Xia Yiping, CEO of Jidu Automobile: 2023 will be the first year of competition for automotive intelligence

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 real decision is still in the second half.

"The focus of competition for electric vehicles has slowly changed from the past electrification stage to intelligence. The prelude to the intelligent second half has just begun. There is no catch-up, and no one is the priority at all. Because the chips that can truly carry the voice AI capabilities in the cabin and high-end intelligent driving will only start production in 2023, I think 2023 will be the first year of intelligent competition for automobiles. ”

During the high-level forum of the 8th China Electric Vehicle 100 Forum held on the afternoon of March 26, Xia Yiping, CEO of Jidu Automobile, was interviewed by the media, including China Business Daily.

It is understood that Tesla's sales have been rising since entering China, and the first echelon of new car-making forces led by Weilai, Ideal, and Xiaopeng has gradually developed and grown in China, and has successively crossed the 100,000 mass production mark, at the same time, the second echelon of Nezha Automobile, Gaohe Automobile, and Weima Automobile is also gaining momentum. In 2021, when the new energy track is hot, Baidu announced the official establishment of a smart car company to enter the automotive industry as a vehicle manufacturer. The brand of Baidu Smart Car was identified as "Jidu", and the investors were Baidu and Geely.

Not only Baidu, Huawei, Xiaomi, and Apple have also crossed borders into the automotive industry. For a time, new brands surged up, and how to catch up with the head of the new car-making forces became the focus of attention in the industry.

However, for the "birth" of Jidu Automobile, Xia Yiping is full of confidence. "In just over a year since its inception, I have deeply felt that the automotive industry is undergoing cross-era innovation. In the future, Jidu Automobile wants to build an automotive robot product. When the car has a high degree of intelligent interaction ability and high-level automatic driving ability, it is actually an AI-driven robot in the form of an automobile, which can provide users with a high-level autonomous driving product experience while also having the ability to continuously iterate. We hope that Jidu Automobile can bring benchmark intelligent products and experiences to the industry in 2023. ”

"The era of smart 3.0 has arrived"

"In the era of fuel vehicles, the attributes of cars as a means of transport are stronger, and now, the era of smart cars 3.0 has arrived, and with the popularity of electric vehicles, smart electric vehicles are becoming our second living space." Electric vehicles are ushering in a comprehensive digital upgrade, and AI intelligence has become a new trend. Xia Yiping said.

It is understood that for a long time in the past, the chip computing power of cars has been lower than that of smart phones, which has led to many AI technologies that cannot play an advantage in cars and cannot comprehensively improve the user experience. But now the emergence of Qualcomm 8295, Nvidia, Horizon and other high-computing car chips has gradually transformed the car from a means of transportation into an AI-driven intelligent mobile space, and AI has brought technological innovation, efficiency improvement, and experience subversion.

At present, how to define the products of the smart car 3.0 era? Xia Yiping believes that there are three points: "With a software and hardware system that supports high-level automatic driving capabilities, the automatic driving of the car has grown from only being able to cope with specific scenarios to calmly coping with more complex scenarios; second, the speech semantic interaction should be accurately recognized, and the communication process is natural; third, it can also complete independent learning and functional iteration according to the user's habits of using the car, so that the car understands the user more and more." ”

Behind these experiences and capabilities, there is actually a complex set of software and algorithms. He believes that in the era of smart cars 3.0, AI needs to integrate soft and hard. Hardware security comes from quality, system, and appropriate hashrate redundancy. Software security comes from the accumulation of big data in a wider range of scenarios and the faster iteration of algorithms. The safety and stability of AI intelligent driving and smart cabin software operation, in addition to relying on the protection of high-level hardware, also need to work software algorithms, and through the accumulation of mileage data, make car robots smarter. Therefore, the research and development of software, the verification of software capabilities, and the safety and stability of software operation have become the core of jidu automobile in the era of intelligent car 3.0.

So how do you collect a wide range of data to make cars smarter? According to Xia Yiping's introduction, on the basis of tens of millions of kilometers of road test data accumulated by Robotaxi equipped with Baidu Apollo, the software development process of Jidu automotive robots can always be efficient. "Baidu Apollo's Robotaxi has high-level automatic driving capabilities, and has 25 million kilometers, safe and zero accidents of automatic driving test mileage, a large number of Robotaxi road test fleet in more than 30 cities across the country uninterrupted real road testing, based on the accumulation of data continuous iteration of the algorithm, the purpose is actually to make this software and its controlled hardware fused with each other, perfect coordination, to achieve accurate judgment of vehicle driving road conditions, To ensure the safety and stability of high-end autonomous vehicle operation. ”

It is understood that last year, Baidu Apollo driverless Robotaxi was first launched in Beijing Shougang Park, and has now entered the social open road in the core areas of Beijing Yizhuang and other core areas, and commercial toll operations have also been applied to the daily travel services of the public from the park. Autonomous driving test miles are accelerating at a rate of no less than 1 million kilometers per month.

Xia Yiping said, "To this end, Jidu also developed a set of automotive robot 'brain' process, we call it SIMUCar software integration prototype, so that the development of the vehicle's software and hardware to achieve decoupling, do not interfere with each other, dual-track parallel, so that you can put the development of high-level automatic driving capabilities in front, so as to exchange for more sufficient time for the software's 'safety and stability verification'." At the end of last year, the development of our high-level automatic driving capabilities has realized the dual-domain integration of high-speed domain and urban domain. ”

According to its introduction, in September 2021, SIMUCar has started running; in November, dynamic tests have been launched, and the development of intelligent driving capabilities and the development of smart phones have been updated once a week, successfully verifying the reliability of functions such as signal light recognition, right turn at intersections, and night driving. In December, SIMUCar updated the application of autonomous driving scenarios commonly found in urban and high-speed areas, such as left turn at intersections and autonomous lane changes. At the end of February 2022, SIMUCar was upgraded to version 2.0, and at this stage, the integration of high-level autonomous driving software, vehicle electronic and electrical architecture and SOA has been completed.

"Supply chain shortages are expected to ease during mass production in 2023."

In fact, as a start-up brand, Jidu Automobile has been accompanied by a series of challenges since its birth. The problem of lack of core in the automotive industry has lasted for two years, and due to objective factors, the rise in the price of automotive raw materials has become a "heartache" for many car companies.

Xia Yiping revealed, "The current supply chain shortage of the large market environment still has an impact on Jidu Automobile. Although we have not yet mass-produced and put into production, the shortage of chips is still challenging for us. In the production verification process required for A sample, B sample, C sample chip, many times can not be found, if there is no way to find the chip and sample required to support the entire product verification time, the entire development cycle will be delayed. At the same time, in addition to the tight supply, the cost of the car has also increased a lot, and sometimes the cost of a sample is close to dozens of times the cost of mass production, so it is necessary to ensure that there is sufficient funds to buy spot in the market at any time. In the process of testing the samples, we set up a guarantee team, and the team searched for chips almost every day across the country and even around the world, just to find the two or three important samples. ”

He also said, "Our preliminary judgment may be that by the second half of 2023, when mass production is put into production, the environment of the overall supply chain of the automotive industry will be alleviated, so when jidu vehicles are put into production, the pressure may be alleviated, but we are also paying attention at all times, in case the entire market environment continues to deteriorate, then it is necessary to make preventive work related to supply assurance in advance." ”

Fortunately, so far, the progress of Jidu automobile production and research and development is still progressing smoothly. "The recent shanghai epidemic has still had a great impact on Jidu Automobile, and the first two months of this year coincided with the important stage of mass production and shaping of the company's first car and the manufacture of molds. During the closure period, the team took the initiative to work in the company to catch up with the time point of mass production and listing of new cars to ensure that the epidemic did not affect the research and development schedule. At present, the entire R&D rhythm has not been delayed, and we will still insist on starting the official mass production stage of the product in July next year. ”

Xia Yiping said, "In fact, for Jidu Automobile, there are new challenges every day, when the company was first established in March last year, there were only two people, and now the company has grown to more than 1,000 people, of which 70% are R & D personnel." The research and development of automobiles is only the tip of the iceberg, and the challenges we face next are more, such as how to sell, build channels, put into production, and achieve supply chain production and marketing coordination, which will become the problems we need to overcome. But for Jidu Auto, I still think these are the only ways for a startup to grow, so we will face all the challenges. ”

In fact, the smooth progress of Jidu Automobile is also inseparable from the close cooperation with its partner Geely Automobile. However, in Xia Yiping's view, Jidu Automobile is the party that always grasps the "soul" of the car. "We will inherit Geely's existing technical capabilities such as three electrics and chassis, and at the same time, we will also cooperate closely with the team of Geely Automobile in the future production introduction, procurement, production and marketing coordination." However, jidu car in the intelligent parts such as electronic and electrical architecture and appearance of the interior, is completely defined and designed by themselves, so the new car is fully integrated into the DNA of the Jidu automobile brand. ”