The second half of the automotive industry: winning the intelligent network connection

At present, new energy vehicles have entered a new stage of policy-driven to market-driven, showing a good development situation of both market scale and development quality, at the same time, the development of automobile intelligence has advanced by leaps and bounds, and intelligent networked vehicle technology has entered a critical period of landing.

In this context, how to better grasp the development trend of the industry, explore the direction of the next stage of the industry, and better cope with the challenges is a problem that the entire automotive industry must consider.

New energy vehicles completed the first half of the competition

At the recent China Electric Vehicle 100 Forum (2022), Miao Wei, deputy director of the Economic Committee of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, talked about his thinking on accelerating the development of intelligent and connected vehicles, and he pointed out: "If new energy vehicles are compared to the first half, intelligent networked vehicles are compared to the second half, China's automotive industry has achieved great results in the first half, but the decision is still in the second half. And stressed the need to take advantage of the momentum to accelerate the development of intelligent networked vehicles.

Miao Wei divides the development of new energy vehicles in mainland China into three stages: the demonstration operation stage of ten cities and 1,000 vehicles from 2009 to 2012, the popularization and promotion stage from 2013 to 2015, and the rapid growth stage from 2016 to 2022. The development momentum of the new energy automobile industry in mainland China is strong, and the production and sales of new energy vehicles have ranked first in the world for seven consecutive years.

According to the data, among the world's top 20 new energy vehicle companies last year, including 8 in China, 7 in Europe, 2 in the United States, 2 in South Korea, and 1 in Japan. Miao Wei pointed out: "Originally, everyone was worried about how big the gap between our internal combustion engine technology and the international community was, and we have made really great progress after the reform and opening up. But I have always advocated that we also have to look for opportunities to change lanes and overtake, and the development of new energy vehicles is a typical lane change overtaking. By grasping the development of new energy vehicles, overtaking has been achieved in recent years. ”

It is reported that the share of Chinese brands in passenger cars reached 44.4% last year, an increase of 3.6 percentage points over the previous year, and the improvement mainly depends on new energy vehicles. The Chinese brand share of pure electric vehicles is 81%, and the Chinese brand share of plug-in hybrid vehicles is 78%, an increase of 6 percentage points after weighted average.

In Miao Wei's view, in the subsequent trade-off relationship, fuel vehicles, especially passenger cars, cannot have a substantial market expansion, but the market share of new energy vehicles will rise faster. Some fuel vehicles will be replaced by new energy vehicles, which is also the proper meaning of structural adjustment to achieve high-quality development.

If you want to achieve high-quality development of new energy vehicles, you also need to continue to upgrade the entire industrial chain, in addition to the continuous improvement of the entire industrial chain of batteries, motors, and electronic controls, it is also necessary to accelerate the deployment of charging infrastructure. In addition, it is necessary to firmly grasp the outlet and quickly realize the development of intelligent vehicles, so as to enter a new level.

Miao Wei said frankly: "There are three points of change. First, the power system is shifting from internal combustion engine drive to pure electric drive; second, the control system is evolving from distributed to centralized control, and may evolve to the platform in the future; third, automotive products will move from closed systems to open systems. ”

Chen Qingtai, chairman of the China Electric Vehicle 100 Association, also holds the same view, in his view, the intelligent car revolution provides opportunities for the mainland to shift from a big car country to a strong country, but the window period will not be too long.

The second half of the decider depends on the development of intelligence

Chen Qingtai pointed out that electrification, networking and intelligence are the three major characteristics of future automobile development. To win this automotive revolution, we must pay extraordinary attention to the construction of electrification, networking, and intelligence. The goal is to be autonomous and controllable under open conditions. At the same time, the value chain is changing rapidly. Software will be the foundation and core of future automotive intelligence and competitiveness.

You know, this automobile revolution is not carried out in isolation, and it is parallel and connected with the new energy revolution and a new generation of mobile communications, the transportation revolution and smart cities. Underpinning this automotive revolution is the rapid development of mobile Internet, digital economy and artificial intelligence technology.

Miao Wei said: "Now, cars are transforming from functional cars to smart cars, and traditional car companies must strive to make Samsung. The new car-making forces are now ambitious, and they may not be able to succeed, but there will certainly be winners. ”

Nowadays, intelligent connected vehicle technology has entered a critical period of landing, not only need to accelerate the application of L2 level intelligent networked vehicle auxiliary driving technology, but also need to achieve the early application of highly automated driving technology L3 and above in specific scenarios and limited areas, and help to achieve the ultimate goal of intelligent networked vehicles - unmanned driving as soon as possible. At the same time, it is also necessary to ensure safety as the premise of the development of intelligent and connected vehicles.

It can be seen that today's intelligent networked vehicles have gathered car companies, software companies, chip companies, Internet companies, etc. in an open, cooperative, mutually integrated and symbiotic industrial ecology. In the future, information and communication technology enterprises, infrastructure construction enterprises, transportation enterprises, smart city development enterprises, etc., will play a unique role in the development of intelligent networked vehicles, so it is necessary to cooperate across borders and develop together.

Chen Qingtai also admitted that in China, some cross-border enterprises and investors have bravely entered the field of new energy vehicles and formed a new force of car manufacturing, and so far we have not seen a second country with such a strong momentum, which is both a major feature and a major advantage of China.

Importantly, these new forces do not have the shackles of traditional car-making concepts and the drag on the asset stock. Their entry has brought new ideas, new thinking, new technologies, broadened people's thinking, and accelerated the process of innovation iteration. In particular, some new car-making forces with Internet genes have integrated the concepts of Internet thinking, networking and intelligence into product definition and marketing models from the beginning, so that the mainland can grasp the direction of networking and intelligence earlier.

As Miao Wei said, intelligent networked vehicles involve a wide range of aspects and high technical complexity, and there are opportunities and challenges in the development of intelligent networked vehicles. We must give full play to the mainland's advantages in institutional mechanisms, market space, and information and communication technologies, make full use of our strong points and avoid our weaknesses, and speed up development.

Therefore, if we want to truly complete the evolution from an automobile power to an automobile power, we must have the confidence and ability to continue to seize the second half, achieve high-quality development of the automobile industry in the change, and finally achieve the goal of building an automobile power.

Responsible Editor: Li Yan'an Editor-in-Chief: Yu Jianping