Recently, the California Traffic Control Institute (California DMV) released the 2021 Disengagement Report for autonomous driving. The data shows the road test data and problems encountered by 26 mainstream autonomous driving companies in California in 2021. According to the report data, the road test mileage of the autonomous driving system of 26 autonomous driving companies exceeded 4 million miles, which doubled compared with the road test data in 2020. From the perspective of distance and human intervention, the performance of autonomous driving systems of technology companies is far superior to that of traditional car companies.
The core points of this article:
1, Waymo is still a leading enterprise in the field of automatic driving, but Cruise, Xiaoma Zhixing and other companies are also catching up, the industry will present a "tiger and many wolves" situation.
2. There is no clear correlation between the number of human takeovers and the test mileage.
3, super 8 adults for the takeover situation is happening on the street.
4, Apple's automatic driving data performance is not satisfactory, there are more cars, less road test data, and more takeovers.
5, the lack of capacity of self-driving cars themselves is the main reason for human takeover.
6. Compared with traditional car companies, technology companies have performed better in automatic driving systems.
First, the rapid growth of road test data The pattern of "one tiger and many wolves" has gradually emerged
Although the mileage of autonomous driving road tests has doubled in 2021, most of the mileage data is provided by the first few companies. According to the report data, Waymo, Google's self-driving company, contributed more than 2 million miles of road test data in 2021, GM's Cruise contributed nearly 900,000 miles of road test data, and Chinese self-driving company Xiaoma Zhixing provided more than 300,000 miles of road test data. The three companies accounted for more than 85% of the total road test data in 2021, while the remaining 15% of the road test data was provided by the remaining 23 companies.
Overall, the top ten test miles are: Waymo, Cruise, Pony Zhixing, ZOOX, NURO, Mercedes-Benz, Wenyuan Zhixing, AutoX, Didi and ArgoAI, of which 9 are technology companies.
In terms of the number of test vehicles, Waymo still has an overwhelming advantage. As you can see from the chart above, Waymo will use more test vehicles in 2021 than all other companies combined, reaching 693 test vehicles. In second place was Cruise, which was a 138-unit test vehicle. This was followed by Amazon's ZOOX (85 vehicles), AUTOX (44 vehicles), Pony Zhixing (38 vehicles), and Apple (37 vehicles). The rest of the california companies have fewer than 30 test models.
On the whole, Waymo undoubtedly occupies the first position in the number of test vehicles and the mileage of autonomous driving road measurements, and its autonomous driving road data is far more than other companies. The number of road test vehicles determines the data of the test mileage to a certain extent, and the amount of road measurement mileage data will directly affect the progress speed of the automatic driving system. Relevant people in the industry said that the progress of autonomous driving systems is very dependent on road data, and Waymo's advantage in data volume will be transformed into an advantage in the speed of system evolution. In theory, waymo's autonomous driving system will evolve faster and faster, and it will be difficult for other companies to catch up with its pace at the level of natural evolution of the system, and can only narrow the gap by continuously optimizing the system.
In other words, Waymo still occupies the leading position in the field of autonomous driving, but companies such as Cruise and Xiaoma Zhixing are also catching up.
Second, the street scene is still the bottleneck of the automatic driving system Apple's automatic driving performance is disappointing
In addition to releasing the driving mileage data for autonomous driving, the California Traffic Control Office also published the number of human takeovers and the reasons for it.
In terms of the number of takeovers, Apple's self-driving system has the highest number of human interventions, reaching 663 times, followed by Toyota (419 times), Waymo (292 times), Mercedes-Benz (272 times), easymile (222 times).
Combined with the number of road test cars and test mileage data, there is no obvious correlation between the number of human takeovers and test miles. Although Waymo has the highest number of road tests, the number of human takeovers has also reached 292. Compared with cruise, Xiaoma Zhixing and other companies, Waymo's human takeovers are more than 10 times higher, while the road test mileage is only about three times that of Cruise, so Waymo's takeover rate is higher. Companies such as Toyota and Mercedes-Benz have shorter road test miles, but they have a higher number of artificial takeovers, making it into the top five. Therefore, the number of human takeovers mainly depends on the technical ability level of each enterprise.
In addition to Waymo, it is surprising that Apple has high hopes. Apple's 2021 DMV data performance is disappointing. Apple has 37 road test vehicles in 2021, completing a total of 13,272 miles of test data, with an average of only 359 miles per test car. Although the overall test mileage is not high, Apple's number of takeovers ranks first, on average, to each car, Apple's self-driving system needs to be artificially taken over every 21 miles, which is completely unable to reach the level of automatic driving.
Apple's achievement of this achievement is actually partly a sign. In 2021 alone, four executives left Apple Cars, including Doug Field, head of Apple's car-building program, Jamie Weedow, head of Apple's self-driving car safety and regulation team, Doug Field, vice president of special projects, and Dave Scott, head of Apple's automotive-related robotics team. The constant loss of executives has made it difficult for Apple's "Titan" project to push, and may also affect the test results of Apple's DMV autonomous driving in 2021.
From the perspective of the cause of the takeover, the number of human takeovers in the street scene is much higher than that of other scenes. According to DMV self-driving car takeover data, the over 8 adult takeovers occurred on the street, and the remaining 20% occurred on highways and interstate highways. According to statistics, there are more than 170 reasons for the human takeover of the car, including the inability to change lanes, the deviation of the car's positioning, accidental braking, GPS signal errors, the inability to change lanes safely, and so on.
It is worth noting that of all the takeover reasons, the lack of capacity of self-driving cars themselves is the main reason for the human takeover. Judging from the human intervention reasons reported by the system, in the street environment, the system will occasionally fail to identify the road, fail to plan the route correctly, and fail to predict the behavior of other vehicles. In addition, when there is a complex traffic situation, the driver will also artificially take over the vehicle to ensure safety.
At the hardware level, the automatic driving system will occasionally have GPS positioning errors, and the sensor will not work in a harsh environment, but compared with software errors, the takeover due to hardware errors is an occasional event.
From a corporate perspective, Nissan and Mercedes-Benz's autonomous driving systems are more likely to intervene humanly due to errors in the basic logic of the system, driving planning errors, and sensor perception errors. The following table is part of the reason for the human takeover.
The human intervention of technology companies is more due to path deviations in cars, forced parallel lanes by other vehicles, and overly aggressive road and speed planning. The following table is part of the reason for the human takeover.
Overall, compared with traditional auto companies, technology companies perform better on autonomous driving systems.
Third, China's autonomous driving companies are still at the forefront The average annual takeover mileage has advantages
In addition to paying attention to the road measurement mileage and the number of artificial takeovers of each company, the data of the mileage traveled between takeovers is also very important. As the name suggests, the mileage traveled between the takeovers is how far the system can rely on its own ability to run between two artificial takeovers, and the higher the mileage number, the better the stability of the system, and the more comprehensive the scenes covered by the system.
Judging from the single mileage traveled between takeovers, Chinese companies AutoX, Didi, Wenyuan Zhixing, Xiaoma Zhixing, etc. are all ranked in the top ten. It is worth noting that AutoX, Didi and ArgoAI, three self-driving companies that have tested more than 30,000 miles, have only taken over once. From this perspective, China's autonomous driving companies are still at the forefront of technology.