The "Medici effect" opened the curtain on a new automotive revolution.
As early as the 15th century, the Italian Medici family invested extensively in finance, art, philosophy, science, politics and other fields, encouraging innovative pioneers in different industries.
It is precisely because of the synergy and complementarity between different disciplines that the various branches have made spiraling progress, and the glorious Renaissance has occurred and developed.
To put it simply, the "Medici effect" refers to the use of cross-thinking to rearrange and combine different fields, concepts, and technologies to get rid of the bottleneck of development in a single field; through more dimensions of cross-progress, to achieve the evolution of quantitative change to qualitative change.
Many emerging technologies at the bottom are organically integrated and fissioned, and cluster innovations are generated.
The same is true of the electric intelligent revolution of the automobile, backed by the continuous rise of electronic software and hardware technology, algorithms and computing power, and the "skill tree" (branch) is lit up one by one, coupled and added, driving and nurturing the breakthrough innovation of the entire automobile industry.
On March 25-27, the 8th China Electric Vehicle 100 Forum (2022) was held at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing to discuss the new stage of market-oriented development of new energy vehicles.
Miao Wei, deputy director of the Economic Committee of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, said at the meeting that the deep synergy across industries is crucial to the intelligent development of the next generation of automobiles. It not only requires the participation of automobile OEMs, but also requires close collaboration in multiple fields such as machinery, communications, artificial intelligence, Internet, chips, road transportation, urban construction, etc., and ultimately builds the car into a large-scale mobile intelligent terminal.
Source: Electric Vehicle 100
Wan Gang, vice chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and chairman of the China Association for Science and Technology, pointed out that in the face of the trend of cross-industry integration and development of new energy vehicles, it is necessary to further strengthen the automobile and energy, transportation, information and communication industries, overall planning and organization coordination in terms of policies, standards, cutting-edge technology demonstration, etc., cohesion and development, and accelerate the realization of high-level industrial integration and development.
01 The underlying technology is maturing day by day
The precondition for the automobile revolution to occur is that the revolution of new energy and underlying technology and technology will take the lead.
Miao Wei said that the global automotive industry is experiencing major changes unprecedented in a century.
First, the powertrain is shifting from an internal combustion engine drive to a purely electric drive; second, the control system is evolving from distributed ECUs to centralized domain controllers, and then to computing platforms; third, automotive products will move from closed systems to open systems.
The state has set the goal of energy conservation and emission reduction in 2021: strive to achieve carbon peaking by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060.
The core of the "double carbon" strategy is to advocate a green, environmentally friendly and low-carbon lifestyle and reduce the consumption and dependence on fossil energy. Clean renewable energy sources such as photovoltaics and wind power have reshaped the green power generation end, while the rise of new energy vehicles is to help implement the "double carbon" strategy on the consumer side.
Under this influence, domestic new energy vehicles have flourished and taken an epoch-making step.
According to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, in 2021, the sales of domestic new energy vehicles reached 3.521 million units, a year-on-year increase of 160%, even exceeding the total sales volume of the three years from 2018 to 2020; in contrast, the sales of traditional fuel vehicles fell by 3.1% year-on-year.
BYD (002594. SZ) and other traditional car companies, together with New Car-making forces such as Weilai (09866.HK), Ideal (02015.HK), and Xiaopeng (09868.HK), have jointly completed the prelude to the counterattack of new energy on traditional fuel vehicles, increasing the market penetration rate of new energy vehicles to nearly 13.4%, an increase of 7.6 percentage points compared with the previous year.
After entering 2022, new energy vehicles continue to break the trend, sales and penetration rates are rising steadily, and the certainty of new energy has been recognized by the market, and a magnificent new scene will be staged.
Wang Chuanfu, chairman and president of BYD, predicts that in 2022, the sales volume of domestic new energy vehicles may reach 5 million units, with a penetration rate of more than 20%.
Electrification, in the first half of the perfect completion of their own carbon reduction task of the declaration, the industry pattern has gradually taken shape. The time has come to the second half, how should many new energy vehicle players compete? The baton was then passed to the hands of "intelligence", which is the top priority of car companies in the second half.
It is not only the struggle between new energy and "new forces". The data shows that in 2021, self-driving cars equipped with L2 and below account for 38% of the total new energy vehicles, accounting for 22.2% of full-caliber passenger cars.
In other words, a considerable number of fuel vehicles have also begun to use automatic driving systems below L2 level, such as adaptive cruise, automatic emergency braking, lane keeping systems and automatic parking.
As a result, intelligent driving is setting off a global industry-wide automobile revolution, and it is also a curve overtaking of traditional automobile concepts. Regardless of the old and the new, the players drove to the straight-line acceleration schedule, competing for absolute driving force.
He Xiaopeng, founder of Xiaopeng Motors, once said: "Smart cars will bring about a change of the times, and the transformation of feature phones to smart phones, cars need to have stronger computing, networking and interaction capabilities, it is not only a car, but also an intelligent carrier of information." ”
In the past decade, we have witnessed the revolution and replacement of smart phones for feature phones, software, hardware, and systems have been continuously upgraded, user experience has continued to improve, and industry leaders in the new era such as Apple and Huawei have emerged.
With the development of the mobile phone industry as a reference, car companies and upstream suppliers that have already occupied a place are walking on thin ice, actively laying out the future development direction, hoping to maintain competitiveness in the "arms race", for fear of being surpassed and left behind.
Digitalization is the initial stage of intelligence, the core is the perception layer, only accurate and complete collection of the required information, beyond the human eye intelligent analysis is possible to achieve. Thanks to the development of high-precision sensors, the hyper-perception of automobiles has been commercialized on a large scale.
Complex and diverse data is inseparable from the improvement of the underlying computing power. Vehicle-grade chips can be described as the "brain" of the next generation of automotive artificial intelligence, which is used to process the data received by numerous sensors.
The progress of perception and computing is only the beginning of bicycle intelligence, and the future interconnection with the Internet, intelligent roads, artificial intelligence and other advanced supporting facilities is the core appeal of intelligence.
In any case, smart cars are making great strides forward, and many practitioners behind them hope to gain a first-mover advantage in this automotive revolution and enjoy the "early bird" dividend of the market.
Automobile intelligence is at a critical juncture of comprehensive outbreak.
02 Head enterprise full stack distribution point
Being intelligent is not an easy task. It requires full-stack participation with digital perception, computing, execution, interconnection, etc., which is a complete set of systems.
For example, one of the most headaches for old drivers is the difficulty of parking, and autonomous valet parking, as an entry-level application for intelligent driving, can solve this pain point.
To achieve functions such as memory parking and remotely controlled valet parking by mobile phones, hardware such as cameras and ultrasonic sensors is required, as well as centimeter-level high-precision maps. In this way, there is no need to carry out large-scale renovation of existing parking lots, and intelligent functions such as self-picking and returning of cars, cross-layers, obstacles, parking, and queuing can be realized in public parking lots.
Commercial Valet Parking will not only greatly enhance the user experience, but also have considerable economic benefits.
Years of operational testing practice have confirmed that Valet Parking is suitable for more than 99% of parking spaces on the market, providing users with convenient one-stop service while helping operators reduce operating costs by 30%.
Assisted driving is another major application that is easily perceived by consumers.
L2 pilot assisted driving for complex urban roads needs to rely on vision and radar perception to complete the driving ability from point A to point B, and on the basis of free hands, it can also improve the safety level, identify and eliminate "risks that you don't know", and truly assist driving.
Speaking of safety assurance, Li Xiang, founder, chairman and CEO of Ideal Automobile, made a proposal in the offline exchange of the "Hundred People's Meeting": make AEB (Automatic Emergency Braking) standard.
The principle of AEB is also to monitor the surrounding vehicles and pedestrians through radar and cameras, and after detecting the potential risk of collision, the system will take corresponding early warning and braking measures, thereby greatly reducing the safety accidents of road traffic. This idea was also unanimously recognized by the leaders of the guests present.
There are more and more different intelligent modules such as the above, and they are increasingly playing an important role in the driving scenario, which requires automotive suppliers to organically combine these functions with the underlying technology and the cloud network car terminal to make a complete solution. It can not only realize the identity of different module functions, but also reduce costs and improve the feasibility of landing.
Miao Wei stressed at the meeting that the realization of fully driverless cars is the ultimate goal of smart cars. At present, there are two development routes in the world, the first of which is the step-by-step development path represented by Baidu and Waymo. The other is the gradual development path represented by Tesla. And now, China's Baidu (09888. HK) has clearly caught up.
Indeed, automatic/driverless is the crown of smart cars, which is a figurative embodiment of the ultimate form of the industry.
On September 27, 2021, the "Intelligent Connected Vehicle Industry Development Report (Shunyi Index 2021)" released by the China Electronics Information Industry Development Research Institute shows that the integrated automatic driving solution of "Vehicle Road Cloud Network" surpasses the traditional automatic driving and similar solutions with only bicycle intelligence.
Xin Guobin, vice minister of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, proposed that in terms of supply chain and industrial chain, it is also necessary to deepen integration and innovation, strengthen the innovation and construction of manufacturing centers, accelerate the research and industrialization of key technologies such as new system batteries, vehicle specification-level chips, and vehicle operating systems, promote the integrated development of vehicle and road network cloud maps, accelerate the construction of new information network road infrastructure, and expand the demonstration and application of intelligent networked vehicles in multiple scenarios.
For example, Baidu Apollo was launched in 2017, as the world's first open platform for autonomous driving, Baidu Apollo can help car companies combine vehicles and hardware systems to quickly build a complete automatic driving system of their own.
Following the first domestic autonomous driving commercialization pilot "settled" in Beijing Yizhuang, driverless Robotaxi has gradually opened up the normal commercial operation, Baidu autonomous driving travel service platform "Radish Run" has landed in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Chongqing, Changsha, Cangzhou, Yangquan eight cities, Beijing, Chongqing, Yangquan three places to open charging operations.
Chen Shanzhi, deputy general manager of China Information and Communication Technology Group and director of the expert committee, said that roadside coverage and vehicle-side penetration rate are the main issues in promoting the coordinated development of "double-smart" cities.
The installation of C-V2X (Cellular Vehicle to Everything) equipment at intersections and important dangerous sections of urban roads is a prerequisite for determining whether the assisted driving of intelligent connected vehicles can operate. If the real-time communication between the car and the road is not connected, the effect of "double wisdom" will not appear.
Apollo intelligent driving products are dimensionality reduction applications with L4 level automatic driving capabilities, with mass production capabilities, which can be installed on passenger cars for ordinary users to purchase and use.
At present, Baidu's intelligent driving products ANP (Apollo Navigation Pilot, Pilot Assisted Driving) and AVP (Apollo Valet Parking, autonomous parking) have realized the global intelligent driving assistance capability from the parking domain to the driving domain, which can support the whole scene of the city.
As an electronic map with absolute accuracy and relative accuracy of less than 1 meter, high precision, high freshness and high richness, the HIGH-precision map should not only contain static road information such as road type, curvature, lane line location, traffic signs, etc., but also include real-time dynamic information such as traffic flow and traffic light status.
Based on the overall memory and cognitive function similar to the human brain for space, it can help the car predict the complex information of the road surface and better avoid potential risks.
Relying on the advantages of data, computer vision, deep learning, high-precision maps, and cloud computing, we can propose a perfect solution to practical problems under the premise of effectively reducing costs.
Many different intelligent application full-stack layouts, if the future of the road cloud map under the coordination of interconnection, a wider range of intelligence will be landed faster.
03 Connecting points into lines, "vehicle road cloud map" becomes the key path for the development of intelligent vehicles
This automotive revolution, the "digital base" is based on the rapid development of mobile Internet, digital economy and artificial intelligence technology, and the future travel scenario will be reconstructed. Intelligent transportation not only involves a single point such as bicycle intelligence, but also a grand system.
On March 15, 2021, the 14th Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development of the People's Republic of China and the Outline of Long-term Goals for 2035 were officially released, which framed ten digital application scenarios, with intelligent transportation ranking first.
By upgrading the road and roadside infrastructure, the road traffic environment is monitored in real time, so that the vehicle can realize the perception of the road conditions beyond the visual distance, achieve the integration of vehicle and road cloud, and further ensure driving safety.
On March 25, 2022, Guo Shougang, deputy director of the First Department of Equipment Industry of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said that while promoting the pilot work of double intelligence (smart cars and smart cities), the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology is also accelerating the demonstration of road testing of intelligent networked vehicles.
Guo Shougang also stressed that the pilot demonstration is an indispensable link in the development process of intelligent networked vehicles, and while promoting the pilot work of double intelligence, we are also accelerating the road test demonstration of intelligent networked vehicles.
Up to now, the country has opened more than 5,000 kilometers of open test roads, more than 10 million kilometers of safety testing, and driven the transformation and upgrading of intelligent roads for more than 3,500 kilometers.
This shows that the future of intelligence not only needs "smart cars", but also needs "smart roads", so as to better realize the strategy of "vehicle road cloud map" integration.
Miao Wei also said that the representative of the smart road is the Beijing Yizhuang Economic Development Zone, which combines smart cars, smart roads, accurate maps, real-time clouds and reliable networks together to become a model for national pilots.
Miao Wei also mentioned that he and Robin Li had exchanged views, and it is more prudent to fully realize unmanned driving, but in some logistics, shuttle buses in some communities, and port vehicles in some ports, it is completely possible to be faster, Robotaxi is OK.
Kong Lei, deputy director of the Administrative Committee of Beijing Economic and Technological Development Zone and director of the Beijing High-level Autonomous Driving Demonstration Zone Office, introduced the progress of intelligent construction in Beijing Yizhuang in more detail:
"At present, the demonstration area has basically completed the construction of the 2.0 stage, deeply practiced the technical route of vehicle-road-cloud integration, and within 60 square kilometers of the Beijing Economic Development Zone, it has achieved full coverage of 332 digital intelligent intersection infrastructure, completed the construction of a city-level engineering test platform for high-level autonomous vehicles, initially established the ability of the network cloud control system to provide external services, and normalized the testing and commercialization of various high-level autonomous vehicles of all kinds."
On this basis, Beijing Yizhuang has achieved the improvement of quality and efficiency of regional intelligent traffic management, and has now realized the dynamic optimization of the information control of single-point trunk roads, promoted the construction of "multi-pole integration, multi-sensor integration", and the average delay rate of vehicles at single-point adaptive intersections has dropped by 28.48%, the length of vehicle queues has decreased by 30.3%, the wasted time of green lights has dropped by 18.33%, and the delay of green wave roads on 4 double-line trunk roads has been reduced by more than 16%, which has greatly improved the efficiency of people's daily travel.
Beijing Yizhuang has also made good progress in high-precision maps, and the Bureau of Surveying and Mapping has approved an open pilot project that can implement high-precision maps and high-precision positioning in the local area, and a large number of high-precision map service providers have begun to play a role there, adding bricks and tiles to intelligence.
On the network side, 5G, C-V2X and other technologies have been integrated, and intelligent networking companies have joined forces with them to jointly create a dedicated network for autonomous driving and smart cities. At the same time, the combination of edge cloud and central cloud enables digital holographic intersections.
Miao Wei mentioned that there is no V2X (Vehicle to Everything, Internet of Vehicles) and relying solely on bicycle intelligence, perhaps L2 can be done, it is very difficult to do L3, L4, computing power, power consumption are more than the limit of the vehicle itself.
Therefore, it is necessary to move a part of the computing power from the car to the road test, and use edge computing and end-to-end communication to achieve vehicle-road collaboration. It will lay a solid step for the interconnection of future vehicle-road cloud maps.
Nowadays, the development of the Internet of Vehicles and the "Vehicle Road Cloud Map" is still facing many problems, for example, the technology and standards of end-to-end short-range communication have not yet been determined and unified, the national standards for intelligent grading of roads have not been unified, and the signal lights and road markings and signs still need to be intelligently transformed.
Miao Wei took Xiong'an as an example to illustrate the solution to the difficulty of standards and regulations, and Xiong'an specially identified 4 standardization committees, namely the Automobile Standard Committee, the Communication Standard Committee, the Intelligent Transportation System Standard Committee and the National Road Traffic Management Standard Committee.
The standardization committees recognized by the four national standard committees have consulted together to form a consensus, and each other's standards can be docked and coordinated to further play their role.
At this time, it is necessary for large factories with deep technology and rich experience reserves to promote the industry to go further.
In June last year, the Intelligent Industry Research Institute of Tsinghua University (AIR) and Baidu Apollo released the world's first white paper on vehicle-road collaboration technology innovation,"Key Technologies and Prospects of Vehicle-Road Collaboration for Autonomous Driving," which has a solution to the above standards, which divides the road intelligence level into C0-C5 six levels, providing detailed theoretical support for the cutting-edge technological innovation of vehicle-road collaboration.
Prior to this, Tsinghua University and Baidu released the Apollo Air plan. This is the world's first and only vehicle-to-road collaboration technology that uses pure roadside perception capabilities to truly realize the closed-loop L4 autonomous driving of the open road continuous road network.
After continuous research and repeated testing, Baidu intelligent transportation team and Tsinghua Intelligent Industry Research Institute have completed the intelligent transformation of several intersections such as Beijing Yizhuang, Guangzhou Huangpu, Cangzhou and other intersections, and realized the test of Apollo Air pure roadside perception technology in the real scene of L4.
At present, Baidu Intelligent Transportation has landed in more than ten "double wisdom" pilot cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Changsha, and has been deployed in more than 50 cities nationwide.
As an intelligent "gripper" at the end of the road, the artificial intelligence road system has been deployed at more than 2,000 urban intersections across the country, and has realized the real-time optimization of "city-level" information control, which can improve the efficiency of urban traffic and make public travel safer, more efficient and more convenient.
Jiang Wanrong, vice minister of the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, believes that the electrification, intelligence, networking and green transformation of the automobile industry are becoming a new driving force to guide urban development and shape urban form.
Promoting the coordinated development of smart city infrastructure and intelligent networked vehicles is an important path to promote the transformation of the automobile industry, urban transformation and social transformation in the new era and new situation.
The development path of "Vehicle Road Cloud Map" has become the consensus of the industry. Bicycle intelligence is the foundation of automatic driving, and the vehicle road cloud map is the supporting of automatic driving, and the organic combination of the two is the optimal solution for the rapid development of China's automatic driving industry.
Chen Qingtai, chairman of the China Electric Vehicle 100 Association, said that in the revolution of automobile intelligence, the mainland automobile industry has achieved a first-mover effect in changing lanes.
In the first half of the transformation of the automobile industry, the development of New Energy Vehicles in China has achieved remarkable results. But the second half of the decision is in the intelligent networked car, which is more technically complex and more challenging.
Only by achieving high-quality development of the automobile industry in the changing situation can we help China move from an automobile power to an automobile power. This is also the fundamental significance of the automobile industry to promote change.