What's the reason you didn't buy the Volkswagen ID series?
The reason for many people is that they are not very satisfied with the intelligent driving and smart cockpit of the ID series. The existing models of the MEB platform in China are the ID 3, ID 4, and ID 6 of the North-South Volkswagen.
The sales volume of the Volkswagen ID series in the Chinese market in 2021 is 70625 vehicles, and Volkswagen China is not satisfied with this data. The MEB platform that Volkswagen Group spent 4-5 years and spent a lot of money to build did not hit the "cool point" of Chinese consumers.
The good news is that Volkswagen China is already actively "rescuing" MEBs. Recently, the self-media "Red Star" broke the news that Volkswagen China has begun to bid for the electric vehicle auxiliary driving system for the MEB platform, and a total of 13 Chinese companies have participated in the bidding.
In the end, 1 company will get the project to undertake the intelligent driving upgrade program of all domestic models of the MEB platform, and the project SOP time is the end of 2024, which means that the first MEB model with enhanced driver assistance will also be unveiled in 2025 at the earliest.
Make up for the shortcomings of the MEB platform
According to the information that broke the news, at present, Volkswagen China has limited access to Germany, and can only do hardware upgrades on the original model, can not be replaced or reduced, and can only increase sensors.
Therefore, even if the SSP platform that replaces the MEB platform in the "2030 Strategic Plan" of the Volkswagen Group will usher in the first mass-produced pure electric vehicle in 2026, Volkswagen China can only add through the MEB platform if it wants to launch a version of the intelligent driving model of a Chinese supplier.
The main purpose of volkswagen SSP architecture is "electrification" to give way to "electronic", and the focus of MEB development is to build an efficient development platform for electric vehicles, while the SSP is to build an efficient development platform for intelligent electric vehicles. The former is a car, the latter is closer to electronics.
However, it is not optimistic that the Volkswagen China Enhanced VERSION of the MEB model is still too slow at the SOP time point at the end of 2024. According to the time backwards, if the supplier can be completed in the first half of this year, the entire development cycle will be up to 30 months.
This is still too slow for platform models with very mature basic hardware.
Even if the horizontal comparison, the head of the intelligent electric enterprises Weilai, Xiaopeng, Ideal, Huawei HI, Great Wall Zhixing, Zhiji, will push the pilot auxiliary driving function of the three major scenarios of urban, high-speed and parking around 2022-2023.
Even Tesla, the "imaginary enemy" of Volkswagen MEB, has also started the localization of FSDs and built research and development centers and data centers in China. BYD, the "real opponent" of Volkswagen MEB, has also actively cooperated with Momenta and NVIDIA to make up for the shortcomings in smart driving.
Volkswagen's MEB tender proposal is the 6V5R1D driver assistance system. Refers to 6 driver assistance cameras (excluding the round-view fisheye camera), 5 millimeter wave radars (1 forward medium and long distance radar and 4 angle radars), and 1 DMS driver monitoring system.
As for the lidar that everyone is interested in, it is not covered in this package.
If this configuration is placed in Xiaopeng's intelligent driving universe, it is probably the configuration of X Pilot 3.0, which can realize the NGP highway pilot assistance system. Not surprisingly, with the smart driving patch, the effect that can be achieved in terms of function is about equal to the high-speed pilot auxiliary function of Weilai NOP and Xiaopeng NGP.
If the MEB model that completes the smart driving patch can be delivered in 2025 (the schedule is only speculation), Volkswagen China will be one step late, after all, according to the plan of He Xiaopeng, the founder of Xiaopeng Automobile, Xiaopeng will realize the switch from assisted driving to automatic driving in 2026.
In addition, volkswagen China's bid for intelligent driving can basically be understood as Volkswagen's acquisition of Huawei's ADS team is a high probability of yellow, and Volkswagen's progress in building a localization team for intelligent driving in China has once again become far away.
Who will fight MEB's "smart driving patch"?
According to the revelations of "Red Star", among the current bidding suppliers, There are still Desay SV, DJI, Neusoft and Horizon to do the final competition.
The amount of MEB platform is still very tempting, according to the current stage of sales and future growth expectations, the annual sales in 2025 will be about 250,000 vehicles. In addition, eating the orders of the public, the publicity effect on their own brands is also full.
The author believes that the most promising to win this "big order" are Desay SV and DJI. Among them, DJI is the total solution, and Desay SV is bundled with software supplier NullMax (Shanghai Nux Technology)) to compete for a unified bid.
Before the Volkswagen MEB platform project, DJI and Volkswagen already had cooperation projects, but due to Volkswagen's secrecy (it is also possible that Volkswagen China does not know the specific decisions of the Germans), it is only known that DJI will develop an intelligent driving system for a certain model of Volkswagen, and the specific model and which platform it comes from is still unknown.
At the 2021 Shanghai Auto Show, DJI officially announced the D130/D130+ (0~130km/h) assisted driving solution, the D80/D80+ (0~80km/h) assisted driving solution, and the P100 and P1000 intelligent parking solutions.
Overall, DJI has taken advantage of its rich accumulation and talent reserves in the field of visual artificial intelligence to focus on binocular stereo vision, launching versions of 2 million cameras (D80) and 8 million (D130) cameras, and the plus sign represents the presence or absence of lidar.
DJI not only provides software algorithms, but also provides the integration, detection, and even manufacturing of hardware modules. In terms of time, the lidar-free version can already be mass-produced and delivered in 2021, and will be displayed in the first half of this year, when AutoLab will bring the experience video from the first perspective. The version with lidar is expected to be delivered in 2024.
If you want to match the Volkswagen 6V5R1D solution, it is expected to be a forward binocular camera, plus a forward wide-angle camera, a rear camera, and a side rearview camera on the left and right sides. Both DJI and Huawei have chosen the binocular visual stereoscopic perception solution, which is more difficult, and there are not many companies that choose this route at present.
Another strong contender is the solutions of Desay SV and NullMax. Desay SV is currently the highest market share of the integration supplier in the field of high-end intelligent driving in China, Xiaopeng, Ideal, Nio are all customers of Desay SV, Desay SV also based on Nvidia Orin to create a vehicle standard intelligent driving domain controller IPU04, is an important partner for car companies to achieve Orin on the car.
NullMax is a very low-key assisted driving technology company, the founder Dr. Lei Xu was the head of deep learning at Tesla Vision, reporting directly to Musk, and was one of the core members of the early Autopilot team.
The current head of Tesla Vision is the famous Andrej Karpathy, who is the big brother who speaks at an invincible speed and shares the cutting-edge development of Tesla algorithms every year tesla AI Day. How strong Nullmax is in the field of visual algorithms should be felt from the resume of the founder.
As early as 2020, Nullmax launched a mature highway Pilot pilot auxiliary function, which was earlier than the time of Xiaopeng NGP push, so technically, it is not difficult to give MEB a "patch".
Overall, whether it is for DJI or Desay SV, this patching project of Volkswagen MEB is a "piece of cake", the difficulty coefficient is not large, and the experience and safety are basically guaranteed.
Just as a consumer, would you expect a "patch" for the Volkswagen ID series of smart driving?