Source of this article: Times Finance Author: Lin Qian
On April 18, Jidu Automobile announced the latest progress of its car manufacturing, including the specific layout plan of forward dual lidar, the perception plan of automatic driving system, and the latest research and development and landing progress.
"The joint investigation work of Jidu is scheduled to begin at the end of this year." Jidu told the times finance and other media on the 18th that the research and development and pre-research of the second mass-produced model has been launched, and it is expected to be released at the Guangzhou Auto Show at the end of this year.
Source | Jidu car
Since its establishment in March 2021, it has only been more than a year, and the process of Jidu Automobile has exceeded the industry's expectations. In this regard, some insiders said that this may be related to the resource support of Geely Automobile and Baidu behind it, in other words, its car-making process may not be "from 0 to 1" in the traditional sense.
According to Tianyancha data, Baidu and Geely hold 55% and 45% of the equity of Jidu Automobile respectively, with their registered addresses located in Shanghai, and Xia Yiping is the director and general manager of the company. In the cooperation, the division of labor between Baidu and Geely is also relatively clear, Geely mainly provides a vast platform, while Baidu provides intelligent support for Jidu.
At present, Jidu Intelligent Architecture JET is an intelligent architecture for high-end autonomous driving developed by itself based on the transformation of Geely Haohan platform, which includes electronic and electrical architecture EEA and vehicle operating system SOA. Jidu frankly said, "The early stage of Jidu will still be based on Baidu Apollo's L4 system, on the one hand, because its inherent technical foundation comes from Baidu Apollo, on the other hand, taking into account the overall system security, Baidu Apollo has been road testing and simulation verification for many years, and has a good guarantee in terms of security."
Source | Jidu car
It is reported that the recent Jidu SIMUCar (Software Integration Mule Car) has been iteratively upgraded to version 2.0, and its automatic driving system has been added to the lidar sensor. In terms of supply chain, the choice of concentration is NVIDIA's autopilot chip Orin X and Hesai Technology semi-solid-state lidar AT128.
According to Wang Weibao, head of Jidu Intelligent Driving, "The pure vision and lidar autonomous driving scheme being tested and developed in the SIMUCar 2.0 stage is an independent dual system that can achieve 'true redundancy' after mass production." Compared with the traditional solution, the two sets of automatic driving solutions of Jidu are mutual backup and complement each other, and the two sets of solutions can be both efficient self-driving and efficient collaboration."
However, Jidu did not disclose that after mass production, who is the main and who is the second of the two sets of autonomous driving programs, how to cooperate and communicate in the work. Some insiders said that "the two schemes have their own advantages and disadvantages, according to industry practices, generally visual radar as a supplement."
From the concept map, unlike other new car-making forces that place lidar on the forehead of the car, the position chosen by the Jidu car is the left and right sides of the front cabin cover. From the perspective of appearance and other aspects, such a practice makes the shape of the car more in line with the current mainstream aesthetic.
Source | Internet
In addition, in the process of optimizing and transforming SIMUCar, Jidu Automobile is in the midst of the epidemic in Shanghai, and Jidu also admitted that this has brought more psychological pressure and challenges to the R&D team.
"Fortunately, people in every direction of the team did their best in this process, and through close collaboration, finally delivered SIMACar 2.0 on time." Jidu Automobile said that Jidu has set up a supply team and a supply chain team to ensure that its related chips and other parts can be delivered on time in a variety of ways to continuously promote the research and development of vehicles.