Car stuff (public number: chedongxi)
The author | Alice Mumi
Editor| Xiaohan
The "autonomous driving report card" of California in 2021 is out!
On February 9, local time, the California Vehicle Authority (DMV) released the 2021 autonomous driving road test data of 28 autonomous driving companies, showing the driving situation of each company's each self-driving vehicle that has been tested and licensed in the past 1 year, including the mileage driven per month, the number of times it has been disengaged, and the reason for the departure.
At present, the global wave of research and development of civil autonomous driving technology is led by Google (Waymo), and Google's unmanned vehicles have started on the road from California. Coupled with the fact that California is the core of the global information industry and has gathered a large number of autonomous driving companies, California has become the center of the global autonomous driving industry.
At present, the world's most well-known autonomous driving companies and teams, including Google Waymo, Apple, Aurora, China's Baidu Apollo, Didi, Xiaoma Zhixing, AutoX, Wenyuan Zhixing and other companies are also in California technology research and development and road testing. Therefore, this report card almost represents the real strength of the global autonomous driving industry.
In order to cooperate with the development of the industry, California has also given full support to the autonomous driving industry in terms of policy, and various supporting regulations are very perfect, providing sufficient support for the development of the industry. One of the important regulations is to require each autonomous driving company to report driving, disengagement and accident data on time, and make this information public, so as to facilitate the outside world to understand the actual development status of autonomous driving technology.
The data is distributed across 6 tabular files, and because they are counted on a per-vehicle basis (Waymo alone has more than 600 cars), a table can have up to a maximum of thousands of rows.
After hours of collation, the car east and west team counted the data of all the 28 companies submitted, including fleet size, total test mileage, average vehicle test mileage, total number of breakouts, and MPD (average mileage per departure) five key data, to present you with a complete picture of the 2021 California autonomous driving test results.
In addition, it should be noted that mpd data is only a statistical result, and the relevant figures are reported by each enterprise itself, and the driving environment is completely different. Therefore, the MPD data is different and does not truly reflect the difference in technical capabilities between the two companies.
But at a time when there are no particularly good indicators in the industry to measure technical capabilities, Chedong believes that MPD data is still roughly reflecting a company's technical capabilities. After all, for the same company, the driving environment is relatively fixed, mpd reflects the stability of the technology in the company's test environment.
First, Waymo's team is far ahead of Apple's Buddhist test
Waymo, the leading self-driving company in the United States and the world, continued its leadership position, occupying the first place with a test range of 2.3258 million miles (3.743 million kilometers), while GM's Cruise ranked second with 876,000 miles (about 1.41 million kilometers).
▲ California DMV 2021 autonomous driving test data (with safety officers, ranked by total test mileage)
Waymo's test mileage is due to its huge fleet, which is statistically more than 200 more than the other companies on the list combined for 693 vehicles tested for autonomous driving.
Statistically, Waymo's current MPD data is not ahead, at 3356 miles (about 5400 kilometers), ranking 10th on the list.
In the MPD ranking of self-driving companies in 2021, the top two are Almotive and Wincher Technology. The two companies have shorter mileage, with the second-ranked Wincher Technology having a total test mileage of just 39 miles (about 62 kilometers) for the whole year of 2021. The two companies did not show any disconnection, so they tied for first place.
In addition, another Chinese company, AutoX, which ranks third, has sufficient test range and vehicle numbers, and has only one breakaway, and its MPD ranking is also higher than that of GM Cruise. While this list doesn't really measure a company's self-driving technology rankings, some of the data from it shows the technical level and scale of testing of these companies.
▲ California DMV 2021 autonomous driving test data (with safety officers, ranked by MPD)
It should be noted here that Waymo currently holds both a test license with and a test license without a safety officer in California. But in 2021, it did not submit data without security officer tests, and all data was tested by security officers.
Apple, which has long begun self-driving testing, seems to continue the Buddhist mentality of previous years, with only 37 cars and a total test mileage of about 13,200 miles (about 21,000 kilometers). The MPD values of the test vehicles are also relatively low, with an average of one intervention for safety personnel who drive 20 miles (about 32 kilometers).
Second, the six Chinese legions entered the top ten and performed very positively
According to documents released by the California DMV, nine Chinese autonomous driving companies (including self-driving companies founded in the United States Chinese) submitted reports. According to the MPD value, of the 28 companies that submitted reports, three Chinese companies entered the top five, and these three are Wincher Technology, AutoX and Didi.
It is worth noting that the number of autonomous vehicle takeovers of Wincher Technology is zero, ranking first in the list. Although Baidu Apollo has only experienced one automatic driving departure, because the total test mileage is not too long, its MPD value is only 1467 miles (about 2360 kilometers), ranking 13th in the overall list (with safety officers).
The data released by the DMV puts the data submitted by the autonomous driving companies from China in two rankings according to the test mileage and MPD.
▲2021 autonomous driving data of Chinese companies (ranked by total test mileage)
Judging from the self-driving test mileage, the total road test mileage of Xiaoma Zhixing is about 314,700 miles (about 506,400 kilometers), which is significantly more than other companies. With this data, Xiaoma Zhixing has also steadily landed at the top of the test mileage list of Chinese autonomous driving companies.
Among the more than 300,000 miles (about 4.8 million kilometers) of xiaoma Zhixing, the safety officer test mileage accounted for the largest proportion, about 305,600 miles (about 491,800 kilometers), and the fully unmanned test mileage was 9,042 miles (about 14,600 kilometers).
Up to now, a total of 8 companies around the world have obtained the california DMV's fully unmanned autonomous driving test license. They are Waymo, Nuro, Cruise, Zoox, AutoX, as well as Baidu Apollo, Xiaoma Zhixing and Wenyuan Zhixing. In California's all-unmanned autonomous driving test, only four companies submitted data: Baidu Apollo, Xiaoma Zhixing, General Cruise and Nuro.
▲California DMV 2021 fully unmanned autonomous driving test data (ranked by total test mileage)
If you look at the MPD value, Baidu Apollo's fully driverless car has not disengaged in the test range of nearly 10,000 miles (about 16,000 kilometers).
The fully unmanned autonomous driving mileage of Pony Zhixing has a disengagement situation in the test of less than 10,000 miles (about 16,000 kilometers). The information submitted by Xiaoma Zhixing to the DMV shows that the reason for the departure is that the automatic driving planning detection failed and the system entered fail-safe mode.
▲2021 autonomous driving data of Chinese companies (ranked by MPD data)
Third, except for GM, most car companies have a weak sense of existence
According to the DMV report, most of the 28 companies that submitted data were technology companies and self-driving start-ups, and only 5 belonged to OEMs: Cruise, Mercedes-Benz, Toyota, Nissan and Xiaokang.
▲2021 autonomous driving data of car companies and suppliers (sorted by test mileage)
Among these 5 car companies, only the GM Cruise performed more brightly. Both its test miles and MPDs are in the top five. Cruise is already offering paid self-driving services in parts of San Francisco, California. Next year Cruise will further expand the scale of the autonomous driving fleet, and it is believed that its autonomous driving test data will be further advanced next year.
▲ Cruise's Robotaxi vehicle
In addition to Cruise, the enthusiasm of other car companies for road testing is not so high, in the top ten of the test mileage, only Mercedes-Benz, its test mileage is 58,600 miles (about 94,300 kilometers), about 1/40 of Waymo. Toyota, Nissan and Xiaokang also ranked low, and the MPD value of Xiaokang was also relatively low, and the car had to take over every 14 miles (about 22 kilometers) driven.
In addition, the enthusiasm of suppliers is also slightly insufficient, only Qualcomm, Valeo and Nvidia submitted data. While Nvidia's MPD is the highest of the three companies, its MPD value is also relatively low, at just 341 miles (about 548 kilometers), and the other two Valeo and Qualcomm have lower MPD values.
Conclusion: Autonomous driving is speeding forward
Whether it is road test mileage or fleet size, self-driving cars in 2021 are a step forward from the previous year, with a total test mileage of 4 million miles (about 6.44 million kilometers).
At the same time, Chinese companies are also beginning to play a leading role in the field of autonomous driving. In the future, with the gradual opening of policies, autonomous vehicles will play an important role in more fields, and the era of automatic driving will also accelerate.