The gradual integration of high-precision maps and navigation maps, and the expansion of application boundaries have allowed more enterprises to see the dawn of large-scale landing.
Tabor Network Mozi Su | wen
In the past two years, the high-precision map market has experienced unprecedented fierce turbulence.
Since the issuance of the "Intelligent Vehicle Innovation Development Strategy" by 11 ministries and commissions in 2020, the market for autonomous driving and high-precision maps has continued to accelerate. According to IDC's "High-Precision Map Solution Market Share" report released in August last year, the total high-precision map market reached 474 million yuan in 2020, with a growth rate of 70%.
The approval of navigation electronic map production (Grade A) surveying and mapping qualifications that have been silent for many years has accelerated in this year, breaking the long-established pattern of map merchants, and the high-precision map market has been surging for a while.
Entering 2021, autonomous driving is still showing a high-speed development trend, and the high-precision map market is also in high demand. At the same time, the speed of approval of high-precision map qualifications has gradually slowed down, and although the team of map merchants has expanded, the qualifications are still a scarce resource.
Through automatic driving and vehicle-road collaboration, the domestic veteran map merchant business has gradually entered a better state; foreign head map dealers have entered the market with rich experience and data application development level, and have gained part of the market share; Huawei, Meituan, SF and other new players have explored a new path and developed rapidly by serving their own business layout.
Under the dual blessing of vehicle and road intelligence, new and old map dealers have successively found a more suitable development path for themselves, high-precision maps and navigation maps have gradually integrated, and the expansion of application boundaries has allowed more enterprises to see the dawn of large-scale landing.
Strict management, qualification is still a scarce resource
Compared with 2020, the approval speed of high-precision map qualifications in 2021 has slowed down significantly, and the "open approval" previously speculated by the industry has not arrived, and although the pattern of map merchants has changed, high-precision map qualifications are still a scarce resource, while supervision is still strict.
Recently, the Ministry of Natural Resources disclosed the main information of 6 Grade A surveying and mapping qualification applicants, namely Tencent Dadi Tongtu (Beijing) Technology Co., Ltd., Beijing Changdi Wanfang Technology Co., Ltd., Aerospace Hongtu Information Technology Co., Ltd., Beijing Huawei Digital Technology Co., Ltd., Beijing Lingtu Software Technology Co., Ltd. and Liaoning Hongtu Chuangzhan Surveying and Mapping Survey Co., Ltd.
This is the first batch of "review and renewal" navigation electronic map production Grade A qualification enterprises announced by the Ministry of Natural Resources this year.
In December last year, the Ministry of Natural Resources also announced the main information of five Grade A surveying and mapping qualification applicants, namely AutoNavi Software Co., Ltd., Shenzhen Kailide Technology Co., Ltd., Speed Space-time Information Technology Co., Ltd., Fengtu Technology (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd., and Shenyang Meihang Technology Co., Ltd.
In 2021, the surveying and mapping qualification management policy will be further improved, and the approval authority of 9 Grade A qualifications will be delegated to the provincial natural resources department. However, the Ministry of Natural Resources is still directly responsible for the approval management, review and renewal of the Grade A qualification for the production of navigation electronic maps, which is known as the "high-precision map qualification" in the industry.
According to the incomplete statistics of Tabor Network, a total of 31 enterprises have been approved to make Navigation Electronic Maps Grade A surveying and mapping qualifications.
Among them, behind the veteran and head high-precision map manufacturers, there are basically large Internet companies or car companies to support:
Changdi Wanfang was wholly owned by Baidu, AutoNavi software was capitalized by Ali, Tencent acquired Dadi Tongtu and is also the second largest shareholder of NavInfo), Tsinghua Unigroup acquired Lingtu, Geely controlled Yitutong through Basket (Basket completed the acquisition of 100% of the equity of Yitutong in March last year), SAIC motor invested in Guangting Information and controlled its subsidiary Zhonghaiting to obtain qualifications.....
Since the free map "war", the veteran high-precision map companies aiming at the large-scale landing of automatic driving have almost defaulted to the image of "burning money" and "large enterprise support department".
IDC reports show that in 2020, Baidu, NavInfo and Jizhen Basket's Yitu tong ranked in the top three market shares of China's high-precision maps, with 28.07%, 21.61% and 16.15% respectively. AutoNavi's market share was 13.07%, falling from the third place in 2019 to the fourth place. Foreign veteran image dealer Here ranked fifth with a share of 7.8%.
In the past year of the "14th Five-Year Plan", the direction and pattern of the high-precision map market have undergone unprecedented and huge changes.
In the era of intelligent networking, high-precision maps are no longer dispensable additives, but necessities. However, the old problem of difficult and high cost of bicycle intelligence is still a mountain that is difficult to cross, and before the large-scale path has been opened, new and old map dealers have begun to break through traditional application and technical barriers and explore relatively roundabout changes in the scene.
Passenger cars are speeding up on the ground, but it still takes time
The passenger car scene is still the largest prize pool for HIGH-precision maps, and the addition of new car-making forces has made this prize pool more attractive and challenging.
Based on the demand for intelligence and networking, more and more car companies are betting in the field of high-precision maps.
Last year, Xiaopeng acquired Zhitu Technology for 250 million yuan, which was one of the earliest new car-making forces to solve the qualification of map data collection in automatic driving, and also provided convenience for its research and development of high-precision maps and high-end automatic driving functions.
The urban NGP function has also become one of the main highlights of the new p5 intelligent electric vehicle released by Xiaopeng. It is understood that this function can integrate vision, radar and advanced driver assistance maps for environmental perception to achieve the highest centimeter-level ranging accuracy. According to the analysis of Northeast Securities, software revenues such as automatic driving and high-precision maps may open up new profit margins for Xiaopeng Motors.
SAIC motor has also continued to increase its weight in this field.
Last year, SAIC Twice invested in Momenta, an autonomous driving company with high-precision map qualifications, becoming the latter's largest institutional investor. The two sides will further deepen strategic cooperation in the core technology field of intelligent driving and jointly develop full-stack intelligent driving algorithms.
The L7, the first sedan released by SAIC's Zhiji Automobile, is also equipped with 12 cameras, 5 millisecond wave radars, 12 ultrasonic radars and high-precision maps, and reserves a lidar interface.
After acquiring Lyft's autonomous driving division, Toyota completed its acquisition of Carmera, a provider of driverless car maps and data, in August last year, further increasing its leverage in the field of autonomous driving.
However, due to the scarcity of qualifications and high-precision map service capabilities, most car companies will still choose to cooperate with high-precision map companies. High-precision maps and high-precision positioning have thus become a highlight of last year's Shanghai Auto Show.
AutoNavi Map participated in the auto show for the first time, comprehensively demonstrating the ability update of the four major automotive-related sectors of AutoNavi Internet of Vehicles, Autonomous Driving Map, Traffic Big Data, and Open Platform;
Wide Stool Technology also brought large-scale automatic high-precision map technology, high-precision map product matrix and self-developed acquisition system C-6620 to the present;
China Mobile has joined hands with FAW, Dongfeng, SAIC, GAC, Great Wall and other car companies, as well as bosch, Huawei and other industrial chain partners, to release the "5G + Beidou high-precision positioning" Xingyao action road test plan.
The high-precision map cloud service is also an important part of the new map company Huawei's smart car cloud service. Wang Jun, president of Huawei's intelligent vehicle solution BU, revealed in an interview with the media that GAO-precision maps are planned to be commercialized within this year.
In order to reduce the cost of collecting high-precision maps, Huawei uses its own processors and sensor self-research and mapping equipment to systematically collect national high-precision maps, and in 2021, it can complete the collection of high-precision maps in the four major cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen, and will be expanded to more than 20 cities in 2022, with the ultimate goal of completing the collection of high-precision maps nationwide.
In December last year, Huawei's in-vehicle map was "on the car" for the first time on the AITO Q&A M5.
From guiding people and guiding cars to people, cars and roads
In the past year, high-precision map companies have opened an intensive order receiving mode.
Baidu Apollo HD Map, which has reached cooperation with GAC, Weilai, Weima, Changan, Honda, Great Wall, Geely, BAIC, Jacques, Evergrande and other car companies, still has a thriving market share. Previously, Baidu officially predicted that by 2023, the number of Apollo high-precision maps will exceed 1 million.
Last year, NavInfo signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Changan Automobile and successively obtained orders from Kaiyi Automobile, Daimler, SAIC Volkswagen, Volvo and Ford to provide autopilot, LBS and other related services for car companies. The performance forecast just released shows that NavInfo is expected to turn a profit in 2021, and the vehicle-level navigation business will continue to maintain a growth trend.
Tencent HD Map is expected to be listed in the second quarter of this year with new cars from cooperative car companies, and in terms of the collection of HD Maps, it delivered 358,000 kilometers of HIGH-precision data across the country as planned last year, and in Q4 2022, it will complete the full coverage of urban secondary to four roads in the top 100 cities in the country.
AutoNavi has also not stopped investing in high-precision maps, but last year's official attitude was somewhat vague.
Jiang Rui, general manager of AutoNavi Automobile Business Center, once said at the event that the research and development of high-precision maps needs to be studied from three aspects: breadth, precision and freshness. At the same time, the development of high-precision maps is also accelerating, but in the long run, whether high-precision maps will be needed in the next decade is uncertain.
In fact, all high-precision map companies face the same "uncertainty" as AutoNavi. As Robin Li said, autonomous driving will not really mature in the next 10 or even 20 years, and it will require continuous investment. Relying only on the development of bicycle intelligence, the landing road of high-precision maps is still very long.
As a result, a transformation from a separate "guide car" and a separate "guide" to a "people-vehicle co-guide" is happening. The long-standing boundary between navigation maps and HD maps has finally been completely broken, and HD maps have entered a new era of rapid change.
"Unlike the (previous) navigation map, which is updated every three months, the high-precision map will (remain) online in real time, identifying changing road conditions at millisecond speeds, so that vehicles can respond in a timely manner." Cheng Peng, the new CEO of NavInfo, said.
In January last year, AutoNavi officially released the third generation of car navigation, through the seamless switching of ordinary navigation maps and high-precision maps, to achieve "people-vehicle co-guidance", provide more accurate status and path planning, and increase environmental rendering. Xiaopeng Automobile became the world's first company equipped with autoNavi's third-generation car navigation.
Tencent also released a smart driving map for human-machine co-driving at the Global Digital Ecology Conference, based on a unified high-standard basic data, integrating high-precision maps, ADAS maps, and ordinary navigation maps together to solve the problem of data consistency at the source, realize "three maps in one" lane-level navigation, and help cars move from bicycle intelligence to Vehicle Networking intelligence.
△Tencent smart driving map schematic map
Baidu Maps integrates HIGH-precision maps, high-precision positioning and data from ordinary maps to ensure the smoothness of switching. At the same time, on the one hand, the high-precision map will be packaged into the automatic driving ecology, and the smart car brand that dominates the unmanned taxi and cooperates with Geely will be promoted on a large scale. On the other hand, in the various intelligent transportation scenarios in which it participates, it promotes lane-level high-precision map schemes that focus more on government and enterprises.
Huawei has also extended some of the capabilities of HIGH-precision maps to the consumer market. In November last year, Huawei launched the "high-precision positioning service", which allows users to pay only 1 yuan per month to achieve sub-meter-level lane navigation services in some models.
But even more groundbreaking is Huawei's AR map (Cyberverse). According to the official introduction, this technology is a technology platform that integrates 3D high-precision map capabilities, spatial computing capabilities, strong environmental understanding capabilities and ultra-realistic virtual-real fusion rendering capabilities. Huawei has built it into an open platform on which different developers can explore different commercialization possibilities, providing a prototype for people to imagine a metaverse based on high-precision maps.
Explore more application patterns in a multi-pronged approach
Although large-scale autonomous driving is still far away, the landing process is accelerating in commercial vehicle scenarios such as autonomous trucks, unmanned driving in closed scenes, unmanned distribution, and smart cities.
NavInfo's Zhonghuan Satellite is targeting the heavy-duty truck market. According to official news, Zhonghuan Satellite has reached cooperation with 9 of the top 10 domestic heavy-duty truck manufacturers in terms of vehicle networking platform, hardware, software, integration, etc., providing high-precision maps and road network matching and other location services, and developing intelligent load-bearing terminals to explore the overall solution of software and hardware integration.
In September last year, Lide Space reached a cooperation with xiaoma Zhixing, an autonomous driving company, to provide it with high-precision autonomous driving road data services. At about the same time, Xiaoma Zhixing merged the truck autonomous driving R&D team into the passenger car R&D team and "upgraded" the truck R&D team architecture. At present, Xiaoma Zhika's self-driving truck has completed the first high-level automatic driving test on the highway in China.
Recently, Baidu invested in qiandang technology, a developer of driverless trucks, holding 2.87631% of the shares. The latter shareholders also include Xiaopeng and SF.
In the field of unmanned delivery, many new players in the field of high-precision maps have been concentrated, including Meituan, SF, JD.com, quandao technology, etc.
Ali, Meituan, SF, JD.com, several Internet companies have a large number of location information-based service business, and entering the field of unmanned delivery is an inevitable option. In addition to Ali's AutoNavi, Meituan, SF, and JD.com have all won the high-precision map qualification in the past two years, and have the strength to expand unmanned distribution on a large scale.
Some qualified enterprises have not entered into automatic driving and vehicle-road collaboration, but still focus on geographic information software development and services, providing location-based big data applications for smart cities, smart businesses and other fields.
A number of industry insiders told Taber that although most smart city scenarios do not require high-precision maps in the strict sense, high-precision location services still have broad application space, and qualifications make enterprises more confident when expanding this field.
It is worth noting that even in recent years, various Internet manufacturers have successively won Grade A qualifications, but it does not mean that the market space of traditional geo-credit enterprises and small and medium-sized enterprises has been completely squeezed.
For example, NavInfo and Huawei maintain cooperation in B-side navigation electronic maps, V2X, smart cities, safe parks, and HUAWEI CLOUD, while providing huawei with autonomous driving data and technical support. HD Map Enterprise Quandao Technology cooperated with JD.com to provide JD.com unmanned logistics with a full-stack solution in the field of L4 HD map data applications.
It's just that the players have changed, the way of playing has changed, and the days of "staking the race" by qualification and scale are gone.
As autonomous driving gradually enters the era of true commercialization, the high-precision map market has gradually entered the harvest period. However, enterprises also need to face more complex road conditions and richer application scenarios, and constantly innovate to higher accuracy, faster update speed, wider coverage, and more realistic scene display.
Only players who can really meet the policy requirements, keep up with the times, and fit the industry application can have the last laugh. v