On the last day of 2021, DeepWay, a new force in truck manufacturing, once again announced its new progress in car manufacturing to the outside world, and the first model, Deep Direction Starway 1 Generation, has successfully completed the data freezing work and is about to enter the product verification stage.
(DeepWay CEO Wan Jun reviewed the exterior sludge model site)
This new power company jointly established by Baidu and Shiqiao at the end of 2020 has attracted a lot of attention from the outside world as soon as it came out because of its multiple genes such as the Internet, autonomous driving, and freight logistics. In the only one year since its establishment, from the release of the first concept car, Deep Direction Starway 1st Generation, to the public display of dynamic testing of autonomous driving technology, to the current model data freeze, DeepWay has been moving forward steadily according to planning and rhythm.
At the landmark time node of data freezing, Che Yunqi was invited to conduct an exclusive interview with Tan Changyu, chief engineer of DeepWay. Prior to Joining DeepWay, Tan had been engaged in research and development for commercial vehicles and special vehicles, and more than 20 years of industry immersion had given him a deep understanding of the design, production and manufacturing of trucks. Through nearly two hours of interviews and conversations, Che Yunqi was able to gain a deeper understanding of DeepWay's vehicle development schedule planning, autonomous driving technology, and power replenishment.
How is the whole vehicle development different from before?
On September 17, 2021, DeepWay held the first brand strategy conference to officially release the first concept car, Shenxiang Xingtu 1 generation, which is also the first intelligent new energy heavy truck designed and developed in China.
(DeepWay CEO Wan Jun)
In the automotive circle, there are generally two kinds of positive development and reverse development. The so-called reverse development, the simple understanding is to take ism, the target vehicle parts are dismantled for analysis and learning, and then assembled step by step.
Although this development method has played a certain role in promoting the start-up and development of China's car companies and even Japanese and Korean car companies, it cannot hide its many drawbacks. Reverse development is not only easy to infringe on the intellectual property rights of other car companies, but also relies on simple imitation of the developed vehicle, its performance is far less reliable and stable than the prototype. With the gradual emergence of the drawbacks of reverse development, coupled with the promotion of electrification and intelligent trend, the positive development of vehicles has become an important factor in the competition of car companies.
Based on this, DeepWay, a "newcomer" to car manufacturing, has decided to comply with the general trend of market demand and adopt all-forward design for vehicle research and development at the beginning of its birth. From the initial planning of the car-making plan, the first generation of Shenxiang Xingtu has undergone steps such as concept design and styling design, and finally after completing the production and testing of the A-sample car, it was officially released to the public.
Since then, The 1st Generation of Deep Direction Starway has successively completed the review of interior and exterior sludge and the freezing of body data, so far DeepWay has successfully completed the design of vehicle engineering data. Of course, this does not mean that the data design work is over. When new problems are found in the product verification stage, the data still needs to be continuously iterated and updated, and continuous ingenuity will continue to the final mass production.
According to DeepWay's plan, the first generation of Deep Direction Starway is expected to start large-scale mass production in June 2023 and deliver 1,000 units in that year. From the official opening of engineering design on DeepWay in June 2021, to the final SOP, the development cycle of the entire project is exactly 24 months.
In the past, the average cycle of traditional car companies to develop a new car was 4-5 years. Today, in the era of new car manufacturing, some passenger car companies can shorten the vehicle development cycle to 18 months. For the 24-month development cycle of DeepWay's first model, Tan Changyu believes that this time is moderate, which not only shortens the development cycle compared with traditional car companies, but also ensures the quality of development with sufficient time.
(Interior sludge model review site)
"DeepWay is based on car building, and a lot of work is going on in sync." For example, in order to verify the ability of high-speed road condition perception and positioning, planning and controlling the full-stack automatic driving algorithm capabilities, DeepWay has previously carried out a truck road test of the automatic driving system in Tianjin. In addition to road testing, DeepWay's other business lines such as interior and exterior clay models, vehicle core component design, etc. are also being developed in parallel, which explains why DeepWay can complete many development tasks in such a tight time.
Although DeepWay's research and development work has made stage progress, when it comes to car manufacturing, DeepWay's two major shareholders, one Baidu and one Shiqiao, have no relevant experience in car building, so why does deepWay, which has just been established, dare to rush into the field of truck manufacturing? Where are its advantages and strengths?
In this regard, Tan Changyu believes that the production and manufacture of automobiles has entered the platform-based and modular production stage, and it is no longer necessary to concentrate all the links in one enterprise to complete the car. Whether it is the industrial chain resources of parts and components, or the development resources and manufacturing resources are already very complete. Traditional heavy-duty truck enterprises already have mature foundry ideas, deep direction Xingtu 1 generation will adopt the OEM mode for production, and DeepWay is already cooperating with some foundry manufacturers. With the help of industrial workers and tooling equipment ready at the foundry, DeepWay only needs to control the cost and quality of vehicle manufacturing. It can effectively save costs and revitalize the spare capacity resources of some heavy-duty truck enterprises, which will be a win-win situation for both DeepWay and foundries. In this regard, JAC's OEM for NIO is a good example in the field of passenger cars.
On the other hand, the focus of the development of trucks in the future will shift from the car to the scene, and the scene will win the world, and Shiqiao, as China's leading digital management platform for vehicle logistics, can provide DeepWay with a wealth of logistics and freight scenarios, which is undoubtedly one of DeepWay's underpinnings.
(Apollo technology is the cornerstone, the lion bridge scene is excellent, and deepWay is developing rapidly)
Where are the great self-driving trucks?
With Baidu's blessing, autonomous driving technology is undoubtedly DeepWay's biggest killer.
The 1st generation of Shenxiang Xingtu is equipped with the HIS Intelligence System (Highway Intelligence System) developed based on Baidu's autonomous driving technology, which can be equipped with L3 level automatic driving capabilities when it is delivered on the market, but due to regulatory restrictions, it will be opened to drivers as L2 assisted driving. In the future, once the policies and regulations allow, the system can be remotely upgraded to L4 level automatic driving through OTA.
When talking about automatic driving, we must talk about hardware configuration. In terms of computing power, it has enough computing power to support high-speed L4 level automatic driving. In addition, the motion driving sensors of the 1st generation of Deep Direction Starway include 11 cameras, 1 infrared camera, 5 millimeter wave radars and 1 lidar throughout the vehicle, which can realize the blind zone of the whole vehicle and the ultra-long-range perception ability of more than 1000m.
Not long ago, Baidu just showed off its "automotive robot" legion, landing autonomous driving technology into multiple subdivisions such as passenger cars, buses, trunk logistics, warehousing and distribution, mine and port operations, etc. In the autonomous driving trunk logistics track, DeepWay is Baidu's only layout, carrying the heavy responsibility of Baidu's automatic driving in the field of trunk logistics and transportation.
A must-have weapon for carrying a heavy responsibility. For DeepWay, Baidu has provided a full range of technologies for "Cabin Cloud Atlas". As far as autonomous driving technology itself is concerned, DeepWay is the only commercial vehicle company on the network to obtain an exclusive indefinite white-box license from Baidu Apollo. Through a white-box license, Baidu Apollo opens its source code directly to DeepWay and allows it to make modifications. Based on baidu's early work in the field of autonomous driving, DeepWay only needs to do some customized in-depth development iterations on this basis.
Although Baidu's previous autonomous driving technology was mostly developed for the passenger car field, the general view in the industry is that the reuse rate of autonomous driving technology between passenger cars and commercial vehicles can exceed 70%. Thanks to the white box authorization provided by Baidu, DeepWay can save a lot of development time in the research and development of automatic driving, which is equivalent to standing on the shoulders of giants and carrying out research and development and iteration of subdivided scenarios, which helps DeepWay to take fewer detours.
In addition to the underlying support from Baidu's autonomous driving technology, DeepWay itself has also recruited top talents in the field of autonomous driving, and its research direction focuses on the direction of vehicle control that is difficult to reuse Baidu's autonomous driving technology.
According to Tan Changyu, 80% of DeepWay's nearly 200-person team is R&D personnel. Among them, the vehicle development team accounts for about 60 people, the rest of the R & D personnel are serving in automatic driving, the convergence of talents so that DeepWay autonomous driving technology can achieve independent and rapid iterative development.
How to choose the energy replenishment method?
Under the influence of the dual carbon policy, the truck industry has also gradually transformed into new energy. Since the second half of 2021, new energy trucks have achieved contrarian growth in the face of the overall downturn in the truck market.
Deep Direction Xingtu 1 is positioned as a smart new energy truck, using the modular design of hydrogen-electric platform, this innovative design is not only forward-looking, but also reflects the technical strength of DeepWay.
In the initial stage, the 1st generation of Shenxiang Xingtu will use the power battery as the main power source, specifically equipped with a customized research and development of 450 degree lithium iron phosphate battery pack, with a full load of 49 tons of working conditions, the endurance can reach 300 kilometers, support 1 hour 1C charging and replenishment.
Battery life anxiety has always been a major pain point for the use of electric vehicles, one of which comes from the inconvenience of charging and the long time it takes. Therefore, in addition to the conventional charging and energy replenishment method, DeepWay is more optimistic about the power exchange mode.
Tan Changyu believes that the biggest value of heavy-duty truck commercial vehicles lies in the transportation mileage, if the time is wasted on charging, the timeliness of transportation will be greatly reduced, so power exchange is a better way to replenish energy in the field of new energy heavy trucks.
In terms of power exchange, DeepWay can complete the power exchange in 6 minutes, and with the iteration of technology, the power exchange time will be further shortened. According to DeepWay's calculations, when the initial sales scale is only 100 units, only 10 power exchange potentials are needed in a high-speed round-trip between Beijing and Shanghai.
(High Speed Power Exchange Solution)
For the construction and operation of the substation, DeepWay is not personally down, but cooperates with the substation operator. At present, under the encouragement of national policies, power exchange has become a hot track, and more and more people have entered the game. As far as heavy-duty trucks are concerned, the construction of power stations according to the highway logistics and transportation scenarios has a higher degree of matching with the demand for vehicles, and it is easier to achieve profitability than passenger cars.
Speaking of the unification of battery specifications in the power exchange mode, Tan Changyu admitted that at present, the industry has not yet established a unified standard, but all companies will move closer to the standard of the industry's top players. Therefore, only a company that is at the forefront of the industry can its standard become the standard of the industry.
In the early stage, the 1st generation of Deep Direction Starway will use the power battery as the power source, but the design of the hydrogen-electric platform allows it to switch the hydrogen energy drive at any time.
"Hydrogen power is undoubtedly an important direction for the development of new energy vehicles in the future, but it may take a while to mature applications." At present, the cost of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles is too high, on the one hand, the disposal cost of fuel cell stacks is high, and the cost of hydrogenation is also high. ”
Tan Changyu said that in the future, with the continuous maturity of hydrogen fuel cell technology routes and the continuous improvement of infrastructure construction such as hydrogen storage and hydrogen production, The 1st generation of Shenxiang Xingtu can be ready to carry hydrogen energy systems at any time without the need to redesign the platform.
Che Yun Summary:
As a newly born truck-making new force enterprise, because behind it stands Baidu, the leader of autonomous driving technology, and Shiqiao, the head of the Internet in the highway trunk logistics industry, which makes DeepWay inherently have a shining aura. More importantly, Baidu can provide it with the empowerment of autonomous driving technology, and Shiqiao can provide support for logistics and transportation scenarios. The advantages of "technology + scene" make DeepWay's development prospects bright.
With the steady advancement of the pace of car manufacturing, DeepWay's vision of creating a new era of smart freight is also being implemented step by step, so let us look forward to the new changes brought by DeepWay to the traditional logistics industry.