On April 24, Xiaoma Zhixing announced that it won the bid for the 2022 taxi capacity index in Nansha District, Guangzhou, and obtained the first taxi business license issued to an autonomous driving enterprise in China. Once again, the industry attention is coming.
In recent years, with the birth of several "first" records in the field of autonomous driving, the commercial road of related technologies is underway. Open-scene applications such as Robotaxi and Robotruck are the most typical, but related autonomous driving companies are also under pressure to survive.
On the one hand, the "soul theory" of vehicle companies, not only favoring incubation or investment in autonomous driving companies, but also starting to independently develop autonomous driving technology; on the other hand, due to technical bottlenecks, operational ecology and other conditions, "do the dojo in the shell", it is difficult to explore the commercialization model. Some insiders believe that the current autonomous driving companies are actively exploring business models, this stage may be very long, and some companies will fall down in this commercial transformation exploration road.
April 20, 2022 "Green Elements" at the Boao Forum for Asia New energy autonomous driving minibus drives in the Boao Passage connecting the inaugural site of the Boao Forum for Asia with the Forum International Conference Center. Xinhua News Agency
Too crowded business conversion model
Seeking technology to land, autonomous driving companies have not been idle in recent years.
In November 2021, when some autonomous driving companies were allowed to pilot commercialization in beijing, they once attracted industry attention: The commercial transformation of autonomous driving is coming?
Of course, a car can be on the road, not only the car company's own business.
"Robotaxi's operation on relatively smooth urban roads has been relatively mature, but it restricts its development in terms of regulations and costs", Li Fan (anonymous), an expert in the Automobile Industry Association, believes that the current relevant road safety laws and insurance systems are still in a blank stage for the management and responsibility of Robotaxi; secondly, the automatic driving system equipped with radar, cameras and many other sensors is expensive and not cost-effective at present.
However, Zhang Ruifeng, secretary general of the New Energy Automobile Industry Technology Innovation Alliance in the Greater Bay Area of Guangdong Province, said that the corresponding area can be demarcated to allow Robotaxi to run and try to commercialize, and explore related issues in technology and operation in a way similar to bus stops.
It is understood that in addition to Robotaxi, Robotruck is also the heartfelt business transformation direction of autonomous driving companies.
For example, in July last year, Xiaoma Zhika was awarded a road test license for the Beijing High-level Autonomous Driving Demonstration Zone. In March this year, Xiaoma Zhixing also established a joint venture with Sinotrans, the largest port logistics freighter in China, to establish a smart logistics subsidiary, Qinghua Logistics, which began official operation on April 1.
According to relevant industry research reports, the scale of China's autonomous driving travel market is as high as 350 billion yuan, and the scale of the autonomous driving same-city freight market is as high as 230 billion yuan, both of which can be landed through self-operated and cooperative operation models.
However, compared to Robotaxi and Robobus (self-driving buses), the Robotruck track is undoubtedly more "inward-rolled" and more competitive.
According to incomplete statistics, Robotruck has given birth to leading innovative enterprises in the industry such as Wenyuan Zhixing, Zhijia Technology, Wincher Technology, Mainline Technology, Yuanrong Qixing, Feibu Technology and Tucson Future, in addition to xingjiao technology, Qianhang technology and other cutting-edge emerging.
However, the head of an autonomous driving company said that the commercialization of autonomous driving needs to rely on hardware and operation to land. Robotaxi would not have been able to operate at scale without front-loading integration of vehicles.
The same is true for trucks, where to achieve a large-scale Robotruck, you have to touch the vehicle's hardware. But this does not mean that every link of car manufacturing must be done end-to-end, but it is necessary to have the understanding of vehicle research and development, the ability to define the core three electricity and wire control, and E/E architecture.
In addition, compared with open scenarios such as Robotaxi and Robotruck, which have broad prospects but are difficult to land on a large scale at this stage, the automatic driving limited scenarios with the characteristics of a single closed area line and relatively low requirements for algorithms have initially fulfilled the commercialization potential in terms of technology and business model, and the automatic driving technology has been put into operation in application scenarios such as port terminals, airport connections, and mining.
However, the "plate" of the limited scene seems to be unable to let go of the ambitions of many autonomous driving companies.
Zhou Guang, CEO of Yuanrong Qixing, once told the Nanduwan Finance Agency reporter that there is certainly no problem for the more head of the autonomous driving company to do some business in more closed scenarios. Yuanrong also tried the port in the early days of this relatively closed, less difficult business scenario, but also did market research and data calculations, found that the closed area of the park sightseeing car, logistics distribution vehicles and other market volume is not large, the ceiling of revenue may be about a billion DOLLARs, can not support the company's long-term development and high valuation.
In 2021, Nandu Kechuang Studio launched the "National Autonomous Driving Investment and Financing Map" to analyze the characteristics and trends of investment and financing in the field of automatic driving in recent years.
Big factories are looking for an independent autonomous driving "soul"
In-depth cooperation with vehicle companies has become the key direction of business development of various autonomous driving companies.
At the 17th Super Automotive Forum, Zhang Ning, vice president of Xiaoma Zhixing and head of the Beijing R&D Center, expressed the hope that autonomous driving companies will carry out in-depth cooperation with car companies in the future, using the mature supply chain mechanism of car companies to reduce costs and create vehicle-grade products. At the same time, create a virtual driver to provide a better travel experience for all users.
However, traditional vehicle companies have not copied the "overtures" of autonomous driving companies.
In June last year, when asked if SAIC would consider working with third parties such as Huawei on autonomous driving, Chen Hong, chairman of SAIC, said bluntly: "It's like having a company that provides us with a holistic solution, so that it becomes the soul and SAIC becomes the body." For such a result, SAIC is unacceptable and must take the soul into its own hands. ”
"Traditional car companies for the supply chain should be the overall control of the thinking has been deeply rooted", some auto industry analysts said that the control of the supply chain means that there is a higher bargaining power and dominance, the vehicle company can not give up the dominant right to talk to you about 'cooperation', especially this partner may also build cars in the future, "so the car companies will choose a pure automatic driving technology software company that is easier to control, in other words, the vehicle manufacturer prefers 'obedient'."
After SAIC invested in the self-driving company Momenta Series C financing in March last year, it continued to increase its investment in the self-driving startup in September of the same year. SAIC's zhiji automobile's first mass-produced car, the L7, is equipped with Momenta's autonomous driving solution, which can initially achieve L2+ level intelligent driving; SAIC Artificial Intelligence Lab, Momenta and other companies continue to cooperate with Robotaxi services.
At the same time, there are also many vehicle companies that personally go down and divide independent intelligent driving companies to provide services for the intelligent and intelligent driving of the main engine factory.
For example, many popular models of Great Wall Motor have been equipped with the auxiliary driving system of Great Wall's autonomous driving subsidiary, Mille-Ma Zhixing; the new trend of car manufacturing such as Xiaopeng, Weilai and Ideal is also increasing investment in research and development in automatic driving; there is more news that BYD's intelligent route will shift from purchasing solutions to full-stack self-research, and will build an autonomous driving research and development center in Shanghai and recruit relevant positions for autonomous driving.
Survived the transformation test, was acquired or looked for an innovative model
"Recently, we have not invested much in companies related to autonomous driving, because the business models are all the same," more than one head venture capitalist has said similar words to the Reporter of Nanduwan Finance Since 2022.
At a time when there is no major innovation in the business model and the bottleneck of autonomous driving technology, there seems to be not much choice left for autonomous driving.
"Now in the automotive industry, there are vehicle manufacturers, parts manufacturers and operators in the competition, each side wants to do the lead, but at present, the host manufacturers have a greater right to speak", Zhang Ruifeng said, although some companies have repeatedly stated that "do not build cars", but vehicle manufacturers are aware of the challenges and threats that such a company's entry may bring.
In Zhang Ruifeng's view, there are clear boundaries between the automotive industry chain, and it is best not to cross the line between each other. Therefore, if the autonomous driving giant wants to cooperate deeply with the vehicle manufacturers to find a breakthrough in the business, it will either position itself as a front-end supplier service provider or a back-end operation service provider, "Automatic driving companies should not care too much about their own valuation, Roadstar.ai is a lesson from the past, and the income from autonomous driving rental cannot support the profits required by valuation."
"Under the premise that the technical difference is not too big, automatic driving needs to find advantages in the business model or hardware to form a moat", Li Fan said, Xiaoma, Wenyuan and other autonomous driving companies need to be deeply bound with car companies or related travel service platforms through capital cooperation, joint agreements, etc., in order to put their "soul" into the appropriate "carrier" for commercialization, if you only rely on yourself, such business development to a certain extent will definitely have problems.
It is worth noting that the above-mentioned cooperation model of "car companies + operators + autonomous driving technology companies" is also becoming more and more common. At present, the "GAC Aian + Ruqi Travel + Wenyuan Zhixing" Robotaxi project has landed in Guangzhou, and the "Geely + CaoCao Travel + Yuanrong Qixing" tripartii will also launch the Robotaxi project in 2022.
At the same time, for self-driving companies with high valuations but lack of commercialization capabilities, the outside world has repeatedly put forward the view that "self-driving companies 'selling' themselves to car companies or related platforms is a good soft landing method".
"It is not necessarily, after the acquisition is reached, both sides may not get the expected effect", Li Fan analyzed that the car company also has its own technical team, the technology and personnel bought back need to have a digestion process, and even the technical team that has been acquired is fragmented, and the technology may not be able to copy it intact, "Geely's acquisition of Volvo is already a very successful example, but the loss in the middle is still relatively large."
"It is still in the stage of technological iteration and upgrading and actively exploring business models, this stage may be very long, the darkness before the dawn," said a veteran of the automotive industry, "many of the commercialization directions of autonomous driving are right now, but it is difficult to say whether they can survive to the end." ”
Producer: Nandu Kechuang Studio
Written by: Chen Peijun, reporter of Nanduwan Finance Agency