In recent years, under the guidance of the "Outline for the Construction of a Transportation Powerhouse", the Party Central Committee and relevant ministries and commissions have actively led at the policy level, and the support of various localities for relevant enterprises has been increasing, and the autonomous driving industry has been innovated in an orderly manner.
Beijing has been leading in the automatic driving management policy, on April 28, Beijing took the lead in issuing an unmanned manned demonstration application notice, Baidu became the first batch of approved enterprises, and its autonomous driving travel service platform Radish Run officially opened the "no one behind the steering wheel" autonomous driving travel service.
As a global megacity, Beijing has taken the lead in opening the unmanned manned demonstration application, marking a substantial step towards unmanned autonomous driving in the mainland, which is an important achievement of Beijing's actively increasing the policy of first-mover trial, seizing the opportunity of industrial development strategy, accelerating the innovation and development of intelligent and connected vehicles, and also an important breakthrough in the development of China's automatic driving.
01
Baidu Apollo has led Waymo
Usher in the "peak moment"
Unmanned driving is the "Everest" in the field of automatic driving, and this time Beijing opened an unmanned manned demonstration application, indicating that mainland autonomous driving has entered a key "peak moment". As a must-compete place for cross-border and competitive cooperation between the automobile industry and the technology industry in various countries, it is of great significance who can take the lead in successfully reaching the peak of automatic driving.
In the global autonomous driving industry, there are two major players, one is Alphabet (Google's parent company) subsidiary Waymo, the other is China's Baidu Apollo, its technical route, test operations, commercial landing and other moves will attract the attention of the entire autonomous driving industry.
Judging from the complexity of the road actually tested and operated by the two companies, the road conditions faced by Baidu Apollo in the domestic test are obviously more complex. Unlike the million-level population cities tested by Waymo, Beijing has a permanent population of nearly 22 million, with a higher population density and a geometric increase in the difficulty coefficient of technology landing.
The urban core area of the United States is very small, the residential and living areas are relatively scattered and sparse, and the connections between the main areas are mostly trunk highways and branch roads with relatively low traffic flow, the overall road scene is more standardized, and the traffic participants are relatively small. China's urban core area is larger, with mixed distribution of living areas, commercial areas and residential areas, with higher density, and congestion during peak travel periods is the norm. In addition to motor vehicles, traffic participants also include a large number of pedestrians and non-motorized vehicles, especially various express delivery vehicles and takeaway vehicles, which will bring relatively large traffic risks.
The unmanned Robotaxi can realize the unmanned manned demonstration application in Beijing, which means that Baidu Apollo is more mature in technology, and shows that China's autonomous driving technology has achieved global leadership.
Although Baidu Apollo started a few years later than Google Waymo, its actual road test mileage has reached 27 million kilometers, growing faster than Google Waymo, and it is foreseeable that in the near future, Baidu's total test mileage will also surpass Waymo.
In addition to Domestic, Baidu Apollo also tested in California, USA, a more diverse test environment, which means that Baidu can collect higher quality test data and have more advantages in algorithm iteration. According to the California Municipal Motor Vehicle Administration (DMV) report, Baidu Apollo has no accidents and no takeovers in the unmanned test process in California in 2021, and has achieved the first place in the test of all unmanned autonomous driving.
From the operational point of view, Waymo only operates in Phoenix and San Francisco in the United States, while Baidu Apollo has fully opened its services in Beijing, Changsha, Cangzhou, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Chongqing, Shenzhen, Yangquan and Wuzhen, and has begun pilot commercialization of autonomous driving services in Beijing, Chongqing and Yangquan. According to data released by Baidu Apollo in early 2022, the average daily order volume reached more than 2300 orders, almost 4 to 5 times that of Google Waymo, and this operational capability is far ahead of Waymo.
In terms of products, Baidu Apollo's latest release of the Apollo Moon fifth-generation unmanned car has further reduced the cost of unmanned vehicles to 480,000 yuan, while Waymo's bicycle cost is about 1.1 million yuan, and the bicycle cost is close to 1/3 of Google Waymo. The lower cost can help Baidu achieve more unmanned vehicles and obtain faster data mining speed. More importantly, its cost has entered the cost range of commercial operations, which means that a true commercial closed loop can be formed.
Richer test scenarios, more real road test data, faster data growth rate, and lower product costs have made Baidu Apollo's autonomous driving technology rapidly iterative progress, which can solve extreme scene problems faster and climb to the peak of autonomous driving earlier.
02
China's industrial ecology suitable for the development of autonomous driving
In the field of autonomous driving, relevant policies and regulations play an important leading role. In contrast, the United States has introduced 5 national policies in the past 6 years, such as allowing companies to produce models without steering wheels and throttle brakes, the main goal is to reduce the shackles on innovation, but lack of initiative in specific implementation and guidance.
In the past 6 years, China has continuously issued more than 10 national policies to ensure the all-round development of automatic driving from multiple angles such as digital transportation, infrastructure construction, intelligent networked vehicle development, intelligent networking standards, road testing, etc. This policy guidance of "concentrating on doing big things" will undoubtedly play an important role in promoting the development of the automatic driving industry. The embodiment of this institutional advantage, the development of new energy vehicles in recent years is the best example, the field for 7 consecutive years to obtain the first good results in production and sales.
In addition to the national policy guidance, local governments are also very active in the development of autonomous driving. More than 40 provinces and cities, including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Chongqing, Henan, Changsha and other provinces and cities, have introduced meticulous management measures, realized the division and coverage of road testing, manned testing, demonstration operation to unmanned and other stages, and have established road testing and demonstration application policy pilot zones to ensure that the industry is implemented.
Autonomous driving requires high-precision sensors, high-computing chips, and efficient cloud services, and China's investment in the field of automatic driving has spawned a large number of excellent technology companies. Especially in the field of lidar, at this stage, domestic enterprises such as Hesai Technology, Sagitar Juchuang, and Tudtong have achieved a leading position in products and technologies. On the computing chip, the development speed is very fast, and the future can be expected. In the construction of infrastructure such as cloud services and V2X, China has always been at the forefront of the world and has an unsurpassable leading edge.
China also has a better environment in terms of market acceptance and user confidence. According to the "2021 China Consumer Self-Driving Confidence Index Survey" released by J.D.Power, the Chinese consumer confidence index for autonomous driving technology reached 50 points, much higher than the 36 points of American consumers.
Research from the McKinsey Center for Future Mobility also points out that Chinese consumers are willing to pay a premium of up to $4,600 for self-driving cars, compared to just $3,900 in the United States. This also shows that Chinese consumers are more accepting of autonomous driving.
Some insiders said that Chinese consumers actively accept new technologies, and the characteristics of stimulating enterprises to continue to innovate will promote the rapid development of autonomous driving technology, so as to build an autonomous driving ecosystem faster than other countries.
At present, the development of China's autonomous driving industry has led the world and entered a key "peak moment", which also means that in the next period of time, new requirements have been put forward for the policy formulation of government departments and the technological development of enterprises: it is necessary to have the mentality of a pioneer in thinking and the courage to dare to be the first in the world, in order to have the opportunity to climb to the top of the world.
Edited by 丨Yang Lei Liao Qian
Audit 丨Liang Wei Lian Meng
Producer 丨Sun Yingli