Wen | Li Haoxian
Recently, I brushed a very interesting Q&A on Zhihu.
The question probably means: will the future car central control screen be bigger and bigger, the larger the better?
The answerers at the bottom are all answering around the functionality behind the screen, which is basically the "several axes" that everyone usually discusses.
The angle of one of the respondents' answers is more unique, and he answers from the perspective of supply chain and technology iteration, which makes people suddenly have a sense of cheerfulness.
Image source: Zhihu
His probably meaning is that the car screen is getting bigger and bigger, behind it is the panel supplier, especially the Chinese supplier has overcome the technical barriers of foreign suppliers (such as Samsung, LG), and successfully beat the panel price down, which makes the large screen on the car more and more popular, the size is getting bigger and bigger, and the effect is getting better and better.
He also took the 1.4-meter-long MBUX Hyperscreen on the Mercedes-Benz EQS as an example, which uses an OLED curved screen provided by LG Electronics, which is the ceiling of the car screen of today's mass production cars. If it weren't for THE FACT THAT BOE (a Chinese LCD panel supplier) also has the same technology, then the cost of this screen is likely to be unaffordable even for mercedes-Benz flagship models.
That is to say, today's large-scale car screen is becoming more and more popular, behind which is not only the need for car companies to show off their skills, but also the specific embodiment of supply chain technology iteration and cost reduction. Of course, it also includes the impact of strong state support and capital operations, which the respondent also mentioned.
Through the above examples, you can give an example and think about what other devices are gradually becoming popular on new cars, which follow the above principles?
Smart driving becomes a hot one
The first thing that comes to my mind is intelligent driving. When it comes to intelligent driving, it is inseparable from the three axes: chip + algorithm + perception hardware, which involves supply chain and capital operations that are much more exciting and complex than LCD panels.
This is a financing of the automotive industry in the first quarter of 2022 compiled by Gaz Auto, and the data shows that companies in the field of intelligent driving are still the focus of capital attention.
Image taken from: Gestapo Cars
In the past few months, a number of high-level autonomous driving solution providers for specific application scenarios, mass-produced autonomous driving solution providers, and core technology providers such as lidar and chips have received new investments, of which two financing amounts are known to exceed 1 billion yuan in the mass-produced ADAS track, which makes the valuation of related companies close to 10 billion yuan.
In addition, a number of leading autonomous driving solution providers have received a new round of investment, involving various segments, the most eye-catching of which is the mass-produced ADAS camp. In the past few months, a number of companies, including MINEYE, Hongjing Intelligent Driving, Heduo Technology, Zhongmu Technology, Soto Ruian, etc., have received new investments, and the maximum financing amount has even reached 1.3 billion yuan.
It is worth mentioning that most of the above companies are domestic start-ups, remember what was said above? Only by breaking the foreign technology monopoly and opening up competition can domestic intelligent driving be rapidly popularized at a lower cost.
From the perspective of the general environment, the field of intelligent driving in the mainland has not lagged behind foreign countries, which is mainly due to the vigorous development and policy support of the domestic intelligent driving field. 2022 will be a key year for the field to complete iterative upgrade mass production, so we can see that xiaopeng G9 and ideal L9 have sacrificed a new generation of high-end intelligent driving software + hardware.
The main engine factory participated in the investment
Among them, the lidar used by Xiaopeng G9 is provided by Sagitar Juchuang, which also appears in the above financing table, and BYD has recently participated in financing; and tuduitone used by NIO ET7 is one of the companies invested by NIO Capital; the Hesai AT128 used by the ideal L9 is the most advanced of the three, Xiaomi has recently raised $70 million for the company, and the future Xiaomi car is likely to also use the perception hardware provided by the company.
Image source: Network
It can be seen that in addition to the participation of peripheral capital in investing in these perceived hardware companies, even the main engine factory is also actively involved. In fact, it is easy to understand that this can not only get the mass production products at the first time, but most importantly, participate in the product development stage in order to better integrate with its own intelligent driving software and play a greater role.
The chip field still needs to catch up
However, in the field of chips, especially in the aspect of intelligent driving chips, there are no flowers like lidar, and the solutions of each family are similar, all using NVIDIA Orin, but the difference in quantity. This is because NVIDIA Orin was mass-produced early and relatively stronger to seize the opportunity.
However, it is understood that there are already many chip companies in The layout of vehicle-level chips, such as horizon strategically invested by Great Wall Motors, and its Journey 5 vehicle-level AI chip has a single AI computing power of 128 TOPS, which can fully meet the needs of high-end intelligent driving through stacking. Great Wall Motors' future high-end intelligent driving and intelligent cockpit products will use chips provided by Horizon.
In addition to horizon, there are many domestic companies in the research and development of vehicle-level chips, such as Geely's participation in the investment of Core Qing Technology released the first domestic 7nm vehicle-grade intelligent cockpit chip, which is expected to be mass-produced in the third quarter of 2022. It is foreseeable that more and more domestic cars will be equipped with domestic high-performance chips, and problems such as chip shortage, chip expensive, and card neck are expected to be solved.
Software algorithms are in place
In the software part, new forces such as Xiaopeng, Ideal, and Weilai have always insisted on full-stack self-research, rather than purchasing external solutions. This is the lifeblood of the new forces, and it is also one of the core selling points of the product, which must not be "surrendered". For example, the XPERO 4.0 that Xiaopeng G9 will be equipped with is said to be able to achieve point-to-point automatic driving, which means that it can automatically drive from the basement of the home to the company parking lot, completely controlled by the vehicle. According to He Xiaopeng, this will allow Xiaopeng Automobile to continue to lead the industry for 2-3 years.
In the field of software algorithms, in addition to "Wei Xiaoli" and other OEMs, there are actually many external suppliers, such as Xiaoma Zhixing, Wenyuan Zhixing, Baidu Apollo are the industry's more well-known autonomous driving solutions companies, in many cities we can see their RoboTaxi figure.
Judging from some public information, freight terminals, ports, and mines are likely to become the scenes of the real commercialization of driverless cars.
On the whole, in the field of intelligent driving, many companies have been able to come up with quite competitive mass production products to compete with foreign products, but at present, bosch, continental, DENSO and other traditional Tier 1 still occupy a relatively large market share. I believe that in the near future, our self-developed hardware + software can accelerate the popularization of independent brands, reduce the cost, and raise the confidence.
According to the "2021 New Energy Automobile Industry Investment and Financing Data Report" released by the Enterprise Investigation Data Research Institute, a total of 239 new energy vehicle tracks occurred in 2021, with a total disclosure of 363.9 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 181.66%. There is an influx of funds, there will inevitably be an influx of talents, it is conceivable that the popularity of the intelligent driving industry will last for a relatively long time, the author is more optimistic about the follow-up development of intelligent driving in China.
Image source: Qi Cha Cha
Of course, smart electric vehicles are a very large sector, involving all aspects, intelligent driving is only one of the links, domestic companies can not be all-encompassing. For example, in the future, whether it is an 800V high-voltage platform or an efficiency improvement of motor drives, it will require the deep participation of silicon carbide (SiC) devices (which can be understood as an upgraded version of IGBT).
From a technical point of view, at present, domestic manufacturers are still dominated by 4-inch wafers, gradually transitioning to 6 inches, while overseas manufacturers are now mainly 6 inches and have begun to transition to 8 inches. This means that Chinese companies still have a technical gap in key technologies in this regard.
If you are interested in what you want to know, we can talk about it separately in the future, and we will stop today.