self-development process of autonomous driving chips.
At present, the general consensus in the semiconductor industry is that the chip shortage is likely to continue until 2022, fully return to normal state or after 2023. If China can take advantage of the shortage crisis of automotive chips, vigorously develop domestic automotive chip production and manufacturing, accelerate the breakthrough of technical barriers and domestic substitution, it is not only expected to solve the supply chain risk, but also accelerate the process of "lane change and overtaking" in the automotive industry.
Keyword nine: accident and reflection
With the large-scale application of autonomous driving related functions, 2021 has also become a year of frequent autonomous driving accidents.
In August alone, four representative companies were caught up in the storm of public opinion on autonomous driving. First, the fatal accident of Weilai assisted driving has triggered people's vigilance and reflection on the safety of assisted driving; the second is that the US government announced an investigation into Tesla's autopilot system (Autopilot), marking the entry of automatic driving into an era of strict supervision; third, toyota's self-driving bus e-Palettes collided with a Paralympic athlete while running, and toyota suspended the operation of autonomous buses; fourth, Apple's self-driving test vehicles had two minor collisions in August. In addition, including Waymo, Xiaoma Zhixing, Meituan unmanned delivery vehicles, etc. have also had collision accidents of varying degrees, pushing the safety of automatic driving to the cusp of the storm and causing the industry to reflect on the safety of "automatic driving".
In order to promote the safe application of autonomous driving technology, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the "Opinions on Strengthening the Management of Access to Intelligent And Connected Vehicle Manufacturers and Products" in August, which requires strengthening the safety management of automatic driving function products, and proposes 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 instruction information, function activation and exit methods and conditions and other information. Subsequently, in December, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued a revised order no. 2 of the National Standard for the Safety of Motor Vehicle Operation, starting from January 1, 2022, newly produced passenger cars are required to be equipped with EDR (Automobile Event Data Recording System) or DVR (Vehicle Video Driving Recording System) that meet the regulations, providing an important basis for the division of accident liability and data forensics.
Keyword 10: Wave of executive departures
The wave of executive departures is also one of the hottest topics in the autonomous driving industry in 2021. According to incomplete statistics, there will be nearly 40 high-level personnel changes involved in China's intelligent driving industry in 2021.
In February, Gu Weihao, former general manager of Baidu's intelligent automobile business unit, became the CEO of Mobike Zhixing; in March, Xia Yiping, who was the co-founder and chief technology officer of Mobike, became the CEO of Jidu Automobile; in May, Guo Enqing, former chief engineer of active safety in Ambiv China, joined MAXIEYE as CTO; in June, former Senior Vice President of Bosch, Jiang Jingfang joined Heduo Technology as a senior vice president and partner; in September, Hu Zhengnan, former president of Geely Research Institute, joined the investment company founded by Lei Jun. Chen Liming, former president of Bosch Chassis Control Systems China, became president of Horizon; in October, Yu Liguo, former president of Jihu, was exposed to have left BAIC and switched to joining Xiaomi Automobile; in November, Zhu Jiang, former COO of Ford China, joined Baidu's brand Jidu Automobile; in December, Chen Qi, former director of Huawei's autonomous driving department, joined JiKr Automobile. In addition, Hao Jingshan, partner and vice president of commerce of Qingzhou Zhihang, Kong Qi, chief scientist of Jingdong Logistics Autonomous Driving, Xiao Jun, vice president of Jingdong Group and president of X Business Department, and Wang Gang, vice president of Alibaba and head of the autonomous driving laboratory of DAMO Academy, have recently left their jobs...
In addition, U.S. autonomous driving companies are also constantly ushering in a wave of executive departures in 2021. According to incomplete statistics, Waymo has 8 executives leaving in 2021, including CEO John Krafcik and CFO Ger Dwyer. Apple's car team lost at least 7 important members in 2021, including Benjamin Lyon, a veteran member of the autonomous driving team, and Doug Field, the former head of the team, while in December, Eric Rogers, chief engineer of the radar system of Apple's car project, Alex Clarabut, manager of battery system engineering, and Stephen Spiteri, manager of hardware engineering, left their jobs, which can be called a personnel "earthquake". In addition, Daniel Ammann, CEO of Cruise, a self-driving startup owned by General Motors, also left in December 2021.
Behind the wave of executive departures, in addition to personal career planning and choices, it is also a projection of industry development trends. On the one hand, automatic driving has become a must for technological competition among car companies, and the new forces have spared no expense to recruit high-end talents and accelerate breakthroughs in core key technologies; on the other hand, some companies have stopped the pace of expansion under the condition of prominent financial pressure and smooth commercial progress, and many executives have chosen to find another way out in the case of more external opportunities.
In fact, as a microcosm of the serious imbalance between supply and demand of talent, the wave of executive departures is only the "tip of the iceberg" of talent flow in the autonomous driving industry. It is expected that in 2022, the phenomenon of talent flow in the automotive industry will continue, and talents related to autonomous driving will continue to be an important target for enterprises to compete.
Looking back at 2021, the repeated ice-breaking policies, the accelerated integration of market capital and new forces of cross-border car manufacturing have greatly promoted the development of the autonomous driving industry and the commercialization process. Under the influence of uncertain factors such as "lack of core" and the epidemic situation, intelligent electric vehicles have grown against the trend and shown a strong momentum of accelerating the replacement of fuel vehicles, becoming the main growth pole of China's automobile market.
Looking forward to 2022, with the accelerated popularization of assisted driving in passenger cars, the accuracy of hardware equipment such as lidar has improved and the cost has decreased, creating better conditions for the commercialization of high-level automatic driving. Leading car companies have taken 2022 as a key node in the mass production of high-level autonomous driving and opened an "equipment race". It is foreseeable that autonomous driving will accelerate into reality in 2022, bringing about a deep-seated change across industries and fields.
Author: Su Xingyu
The Intelligent Vehicle and Smart City Collaborative Development Alliance was initiated by the China Electric Vehicle 100 Association and 26 leading enterprises and innovation companies from the fields of vehicles, parts, artificial intelligence, Internet, communications and other fields, and carried out exchanges and discussions on the technological innovation, industrial cooperation, pilot demonstration and standard research required for the coordinated development of smart vehicles and smart cities.
You praise me when you see it!