An annual self-driving competition.
Author | Zhao Jian
On February 10, the California Transportation Authority (DMV) released its latest "Disengagement Reprot" report on autonomous driving.
This report can often be seen as a measure of the technical capabilities of different autonomous driving companies. Under California law, companies licensed to test self-driving cars in California are required to submit this report on January 1 of each year, covering the date of licensing to November 30 of the following year.
Of course, because each company's autonomous driving data is reported by each company itself, and the driving environment is completely different, the report does not fully objectively reflect the difference in the technical capabilities of each company. Nevertheless, the report is highly informative.
The DMV defines "autonomous driving disengagement" as: 1) when autonomous technology failure is detected, the autonomous driving mode suspends operation. 2) When the safe operation of the vehicle requires the autonomous vehicle to test the driver out of autonomous mode, immediately manually control the vehicle and deactivate the autonomous mode. This is the case where an autonomous vehicle must be taken over by a human driver.
The 2021 autonomous driving departure report announced the road test data of 28 autonomous driving companies, of which 9 Chinese companies - Xiaoma Zhixing, Wenyuan Zhixing, AutoX, Didi, Yuanrong Qixing, Qingzhou Zhihang, Baidu Apollo, Xiaokang Automobile, Wincher Technology; there are 19 foreign companies - Waymo, Cruise, Zoox, Nuro, Mercedes-Benz, Argo AI, Nvidia, Toyota, Apple, Aurora, Lyft, AImotive, Gatik, Qualcomm, Nissan, Valeo, Easymile, Udelv, UATC.
Whose self-driving is better? We can look at it through a few key figures.
The first key figure is the "total test mileage". Theoretically, the more test miles, the more road test data is obtained, which feeds back into the optimization of autonomous driving algorithms. The total number of test miles is closely related to the number of test fleets in each company.
According to the report, Waymo topped the list with 2.32 million test miles and the company with the largest number of self-driving fleets, reaching 693 volumes.
With 305,000 miles, Pony Chi Heng ranked third, the Chinese company with the most test miles. The top ten companies in the test mileage are Waymo, Cruise, Xiaoma Zhixing, Zoox, Nuro, Mercedes-Benz, Wenyuan Zhixing, AutoX, Didi, and Argo AI.
The second key figure is the number of manual takeovers and the average mileage traveled between each of the two manual takeovers (MPI, Miles Per Intervention). The larger the MPI, the higher the technological maturity of autonomous driving.
In addition to the above-mentioned autonomous driving road test data with safety officers, DMV also released the detachment data of fully unmanned driving (the main driver does not have a safety officer).
GM Cruise ranks second in both total test mileage and MPI, and can be said to be the most "stable" self-driving company.
The best performing MPI company is The Chinese company AutoX, which has only taken over once in the whole year, with an MPI of 50,108 miles; the companies ranked two to ten are Cruise, Didi, Argo AI, Wenyuan Zhixing, Yuanrong Qixing, Xiaoma Zhixing, Waymo, Zoox, Nuro, ranking basically the same as the top ten companies in the total test mileage, the only change is that Mercedes-Benz exited the top ten, replacing The Chinese autonomous driving company Yuanrong Qixing.
In addition, the companies worth noting are Baidu Apollo, whose MPI ranks eleventh; Apple, a big car maker, or the average takeover mileage is "mediocre", with a total test mileage of 13272 miles, ranking 14th, and its 663 takeovers are also the highest number of companies, with an MPI of 20 miles, ranking 22nd.
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, Baidu Apollo, Xiaoma Zhixing and Wenyuan Zhixing. But only four companies released the relevant data this time - Baidu Apollo, Xiaoma Zhixing, Cruise, Nuro, its total test mileage is 9564.6 miles, 9042.87 miles, 6365.6 miles, 9.38 miles, respectively.
Among them, Pony Zhixing once broke away. On October 28 last year, the Pony Zhixing driverless test vehicle turned right and hit a central divider and a traffic sign in Fremont, California, without injuring anyone. In November 2021, Pony Chi Heng suspended the test of unmanned driving.
It can be seen that the distance of automatic driving is truly "unmanned", and there is still a considerable distance.
Judging from the comprehensive data of the 2021 autonomous driving departure report, autonomous driving shows a trend of confrontation between China and the United States. Moreover, autonomous driving is no longer just the patent of AI companies and technology companies, but also more and more automakers (Mercedes-Benz, Toyota, Nissan, etc.) and automotive industry chain companies (NVIDIA, Qualcomm, Valeo, etc.).
An era of autonomous driving brawl is beginning.
Automotive industry chain companies (NVIDIA, Qualcomm, Valeo, etc.).