The current information technology revolution has a far-reaching impact, and the automobile industry is experiencing major changes unprecedented in a century. People's traditional cognition of the car is being subverted, intelligent cockpit, intelligent driving, etc. are being transformed from concepts into products, and the product attributes, industrial value chain and ecological structure of automobiles are being reconstructed by scientific and technological forces and imagination. Under the wave of automotive intelligence, how can Chinese manufacturers seize the opportunity to achieve overtaking in curves?
In order to help auto companies and practitioners better grasp the development trend of China's intelligent vehicles, understand consumer demand and willingness to pay for emerging automobile consumption scenarios, Autohome Research Institute and 21 New Automobile Research Institute jointly released the "2022 China Intelligent Vehicle Development Trend Insight Report" (hereinafter referred to as the "Report"). The "Report" focuses on users, products, enterprises and other parties, based on autohome 20,000 + real user survey samples, more than 100 million model clue data, 60,000 + model configuration data, 18 mainstream new car professional evaluation data, more than 10 industry core enterprise interviews and research, etc., through massive big data to mine user needs and expectations, explore future product development trends, point out problems and propose solutions.
【Autohome Research Institute】Autohome Research Institute was officially established in March this year, aiming to build a forward-looking research think tank for the automotive industry, using industry advantages to provide views on a series of important issues in the development of China's automotive industry. Autohome Research Institute aggregates the research strength of top industry experts inside and outside, uses the full link data resources of seeing, selecting, buying, and using years of industry observation and precipitation, insight into the new trends of the automotive industry, insight into new changes in users, insight into the new pattern of competition, aiming to empower the automotive industry. At present, the institute has five research centers: automotive industry research center, new energy research center, used car research center, aftermarket and ecological research center, and consumer research center.
【21st Century New Automobile Research Institute】In order to integrate and strengthen resources, become bigger and stronger in the field of professionalism and influence in the whole automotive industry, 21st Century Business Herald established the 21st Century New Automobile Research Institute in November 2021, focusing on the new trend of automobile development in the era of intelligent electric vehicles, studying major topics such as the reshaping of the entire automotive industry chain from the production end to the consumer end, producing and releasing relevant research products and reports, and is committed to promoting the effective integration and utilization of resources in the entire automotive industry chain. Promote and shape a better ecosystem of the whole automotive industry chain.
Based on the overall analysis, the Report draws the following important judgments:
First, China's intelligent car market has great potential, relevant policies have been formulated from the goal, to the guidance of landing and infrastructure construction, and the cooperation between technology companies and traditional car companies has been strengthened;
Second, the market penetration rate of intelligent cockpit configuration and intelligent driving configuration has grown rapidly, and intelligent feature configuration will become a new weapon in the competition of Chinese brand differentiation market;
Third, the iV-RATING test score of Chinese brand models is eye-catching;
Fourth, young and highly educated people have a higher acceptance of automobile intelligence;
Fifth, 5G technology promotes the development of the V2X market, and the coordinated development of vehicle-road collaboration and intelligent bicycles will become the main theme.
Development status of intelligent vehicles: broad market space, policy support for infrastructure, advantages of win-win cooperation
The smart cockpit market size is expected to exceed 100 billion in 2025. According to ICVTank data, the global smart cockpit industry market size is expected to reach $46.1 billion in 2022. As the world's most promising automotive market, China's smart cockpit market reached 44.1 billion yuan in 2019 and is expected to reach 103 billion yuan in 2025.
The penetration rate of smart cars has increased rapidly, and China's smart car market has great potential. As the cost of key components will continue to decline, the superimposed industrial environment is mature and the technology continues to progress, it is expected that by 2025, China's L2 and above smart car sales will exceed 10 million, corresponding to the penetration rate of smart cars of 49.3%.
Smart cars involve many industries, such as big data, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, semiconductors, information and communications and other high-end manufacturing fields, and have become the "must fight for soldiers" in the world's major countries. China's policies have gradually shifted from the original set goals and norms to guiding implementation, building infrastructure, and network and data security.
Autonomous driving technology enterprises basically take L4 and above automatic driving as the research and development goal, and at present, China's leading enterprises are mainly providing full-stack solutions. Two commercialization models have been realized, one is automated driving dedicated to solving simple scenarios, and the other is that traditional car companies cooperate with technology companies through cooperation or mergers and acquisitions.
At present, many cooperation is to complete the optimization of algorithms and the integration of software and hardware. With the intensification of competition and the slowdown in the pace of financing, car companies are likely to make up for their shortcomings in the field of autonomous driving through mergers and acquisitions.
"One core and multiple screens" provide unlimited imagination space for the development of intelligent cockpits. The smart cockpit is more easily perceived by the user, and the technology is less difficult to develop than the intelligent driving. The intelligent cockpit is connected with the life ecology of the car owner, and the use scenarios will be expanded infinitely.
The hardware configuration of the new power brand is ahead of schedule, and the algorithm optimization and iteration competition pressure is great. At present, the configuration of China's new forces in terms of hardware can basically meet the current stage of car owners and the upgrading of autonomous driving services in the next few years. However, manufacturers still need to continuously optimize and iterate in terms of perception algorithms, planning algorithms, control algorithms, etc., and integrate the execution layer and the interconnection layer to achieve higher-order automatic driving.
The development trend of intelligent configuration: the rapid penetration of networking functions, the gradual popularization of L2 level automatic driving, and the special configuration to help differentiated competition
In terms of smart cockpits, interactive configurations are trying to break the "circle". The market penetration rate of network function configuration has skyrocketed, with an average compound growth rate of nearly 60% in 5 years. Among them, the 5-year compound growth rate of OTA upgrades is as high as 122.7%. Rapid iterative updates may become the basic equipment of smart cars. However, the market penetration rate of human-computer interaction configuration is not high, and in the future, 5G and Car Networking technology may help it break the "circle".
In addition, the report also analyzes in detail the market penetration trend of different brand grades (overseas luxury brands, Chinese brands, overseas mainstream brands) and different price range markets in the "network function" such as the Internet of Vehicles and navigation road information display, and the "interactive function" such as in-car atmosphere lights and mobile phone wireless charging.
In terms of intelligent driving configuration, the average compound growth rate in five years is as high as 42.7%. Currently, the market penetration of core configurations in the junior driving class is growing; Full-speed adaptive cruises are growing most rapidly; Automatic parking has entered the platform period, and the penetration rate has grown slowly.
The market penetration of L2-class models has grown rapidly, up 24.5 times from 2017. As the price of autonomous driving hardware continues to decline, L2-level configurations penetrate downward into the market segment in the low price range. By 2021, the 200,000-300,000 range models have rushed into the first camp, and the penetration rate has reached 37.6%. By 2021, the market penetration rate of L2 autonomous driving of new energy models will reach 33.7%, which is much higher than the 19.0% of non-new energy sources.
In addition, intelligent feature configuration is the selling point of differentiated competition between brands. Chinese brands start earlier and develop more rapidly in this regard. The difference advantages of these emerging configurations may become a new weapon for Chinese brands to compete in the market.
The current situation of intelligent vehicle level: Chinese brands have performed eye-catchingly, but there is a lot of room for product improvement, and safe driving needs to be improved urgently
Models of each brand scored an average of 66.4 points in the iV-RATING test. Among them, Chinese brand models have performed eye-catching. iV-RATING is the "intelligent car evaluation system" designed by Autohome, which conducts professional evaluation from the two dimensions of intelligent cockpit and intelligent driving, including 8 dimensions of real user use scenarios, and the test strictly follows 36 strict standards and 75 subdivision evaluation standards.
Overall, there is still a lot of room for improvement in smart cars in terms of products. By the end of 2021, the average total score of the 18 mainstream smart cars participating in the test was only 66.4 points; Models under 65 points accounted for 44.5%.
The advantages and shortcomings are obvious, and the intelligent cockpit and intelligent driving have shown uneven development drawbacks. The main shortcomings of the smart cockpit are two parts: scene coverage and communication favorability; The main shortcomings of intelligent driving are high-speed and parking scenarios. On the whole, the performance of Chinese brand car series is more eye-catching, and the total score Top 3 comes from Chinese brands.
In the 2021 smart cockpit score Top 10, Chinese brand car series occupy 8 seats. Among them, the Haval H6 and Hoshikoshi L belong to the first camp, and the results are significantly higher than other car series.
From all dimensions, Xiaopeng P7 scored the highest interactive convenience, and its voice function was particularly powerful; Ideal ONE has the highest functional satisfaction score and a variety of entertainment systems; Hoshikoshi L has the highest scene coverage score, thanks to the embedded mini program in the system that covers many car and life scenes; NIO EC6 scored the highest communication favorability, and the NOMI robot added a warm and interactive experience to the interaction between people and vehicles.
In multiple dimensions of the smart cockpit, Chinese brands are in a leading position. Chinese brands scored the lowest on mapping features, with some newly launched smart cars in recent years not supporting any type of phone mapping feature, arguing that the cockpit is enough to replace or even surpass mapping tools like CarPlay or CarLife. Luxury brands are weaker than other camps in terms of scene coverage, and the localization service ecology is obviously missing.
In terms of intelligent driving, Tesla, the benchmark of self-driving in the traditional impression, is inferior to Chinese brands and only ranks eighth. In the top 10 of the rating, except for the Mercedes-Benz E-Class in the 3rd place and the Tesla Model Y in the 8th place, the other models are all Chinese brand models.
The parking scene is unique to Chinese brands, but the scene related to safe driving needs to be improved urgently. The test performance of Chinese brand models in the parking scene is particularly prominent, and the score is much higher than that of other camps. Among them, the basic ability and parking ability of various types of parking spaces are significantly stronger, but the intelligent driving ability in safety-related scenarios needs to be improved urgently.
The implementation of AEB functions is mainly based on hardware fusion solutions, but the performance of different tuning varies greatly. In terms of the current perception technology route selection, it is still based on the hardware integration scheme of vision + radar. However, the choice of solution does not completely determine the effect of AEB, but also has high-quality chips and advanced algorithms as a support to make better performance adjustments for the model.
Assisted driving monocular is the mainstay, but advanced autonomous driving lidar solutions are indispensable. In the IV-RATING test, the models with good performance mostly use the technical solution of multi-eye camera + angle radar, and the multi-hardware solution may not be redundant in high-speed scenarios.
User demand preference analysis: Young and highly educated groups are more open-minded, post-00s or tend to be conservative
In terms of acceptance of autonomous driving, 40% of users are more willing to accept assisted driving. From a generational point of view, in addition to the post-00s, the younger the willingness to accept high-level automatic driving. In terms of car purchase budget, the higher the budget, the higher the acceptance of high-end autonomous driving. In terms of academic qualifications, the higher the academic qualifications, the higher the acceptance of high-level automatic driving.
In terms of traditional intelligent car configuration functions, the new generation group does not pay. From a generational point of view, people's preferences for the first six configurations of traditional cars are similar, but the enthusiasm of the post-00s is not high. Active braking/active safety system and full-speed adaptive cruise are the two most important configurations for the post-80s and post-90s, and the proportion of post-00s choosing them is much lower, and it seems that the traditional configuration is difficult to impress the new generation of post-00s.
In addition, the report also analyzes the preferences of different groups of people for various traditional intelligent car configurations, such as active braking, full-speed adaptive cruise, parallel assist, lane departure warning system, and seat ventilation; As well as the preferences of different groups of people for various emerging intelligent configurations, such as mobile APP remote control of vehicles, A-pillar/chassis perspective image system, AR real-life map navigation.
For unmanned buses, young and highly educated users are more willing to pay. Overall, more than 60% of users are willing to accept unmanned buses, and the post-70s acceptance is the highest; 20% of the post-00s generation is unacceptable due to security problems. The younger the user, the more they can accept premium unmanned buses; The lower the education, the more it is expected that the price of unmanned buses will be lower than that of ordinary buses.
V2X status quo and commercialization: smart high-speed recycling period is long, Robotaxi needs to be allocated on a large scale, and terminal logistics has a large space for cost reduction
According to data released by ICVTank, it is expected that by 2022, the global V2X market size is expected to exceed 165 billion US dollars, and the Chinese V2X market size is expected to reach 50 billion US dollars. At present, the main products of the end OBU are mainly T-Box, the price is about 2,000 yuan, and it is expected that by 2023, the front-loading configuration of Chinese passenger cars T-Box will reach 14 million sets.
In the future, the coordinated development of vehicle-road collaboration and intelligent bicycles will become the main theme of the development of intelligent vehicles. Vehicle-road collaborative autonomous driving has become a clear technical route for the development of high-level automatic driving in the mainland. The higher the level of autonomous vehicle driving, the lower the road requirements. Local governments are actively and gradually promoting the coordinated development of smart cars and smart roads, and nearly 30 smart highways have been built or under construction in China, with a total mileage of nearly 4,000 kilometers.
Bicycle intelligence and vehicle-road collaboration are more like the "left arm" of intelligent driving. In the case of complex intersections, for example, drivers and sensors are limited by the viewing angle and line of sight, while roadside sensing devices and computing platforms can sense all traffic participants within the intersection. Vehicle-to-road collaboration has become a necessary condition for the development of autonomous driving. According to the prospective industry research institute, by 2030, the cumulative investment scale of major IT equipment of vehicle-road collaboration will reach 283.4 billion yuan.
The report also calculates the cost and benefit of three business models that apply V2X. The analysis compares the delivery of Meituan's automatic car and the delivery of riders, and believes that after the delivery of Meituan's automatic car is landed, the cost of expenditure may be reduced by half; The evaluation calculated the project recovery period of Hangshaoyong Smart Expressway, and believed that the user acceptance of high smart highway fees was doubtful and the project recovery period was long; Benchmarking analysis of the cost of autonomous driving and driver driving costs, it is believed that the Robotaxi market is huge, but the platform needs to reduce the upfront research and development costs through scale effects.
Intelligent vehicle development suggestions: cockpit configuration adjustment, increase L2 standard rate, full-stack self-developed strategy
In terms of smart cockpit configuration, most of the configuration items are more in demand than supply, reflecting the user's willingness to pay more for the purchase cost of the car to buy a higher model. 300,000-500,000 models in particular need to improve the standard configuration rate of network configuration.
In terms of intelligent driving configuration, L2 level auxiliary driving related configurations and safety configurations are loved by consumers, and increasing the standard rate of L2 level auxiliary driving configurations is conducive to market competition. Satellite navigation systems, 360 panoramic images, parallel assist and automatic parking are in a market situation where supply exceeds demand.
Finally, the Report puts forward six suggestions for Chinese automakers from the perspective of problem solutions and future development directions: (1) OTAs should not be reduced to marketing or patching tools, and OEMs should take back the initiative as soon as possible; (2) in the early stage of autonomous driving development, safety assurance should be the primary consideration; (3) "take-ism" short-term benefits are obvious, but full-stack self-development must be the ultimate attribution; (4) open source, innovation and breakthroughs, and the establishment of systematic and powerful software capabilities; (5) AEB and mobile phone remote control car has the highest willingness to pay, and can give priority to testing the water software paid subscription; (6) through smart driving activities, achievement exposure, function early adopters and other ways to enhance the acceptance of smart driving users.
The information technology revolution in which we are living is profoundly transforming the automotive industry, and China's auto industry should seize the opportunities of the era of digitalization and intelligence and strive to catch up. China's autonomous driving technology development marathon has passed the halfway point, L2 level autonomous vehicles are in the stage of commercial development, and V2X has also opened market exploration. Automotive intelligence has opened up business model innovations, but they need to be explored and verified. (Text/Autohome Research Institute Industry Commentator Lu Yuan)