According to the saying that "high-precision mass production is on the car or landed in 2023", the vast majority of industry participants are already on the road.
Written by | Tabor Net Muzi
Edit | Shikino
The hotter intelligent driving, the more urgent it is to position the car with high precision.
Since 2021, the OEMs have successively launched more than 10 models equipped with high-precision positioning technology, such as Xiaopeng P5, NIO ET7, Nezha U Pro, Eian V Plus, Eian LX Plus, Great Wall Mech Dragon, BAIC Polar Fox Alpha S Hi Edition, etc.
The traditional giants are beginning to be anxious to change, but they are cautious; the new forces grow barbarically and have a tendency to become front-runners.
"From no intelligence to low-order L1, L2 to high-order L3, L4, etc., the penetration rate and assembly rate of high-precision positioning have gradually increased." Zeng Kai, assistant general manager of Daoyuan Electronics, said.
With the growth of the loading rate of L2+ and L3 autonomous driving functions, the market prospect of high-precision positioning has also been recognized by capital. Since October 2021, gaojing positioning service providers Daoyuan Electronics and Liufen Technology have completed financing of hundreds of millions of yuan.
Liufen Technology and Space-time Daoyu, which began to launch high-precision positioning road tests in 2021, have also recently completed high-precision positioning national large-scale road tests and are rushing to the first year of Beidou mass production.
The only certainty is that whether it is a new car-making force or a traditional car company, the requirements for positioning precision products are getting higher and higher, and the demand is becoming more and more clear.
Pinch the market demand
Departing from Beijing, passing through 17 provinces, 2 autonomous regions and 4 municipalities directly under the central government, the test vehicle equipped with liufen technology's self-developed algorithm technology was tested in 15 key cities across the country, such as Beijing, Dalian, Wuhan, Hefei, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Chongqing and Chengdu.
"This is the first time that we have done a nationwide large-scale road test after serving commercial use, and we have greatly upgraded and adjusted our technology and algorithms." Sun Xuejia, marketing director of Liufen Technology, said.
From north to south, from coastal to inland areas, from places with more to less obstruction, the route blends to cover viaducts, shades, tunnels, one-sided bridges, urban canyons, low-rise buildings and many other scenes.
Sun Xuejia said that customers such as depots pay more attention to the service accuracy and coverage of the company's products in different scenarios. "Basically, cities with high customer attention and cities with active ionospherics are the main considerations of our road tests. When designing the route, we will also more or less consider some cities and scene tendencies of the oem's future road tests. ”
Guiding Yuan Electronics, a service provider that provides high-precision positioning technology solutions for OEMs, admits that it is not easy to meet the positioning needs of the automotive industry, especially the intelligent driving industry.
In view of the needs of automobiles to meet the harsh environment, high performance in complex scenarios and long-term (covering the whole life cycle of the automobile), when high-precision positioning enterprises hope to cooperate with the main engine factory to achieve mass production, the main engine factory naturally puts forward many specific and stringent requirements: for example, "the product requirements of the main engine factory for the upstream supply chain are zero defects, which is very large for the overall capabilities of the supplier."
For enterprises, the mass production of high-precision positioning technology needs to meet a set of processes and specifications of the automotive industry, and the run-in with the main engine factory is inevitable. Zeng Kai said, "It is very prudent for OEMs to launch new products and new features. From the early contact, the main engine factory from the product, quality, process capabilities and other aspects, the partners to conduct detailed research, inspection, guidance, and even some main engine factories will personally send people to the site supervision and guidance, to help suppliers meet the strict requirements. ”
After all, from the perspective of automakers, the biggest challenge facing mass production of autonomous driving is how to ensure absolute safety.
Stepping on the pit in front, starting to have mass production experience or a certain shipment, which is a new starting point for high-precision positioning enterprises. "Because automotive customers value the company's mass production experience, especially the market-proven (such as experience in high-volume shipments).
Zeng Kai said that from the current customer point of view, most of the new car forces and traditional car companies will successively launch new models with high-precision positioning since this year.
Batch, starting with L3
"The core needs of the manufacturers we are in contact with are basically the same, and most of the car companies that do autonomous driving have been developing new models in the future L3 and L4 in the past two years." Park Dong-kook, president of Hua test navigation, thinks.
At least from the perspective of market demand, the consensus of most passenger car autonomous vehicle manufacturers at present is basically to install Beidou high-precision positioning units.
What excites Park Dongguo is that in the second half of last year, especially after September, the market share of new energy vehicles has exceeded 20%.
According to existing statistics, in 2021, China's new energy vehicle market share has reached 13.4%, from the sales point of view, December sales reached 530,000 vehicles, the market share of 19.2%, has been close to 20%, and december new energy passenger car market share of 20.6%.
This also means that the relatively low cost of use, the subversive intelligent technology configuration, and the space for upgradability and expansion have attracted a large number of users to pay for it.
Although the degree of development of each depot is not consistent, in Park Dongguo's view, aiming at the layout of the L3 and L4 stages has become a common strategic choice of most depots.
It is not difficult to land, but it is difficult to mass production. From the perspective of high-precision positioning, running to full automatic driving or higher level of automatic driving to mass production, it is more necessary to follow the rules of the automotive industry, "high precision, cost reduction, high quality and more reliable."
Relatively speaking, Zeng Kai believes that passenger cars have higher and stricter requirements for various details of products than commercial vehicles, which means that it is more difficult to locate passenger cars with high precision.
Previously, the cost of high-precision combined positioning technology was relatively high, and the price of a set of solutions could even exceed the price of a car. Zeng Kai said, "Customers in the automotive industry hope that in the future, the combined navigation products can be less than 1,000 yuan, and to meet the stringent requirements of the automotive industry such as performance and quality." If the market volume cannot be raised, cost control is difficult to meet customer needs. ”
As of August 2021, the cumulative delivery volume of front-loading of Daoyuan Electronics has exceeded 100,000 sets, and the actual road safety mileage of consumers in various scenarios of passenger car customers has accumulated more than 10 million kilometers.
"The market will be faster and bigger than everyone expects." Park Dong-kook said, "With the deepening of autonomous driving technology, new models and services for high-precision positioning will continue to be derived in the future, including high-precision maps and location services. ”
Previously, some insiders said that there are dozens of companies in the entire map industry that do high-precision maps, which only meet the policy threshold for access, but few companies can provide mass production data.
At present, some car manufacturers have started to lay out the L4 stage from the hardware. According to Park Dongguo, "From a small batch at the beginning of this year to a large batch at the end of the year, the hardware was installed first." As for the software in the car, the follow-up can be achieved through upgrades. ”
Mass production orders are in hand, and the products still need to be polished
At present, there are not many manufacturers that have really entered the field of high-precision positioning of passenger cars.
"The company's on-board high-precision positioning products are applied to models such as the Xiaopeng P7, and the current impact on the company's performance is small." Beidou enterprise Zhonghaida publicly said.
After all, some insiders pointed out that "the development of a new model in the automotive field requires a development cycle of nearly 3 years." This also means that enterprises participating in the development cycle of car companies will have no new business income within three years. ”
However, as early as the development of the autonomous driving industry, market participants in other fields of Wei habitual navigation combination algorithms and other aspects of precipitation for too long. Park Dongguo introduced, "In the past few years, the market has not yet started, and everyone is doing preliminary research. Huace's Weizhi combination navigation technology has been applied in batches in the automatic driving of agricultural machinery, unmanned aerial vehicles, unmanned ships, and the automatic driving of relatively closed and semi-closed scenarios such as steamship terminals and minecarts. ”
After automakers began to plan for autonomous driving on a large scale, the tracking of the market by high-precision positioning service providers began to become intensive.
From the perspective of automakers, Sun Xuejia believes that "high-precision positioning services are a business that needs to be combined with high-precision positioning terminals."
Just as intelligent driving was born in traditional industries and incubated in the high-precision positioning of relatively traditional industries, it began to move from the original spelling technology to the development trend of fighting quality and cost.
The first is to improve the related hardware products. Sun Xuejia believes that high-precision positioning services are closely related to the performance of terminal hardware, such as chips, modules, complete machines, etc. Hardware terminals produced based on vehicle-level standards can better support high-precision positioning from the perspective of service.
Recently, Zhonghaida also said that its on-board high-precision satellite positioning products have been applied to many automobile manufacturing enterprises, auto parts suppliers and automatic driving solution providers such as SAIC, Xiaopeng and other intelligent driving mass production models or test projects, and began to be gradually shipped in batches at fixed points.
Even if many self-driving companies are still in the process of "unclear business models and crazy burning money", the attention of capital circles to automatic driving has not declined. In the eyes of industry insiders, "this is because many people see the opportunities and blue oceans, like the leading Ningde era that has just begun." The space and capacity of this market have been completely seen by domestic hardware manufacturers. It's just that we still need a long period of time to learn from foreign experience and run in with domestic manufacturers to make better products. ”
Of course, the combination of autonomous driving solutions and fusion positioning still has many processes that need to be verified. Subsequently, Liufen said that it is planning to release new high-precision positioning service products, and with the continuous upgrading and iteration of services, the company will also prepare a wider range of large-scale road tests.
Park Dongguo, president of Huace Navigation, said that this year is the first year that Beidou has truly entered the mass production of autonomous driving applications.
If you follow the saying of "high-precision mass production on the car or achieve landing in 2023", the vast majority of industry participants are still on the road.