The little trees don't slip straight, and people don't fix them and chirp. Friends who pay attention to cars can see that recently another foreign technology giant has reached the claws of the domestic automotive industry. Some time ago, BYD officially said: We have reached a cooperation with NVIDIA in intelligent driving, and it is expected that in 2023, new energy vehicles equipped with NVIDIA's DRIVE Hyperion platform will enter the market. In addition, Ideal also plans to launch a full-size range extender SUV equipped with Nvidia's Orin System-on-Chip this year. At the same time, Xiaopeng and Weilai also joined. And Huawei, which has been in the intelligent driving function for a long time, has no one to ask, why is this? Aren't they afraid of being repaired again and going down the old path of their next-door neighbors?
Nvidia's "Black History"
Due to well-known reasons, there are currently more than 8 manufacturers that have suspended the supply of russian semiconductors. According to PCMag, NVIDIA has also been confirmed to suspend product sales in Russia, in the face of layers of pressure from the United States, Domestic enterprises in Russia have presented a situation of chicken flying eggs, which shows that the so-called science and technology without borders is really. Take our own Huawei, for example, after receiving a paper ban on the other side of the ocean, NVIDIA has not stopped strangling our steps, including a series of measures to collect ARM to achieve a comprehensive supply cut off for Huawei, which once again proves that non-chinese people must have different hearts. But why do automakers know they can't do it?
"Inner Volume"
First of all, for automakers such as BYD, Ideal, and Xiaopeng, Huawei is undoubtedly a chilling presence for them. As a hardware and algorithm, if Huawei is equipped, in the eyes of domestic car companies, it is more like putting a head covering on themselves. As a result, a scattered domestic car company is worried that the brain of their own products will fall into the hands of Huawei in the future, preferring to cooperate with NVIDIA rather than cooperate with Huawei, which has "blood relations".
Secondly, compared with Huawei, NVIDIA seems to be more appropriate as their ally, after all, Huawei still has not made it clear that it does not build cars. If Huawei is involved in building cars, it is another threat in their eyes. And if it is now equipped with its technology, once there is a change in the future, it is equivalent to exposing the back naked to the opponent, which is obviously not what these domestic car companies want to see.
Moreover, compared with Nvidia, Huawei is now seriously hit and blocked abroad, after all, the "Cold War plan" of the United States against Huawei has not stopped for a moment. Nowadays, if manufacturers sell cars equipped with Huawei's intelligent driving technology, it is estimated that it will be difficult to be accepted by Westerners in the future, and it will naturally be difficult to open up overseas markets. So we can only wait and see.
"Outer Volume"
Nvidia is different, as the leader of today's artificial intelligence, with the excellent performance of related technologies, it has become the world's largest semiconductor market value company, about 110 billion US dollars higher than the second TSMC. In addition, the DRIVE Orin chip developed by it is also the highest performance vehicle specification chip in the global market so far, known as the "brain" of the next generation of automotive artificial intelligence, and naturally it is sitting on the throne of the leader of intelligent driving technology.
In addition, NVIDIA's success is of course more than that, but also because it has seized the opportunities sent by the times. On the one hand, it broke the development model of Mobileye, the previous operator in the field of intelligent driving, and tightened the advantages in its hands, so it won the favor of a large number of new forces. The previous king Mobileye's cooperation model with manufacturers was "packaged" to sell, and at that time, as long as it was suitable for car use.
With the continuous advancement of technology, the old method can no longer meet the new era, especially high-dimensional intelligent driving cars like Tesla. NVIDIA is just the opposite, it only provides hardware, intelligent driving algorithm is developed by car companies themselves, and it is assisted by technology, which greatly mobilizes the autonomy of car companies and promotes the brand of the car. On the other hand, due to the supply of the United States to us, domestic suppliers have also become "lack of core and soul" and have no competitiveness.
"Time Bomb"
Take Huawei, for example, once because it was too dependent on other people's chips and technologies, now others will pull the rope, the pants will fall down, naked body, nowhere to hide, so that in the smart device market is also to the end of the road. And is the decision-making of BYD and other car manufacturers also like pressing a time bomb around them? Put your soul in the hands of the other party, not afraid that one day in the future you will be stuck in the neck like today's Huawei?
It seems that the lessons of chips and lithography machines are not profound enough. In this way, NVIDIA may be very dangerous, if once it is developed in the field of intelligent driving, do you dare to guarantee that it will not turn its face at that time? When the new energy vehicles are all using NVIDIA technology, when the time is ripe, it is cut off and stuck, then it must be annoyed? On the mobile phone, computer has been stuck in the neck, with the lessons of the past, if the car is also stuck in the neck, should it be stupid or stupid?
Can't "just call"
If you cannot be born of sorrow, you will surely die of happiness later. Domestic auto manufacturers always shout slogans, and it may not be too much to describe them with thunder and rain. Even Miao Wei, minister of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said bluntly at the recent 2022 Electric Vehicle Hundred People Conference: China's new energy vehicles are blooming everywhere, saying that they have their own automatic driving technology, but few who really act will only "just call". For a momentary profit, the car specification chip and operating system and other brains are pinned on the head of foreign suppliers, so that unconsciously, NVIDIA has occupied the "half of the country" in the field of automatic driving in China, even BYD, which just began to take self-research as the main strategy, did not resist the temptation in the end, and the happiness of "take-ism" finally made it lose its heart in interests.
Where's the strength?
From its own point of view, NVIDIA, founded in 1993, has absolutely sufficient technical accumulation and inherent field support. And in terms of intelligent driving technology, it has also opened a contest with old rivals AMD, Qualcomm, and Intel early. As early as 2017, Tesla had successfully carried Nvidia's hardware and achieved the initial launch of self-driving cars. In addition, the perception module contained in the automatic driving technology happens to be what Nvidia is best at, so in the rally race on this track, NVIDIA is also like a divine help.
From an adversary's point of view, NVIDIA's strategic decisions are clearly also a catalyst for its success. Take the Israeli automotive vision company Mobileye we mentioned earlier, its integrated development model, the car manufacturers and fixed intelligent driving technology bundled up, cut too many possibilities, so that when cooperating with other brands, there will be compatibility problems and lead to mismatch. NVIDIA is divergent, it not only does not restrict manufacturers to develop their own intelligent software algorithms, but also has strong compatibility, and can also help it in difficult times, it is indeed a strong competitiveness.
From the overall point of view, compared with other suppliers, NVIDIA has achieved both soft and hard. In addition to providing customers with high-computing power on-board chips, the Drive Hyperion platform launched by NVIDIA is not only compatible with most brands of lidar, cameras, etc. on the market in hardware, but also provides manufacturers with high-precision map services that have always bothered them, making the sleepy-eyed domestic manufacturers' vision directly soar to 5.0. In this way, it is equivalent to NVIDIA directly feeding the rice to the mouth of the manufacturers, do you open or not?
pull oneself up by one’s bootstraps
Once you open your mouth now, you're highly likely to get your leg broken in the near future. Huawei is the best interpretation of this sentence, but Huawei people are angry. Although the chip was stuck in the neck, but it did not go down, but the "special" treatment more ignited Huawei's fighting spirit, to know that people may invest 140 billion yuan in R & D and innovation a year, no EDA, their own research and development of EDA; the chip was cut off, it reduced the development progress of mobile phone tablets, turned to multi-party new business, to make up for the loss of the terminal; no GMS use rights, Hongmeng's flat thunder, but also blew Google a surprise. As achievements in various fields continue to stand out, it is also like giving Midea a loud slap in the face.
Nowadays, domestic manufacturers should take this as a lesson and cannot bet all the bets on autonomous driving technology in the hands of NVIDIA. Although the current domestic suppliers of new energy vehicle chips have just started, as long as we do not "lie flat" development and catch up, it may not be possible to catch up with the latecomers. Just like Huawei's 5G in the field of communications, after all, thirty years of Hedong, thirty years of Hexi, who can figure this kind of thing clearly? This requires our domestic manufacturers to be self-reliant, taking other people's cars is OK, after all, starting late can be understood, but you can't do it in one stop. Napoleon said that a soldier who does not want to be a general is not a good soldier. If, at that time, someone kicks you down halfway, who are you looking for to cry?
Learning from "role models"
It is worth mentioning that Tesla is relatively tough in this area. With the gradual intellectualization and automation of the automotive industry over the years, behind this series of changes, it is more like igniting a beacon of "chip war" in the automotive field. In this war without smoke, the main control chip has replaced the MCU chip as the main battlefield, and has also spawned chip giants such as Tesla, Nvidia, Qualcomm, Intel and other chip giants. In contrast, Tesla is even more dazzling, as a beginner Tesla is stunned to break out of his own world by his own strength. And its success seems to be like us to show that only by mastering the core technology can we not become a prisoner of others and go further.
Looking back at Tesla's development over the years, both in terms of technology and popularity, it has achieved a leading position in the world. Long before Tesla built chips, it also relied on Nvidia and Mobileye's chips to supply. As a high-threshold chip industry, many players are discouraged. But as a highly imaginative Musk, of course, is not satisfied with chip technology in the hands of others. So he began to develop his own chip, and finally disclosed his FSD chip for the first time in the previous few years. In the same year, the autonomous driving chip developed by it was also mass-produced, and even achieved a good result of nearly 5 times the computing power of Nvidia Xavier chip in that year. This process, from the entry to the lead, he only took a year, perhaps this is the reason why Tesla is now standing in the world and has never fallen.
epilogue
The author believes that perhaps this can not completely buckle the pot to the heads of domestic manufacturers, after all, they have just started, the reason why our people are so indignant, the author wants to be more due to looking at their own children, hate iron is not steel mentality. Of course, we don't have to be too pessimistic, after all, new energy vehicles are not like traditional fuel vehicles, the research and development cycle is long, the replacement is slow, and it may be completed in less than 3 years from the establishment of the project to the output. Therefore, we can completely carry NVIDIA at the same time, maintain the independent innovation of their own technology, take its essence, remove its dross, and hatch its own strength. In addition, without infighting, a family must have the appearance of a family, and more local cooperation is the place where the light of the right path illuminates. (Nian Yao)
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