It has become an indisputable fact that the car, which has developed for more than a hundred years, has begun the largest upgrade in history. Electrification, networking, and intelligence will become the ultimate goal.
If the first half of the car upgrade focuses on the replacement of hardware in the structural components of the car, then the second half focuses on the construction of the software ecology. The first half is hardware-determined performance, and the second half is software-defined cars.
At present, the vast majority of new energy vehicles are electric vehicles, and some are hybrid vehicles. Both models can be classified as new energy vehicles.
The characteristics of new energy vehicles are that the role of the internal combustion engine is secondary, and it is replaced by software and hardware with motors, batteries, and electronic controls as the core, which brings a linear power experience on call. In addition, it has the advantages of high reliability and low maintenance costs due to the simple structure.
More than 20 years have passed since the first half of the car upgrade, and it is still in its infancy relative to the internal combustion engine vehicle that has developed for more than 130 years.
In 2021, global sales of new energy vehicles have reached 6.7 million units, with a market share of 9%. According to the EVTank research institute, by 2030, global sales of new energy vehicles are expected to reach 47.8 million units, accounting for nearly 50% of new car sales that year.
According to this forecast, in 2030, that is, 8 years later, fuel vehicles and new energy vehicles will be divided equally into the market, marking the completion of a small half of the upgrade process and the beginning of the second half of the process.
The situation is becoming clearer, and this trend has become irreversible under the environmental pressure of carbon neutrality and carbon peaking. It is not the traditional car companies that are leading this change, but the rookies who make cars.
These companies have not been in the automotive industry for a long time, up to more than 20 years. Tesla is active in the international market, and BYD is active in the domestic market. They have become the well-deserved head enterprises of new energy vehicles. However, traditional automobile companies, on the road of transformation, are unable to do so.
At the same time, those new car-making forces that have been established for more than 10 years, or even only a few years, have become another force that cannot be ignored, and BYD and Tesla are promoting this process together, leaving little time for fuel car companies.
Technology research and development, the construction of new product ecological chains all take time, with Tesla and BYD leading by 2 to 3 years, even if traditional car companies want to catch up, it is not an easy task.
We can already clearly feel the anxiety of traditional car companies, many old car companies began to catch up, but it is certain that in the next 10 years or so, it will be the world of Tesla and BYD, which will lead a group of new car-making forces to complete the replacement of fuel vehicles and go through the first half of car upgrades.
Different from the first half of the hardware dominance, in the second half of the car upgrade, the network and intelligence are beginning to be realized, and the characteristic of this stage is that the software determines the performance of the car, that is, the software-defined car.
The role of the car hardware as a whole, including the motor, the battery, and a part of the electronic control, has declined, the car has become a software implementation tool, and the car has become a mobile computer with four wheels, or a car-shaped artificial intelligence robot. The resulting changes to the automotive industry are even more significant.
At this stage, whoever still masters the technology has the core capabilities.
The technical base of intelligent autonomous driving is not in the servo mechanism, but in the brain of the car, that is, artificial intelligence, which is in the hands of information technology companies.
In the second half of the car upgrade, the competitive landscape will change significantly. From hardware to software, from monolithic to ecological. The real goal of the new car-making forces of those whose background is mostly information technology companies is at this stage, and those information technology head companies that have laid out or have not yet officially gone to sea will certainly not miss this opportunity. They are Huawei, Apple, Google, Baidu, Xiaomi, Tencent and so on.
If the hardware can form different standard systems around the main engine factory, then the software ecology will be integrated into a larger social system, such as roads, cities, e-commerce, tourism, catering, etc., and the software ecology needs a larger scale. In the hardware upgrade stage, if an automobile company can achieve a scale effect with an annual output of one million cars, then in the software upgrade stage, it is necessary to access tens of millions of cars to have a scale effect. The end result will be convergence.
Referring to the current information technology ecology, the autonomous driving base can only retain 2 to 3 standard systems, based on which large or small intelligent car solution companies will achieve profitability based on the proportion of technology in a car.
The second half of the car upgrade will present a different scene, Huawei, Apple, Xiaomi and other companies will be deeply involved, tesla will continue the current advantages.
In terms of intelligent driving, BYD's public information is not much, and it was once rumored to cooperate with Baidu in intelligent driving. However, with BYD's consistent performance, it is certain that BYD will definitely follow or even surpass in the second half of the car upgrade.