Car stuff (public number: chedongxi)
Author | Juice
Edited by | Xiaohan
Veteran drivers who often drive on the highway have a default rule, which is to stay away from heavy trucks.
The reason is that many large-scale traffic accidents often appear in heavy vehicles, and the impact of heavy trucks is often more serious. Public data show that the number of heavy trucks in the mainland only accounts for 10% of the motor vehicle market, but the proportion of major fatal accidents has reached 50%.
Although the frequency of heavy trucks in traffic accidents is very high, the demand for heavy trucks in the mainland, as an infrastructure maniac and road transport country, is also very high. On the one hand, the demand, on the other hand, the high accident rate, the safety of heavy trucks has become a common topic.
So, how to resolve this contradiction? Che Dongxi believes that intelligence will play a major role.
Under the strong impetus of policies and regulations, heavy trucks are implementing dual early warning and AEB and other functions as standard, which can help drivers to a certain extent, but it is still not enough to completely upgrade intelligently.
The L2L3 level of automatic driving is downgraded to commercial heavy trucks and decompressed the driver from the source, so as to achieve the combination of safety, cost and efficiency, so that intelligent driving can better promote the development of the industry.
From the successive actions of some head enterprises, it is not difficult to see their expectations and ambitions for intelligent heavy trucks.
For example, the domestic heavy-duty truck industry boss FAW Jiefang has created a best-selling model J7 with L2 + auxiliary driving system, a few days ago, Dongfeng Commercial Vehicle High-end Intelligent Heavy Truck Project chose to use intelligent driving technology MAXIEYE L2L3 level automatic driving solution, and the car was informed that the latter is through safe solutionSmart SolutionTrucker three solutions, fully cooperate with the main engine factory to accelerate the landing of smart heavy trucks.
It is not difficult to find that the current heavy-duty truck industry is at the threshold of intelligent upgrading, and the strength of OEMs and technical players do not want to miss this opportunity, and its accelerated layout will undoubtedly promote this process.
Smart driving technology MAXIEYE is an intelligent driving enterprise that has come out of the field of commercial vehicles, and the shipment volume of commercial vehicle front-loading market has reached hundreds of thousands of sets. Because of this, maxieYE of intelligent driving technology has a deeper understanding of the intelligent upgrading of commercial vehicles, and will make a significant contribution to the intelligent upgrading of commercial vehicles.
So what is the current status of intelligence in the field of commercial heavy trucks? What does the intelligent upgrade mean for the truck industry?
First, policy-driven intelligent upgrading The regulatory market has entered the Red Sea
In fact, the intelligent upgrade of the truck industry is not a concept that has only recently been proposed, and it is not a spontaneous upgrade by players in the industry.
The intelligent upgrading of the heavy truck industry was first driven by policies.
On September 1, 2020, the Ministry of Communications officially landed the "Safety Technical Conditions for Operating Trucks".
According to the requirements, trucks with a maximum speed of more than 18 tons and a maximum speed of more than 90kmh need to be mandatorily installed with LDW (lane departure warning) and FCW (forward collision warning); from May 2021, tractors and trucks with a maximum speed of more than 12 tons and a maximum speed of more than 90kmh need to be forced to install AEB (automatic emergency braking).
The implementation of the front-loading regulations has spawned an active safety track for heavy-duty trucks, and the number of new heavy-duty trucks added every year exceeds one million. From this point of view, the active security market for heavy trucks is also very large.
Under such a policy dividend, many suppliers have begun to exert efforts on this track, and many powerful players have emerged.
Since 2019, MAXIEYE has established extensive cooperative relations with domestic mainstream truck manufacturers, explored a set of semi-automatic compensation algorithm calibration and installation methods for the special scenarios of heavy trucks, solved the ADAS application problems of heavy trucks in different scenarios such as bumpy roads and full loads, and achieved large-scale mass production in 2020.
So far, maxieYE has shipped hundreds of thousands of sets in the commercial vehicle frontload market, and its market share is very high.
▲Smart Driving Technology MAXIEYE Headquarters
Driven by regulations, the heavy-duty truck industry will achieve active and safe coverage and enter the L1 era.
In fact, such a market shift is not difficult to understand, the rise of the regulatory AEB market is driven by policy, policy-driven market in the early stage can rely on policy dividends to develop, but when the product coverage reaches a certain level, the entire market needs technology to drive.
If the early regulation AEB market can be called the era of heavy-duty truck intelligence 1.0, the technology and market-driven era of heavy-duty truck intelligence 2.0 is also coming.
L2L3 level autonomous driving has been verified in the passenger car market and has begun to become the core competitiveness of car companies, and it is feasible to transplant it to trucks.
Therefore, in the era of heavy-duty truck intelligence 2.0, prioritizing the promotion of L2L3 level automatic driving in the field of heavy trucks can bring very practical benefits.
Second, the market growth is weak The transportation industry is facing great pressure
Seeing this, one more thing needs to be clarified, that is, why does the current truck industry have to upgrade intelligently again?
As an infrastructure demon, a large number of heavy trucks are needed in many places in China to undertake the function of transportation, so the demand for heavy trucks has been very large.
Since 2015, the sales volume of heavy-duty trucks in mainland China has maintained a growth trend and reached a peak in 2020. According to data from the China Automobile Association, domestic heavy-duty truck sales reached 1.623 million units in 2020.
But since then it has fallen into a slump. According to data from the China Automobile Association, domestic heavy-duty truck sales in 2021 were only 1.395 million units, down 14% year-on-year. What's more, the heavy-duty truck market has continued to fall since May last year.
▲Domestic truck sales continue to decline (picture from China Automobile Association)
According to the news from the sales market, in March, the domestic heavy-duty truck order rate is still very low, coupled with the continuous rise in oil prices, this month's heavy-duty truck sales may still decline further.
Sales volume directly reflects the profitability of car companies, and most heavy-duty truck companies are currently facing weak profit growth.
Overall, the heavy-duty truck market has reached a peak, the current growth is very weak, car companies urgently need to break the bottleneck, once again to achieve synchronous growth in sales and profits.
On the other hand, the transportation industry, which has a relatively large demand for heavy trucks, is not very good. Fuel prices are continuing to grow, while freight rates are not growing with them, and there are even general reductions.
▲Fuel prices continue to rise
Fuel costs continue to grow, coupled with expenses such as tolls and driver fees (heavy trucks require two drivers), many heavy truck fleets are not doing well.
In order to enhance or even maintain revenue, many heavy-duty truck drivers will choose to overload, and there is also a consensus in the heavy-duty truck circle: without overloading, you can't make money.
Many OEMs in the design of heavy trucks, is in accordance with the standard of load limitation to design, long-term overload will affect the performance of the vehicle, the safety of the vehicle will also be reduced.
In addition to overloading, the driver's long-term driving behavior also often appears, the harm of fatigue driving is self-evident, and most of the accidents caused by heavy trucks are caused by fatigue driving.
▲Heavy truck models have a higher accident rate
From the perspective of these two aspects, the field of heavy trucks has indeed encountered a bottleneck in development, and it is in urgent need of a sharp weapon to break the game.
In the current environment, intelligence is undoubtedly this game-breaking weapon. From the perspective of car companies, the improvement of the hardware and appearance of the vehicle is very limited, and it is impossible to make a qualitative breakthrough, while the software, especially the intelligent driving, is promising. At present, in the passenger car market, intelligent driving has become the core competitiveness, while the heavy-duty truck market is still a blue ocean.
From the perspective of the transportation industry, after the intelligent upgrading of the heavy-duty truck industry, the cost of use continues to rise, and the accident rate has remained high. Intelligence can improve the safety performance of vehicles and reduce operation and maintenance costs to a certain extent.
Because of this, policies and regulations have put forward requirements for the intelligent upgrading of the heavy-duty truck industry, and some suppliers such as Fortek, Jingwei Hengrun, Qingzhi Technology, and Smart Driving Technology MAXIEYE are also participating in this matter.
Third, stabilize the L1 speed up L2/L3 main engine factory has begun to act
The heavy-duty truck market is very similar to the passenger car market, and the research and development of all technologies is based on mass production as the primary condition.
The passenger car field is currently fully promoting L2 level autonomous driving and gradually transitioning to L3 level autonomous driving, which is also applicable to the field of heavy trucks.
Truck manufacturers are now thinking the same way, and as early as two or three years ago, they showed their ambitions and ambitions, and keen suppliers began to exert efforts.
Recently, Dongfeng Commercial Vehicle has reached a cooperation with MAXIEYE, a smart driving technology.
MaxIEYE, a smart driving technology, has been designated for the high-end smart heavy-duty truck project of Dongfeng Commercial Vehicle Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Dongfeng Commercial Vehicle"), which will provide the latter with intelligent heavy-duty truck technology solutions and services equipped with advanced pilot auxiliary driving system.
▲Dongfeng commercial vehicle product sequence
As a veteran player in the field of autonomous driving of commercial vehicles, MAXIEYE, a smart driving technology, has realized full-stack self-research and data closed-loop from perception to regulation. And the company has a lot of thinking about autonomous driving in the field of heavy trucks, and has implemented three major solution ideas: safety solutions for the regulatory market, intelligent solutions for market-oriented needs, and unmanned operation and technical solutions.
In addition, MAXIEYE and Desay SV jointly deploy unmanned technology and operation services, and will also promote the landing of fully driverless heavy trucks in the future.
Through this cooperation, the heavy-duty truck models produced by Dongfeng Commercial Vehicles in the future will have L2 level automatic driving, and even further upgrade to L3 level automatic driving.
In addition, FAW Jiefang, Foton and other powerful players are also promoting the landing of L2L3 level automatic driving.
Faw Jiefang officially delivered the elaborate J7 model on April 19, 2019, and the biggest highlight of this car is that it is equipped with intelligent driving technology.
▲FAW Jiefang J7
The car adopts the Liberation Super Pilot Autonomous Driving System, which can use the ACC adaptive cruise system on the highway, which can maximize driving safety. Because of this, this car has received feedback from the market quickly after its release, and has achieved annual sales of more than 10,000.
The head truck OEMs jointly choose to force L2L3 level automatic driving has proved that this path is the trend of the times, for other players, in order to continue to share in the era of smart truck 2.0, it is also necessary to catch up in L2L3 level automatic driving.
However, most truck players do not need to worry about their own development from scratch intelligent driving will miss the development of good opportunities, there are already many suppliers in the market are heavy truck intelligent driving efforts, such as Dongfeng Commercial Vehicle has chosen smart driving technology MAXIEYE products.
On the whole, the in-depth cooperation between car companies and suppliers will promote smart trucks to enter the 2.0 era.
Conclusion: Intelligence has become the key to breaking the situation in the heavy truck market
Whether from the perspective of the main engine factory or the transportation industry, it can be found that the development of heavy trucks has reached a bottleneck period, and if this bottleneck cannot be broken, many tail players will face elimination.
To crack this bottleneck, the best way is to carry out intelligent upgrades, and better products will have a larger market.
At present, the products of overseas heavy-duty truck companies have a good foundation in terms of intelligence, which is also lacking in domestic heavy-duty truck models. However, this situation is being alleviated, and head players and suppliers are working together to promote the intelligent upgrading of the heavy-duty truck industry.
After the intelligent upgrading of the heavy-duty truck market is completed, the entire market will be further expanded, and the entire industry will continue to develop healthily.