Text | Angel Lee
Edit | Su Jianxun
On February 10, 2022, the California Transportation Authority DMV released its 2021 autonomous driving data report. According to 36Kr statistics, a total of 27 companies submitted annual reports to DMV, accumulating more than 4 million miles of autonomous driving, double the total mileage of 1.99 million miles last year.
The California Motor Vehicle Administration DMV has long been recognized as one of the most authoritative regulatory bodies in the field of autonomous driving. The autonomous driving road test report and collision report released every year have also become an important criterion for the technical evaluation of autonomous driving enterprises.
As the global leader in autonomous driving, Waymo topped the list with 2.32 million test miles, GM Cruise and Pony Zhixing Pony.ai finished second and third with 876,000 and 305,000 miles, respectively, and Zoox and Nuro ranked fourth and fifth with 155,000 and 59,000 miles. Wenyuan Zhixing, AutoX, and Didi also ranked among the top ten in mileage accumulation.
36 Kr mapping
In terms of fleet size, Waymo is far ahead of other companies with a fleet of 693 vehicles, but according to statistics, Waymo's actual road test vehicles are 567. The actual road test vehicles of the General Cruise are 138, Zoox 57, Pony Zhixing 38, Apple 35, and Lyft 23.
The other two important indicators are the number of vehicle takeovers and the average takeover mileage (MPI), which is also considered to be one of the important indicators for judging the company's autonomous driving technology.
According to statistics, Apple's self-driving vehicles will take over as many as 663 times in 2021, which is the largest number of all companies that submit road test reports. Toyota, for its part, saw 419 manual takeovers. Both have a year-round autonomous driving test mileage of about 130,000, and on average, there will be a manual takeover every 30 miles.
The best performer is the domestic autonomous driving company AutoX. Although the actual number of road test vehicles was only 7, it was only taken over once a year, with an average takeover mileage (MPI) of 50,108 miles.
The GM Cruise is a close second, with an average takeover mileage (MPI) of 41,719 miles, on par with last year. Didi and Argo took over an average of 40,744 miles and 36,733 miles apart, respectively. Waymo's MPI ranking dropped from first place in 2020 to eighth place. Yuan Rong Qixing, Wen yuan zhixing, and Xiaoma Zhixing performed well in this field.
However, Waymo questioned the California DMV report in 2019, saying that many of Waymo's road tests were conducted in areas such as Phoenix and Detroit outside of California, and most of the valuable data came from Phoenix. So the California DMV report doesn't represent Waymo's true strength.
Therefore, average takeover mileage (MPI) is only a metric, not an absolute criterion. The evaluation of enterprise technology still needs to be actually combined with factors such as the size of the enterprise fleet, the complexity of the road test environment, and the scope of operation and service.
In addition to the above-mentioned autonomous driving road test data with safety officers, the California DMV also released a fully driverless road test mileage and takeover report (the main driver does not have a safety officer).
According to the report, in 2021, only Baidu Apollo, GM Cruise, Nuro, and Xiaoma Zhixing announced the number of full driverless miles, which were: 3188 miles, 6365 miles, 9.38 miles, and 9042 miles, all of which did not exceed 1,000 miles. It can be seen that the progress of all-driverless road testing is relatively backward than the progress of general automatic driving.
36Kr found that only the full driverless vehicle of Pony Zhixing in 4 companies has had a takeover, which seems to be related to the previous "withdrawal" of the California full driverless test.
On October 28, 2021, the Pony Zhixing vehicle collided with the barrier and road sign of a road in California in automatic driving mode. Because of this fully unmanned accident, Xiaoma Zhixing has been called off the California fully driverless driving test and has not yet recovered.
In addition, according to the data of the official website of The California DMV, in 2021, there were 117 accidents in California autonomous driving throughout the year, 64 traffic accidents related to Waymo, accounting for almost half, followed by 30 general Cruise unmanned vehicles, 9 Zoox unmanned vehicles, 5 Apple unmanned vehicles, 3 Wenyuan Zhixing, 3 Argo AI unmanned vehicles, 2 Xiaoma Zhixing unmanned vehicles, and 1 Lyft unmanned vehicle.
Above, from the overall data of the California DMV in 2021, Waymo, General Cruise and other companies are still at the forefront of automatic driving, and Cruise has a hidden momentum of surpassing Waymo. Judging from cruise's recent 1.35 billion financing from SoftBank, its valuation of $30 billion is already comparable to Waymo's.
In China, baidu, Xiaoma Zhixing, Wenyuan Zhixing, AutoX, Yuanrong Qixing, Qingzhou Zhixing and other autonomous driving companies are also clinging to it. Players in the traditional automotive industry chain such as NVIDIA, Toyota, Nissan, and Mercedes-Benz are also secretly sharpening their knives.
However, when the match point of this match will come, no one seems to have an answer.