Grab the city L2 automatic driving, Huawei personally bring goods, can the polar fox turn over?

Header image source | Polar Fox Official

"It's going to sell out of stock."

After 1206 days of hand-in-hand, the cooperation between BAIC and Huawei was finally successfully handed over.

On May 7, the new HI version of the Polar Fox Alpha S, positioned as a high-end intelligent driving pure electric sedan, was launched, with a total of two models launched, and the official guidance price was 397,900 yuan and 429,900 yuan respectively.

Polar Fox Alpha S new HI version, sounds very complicated name, disassembled to "Pole Fox" is the brand name, "Alpha S" is the model name, "HI" represents huawei Inside mode, which is the biggest selling point of this car.

The advent of this car has brought three global firsts, namely the first mass production car equipped with HI Huawei's full-stack intelligent car solution, the first mass production car that supports high-end intelligent driving on urban roads, and the first high-end pure power production car equipped with Huawei's intelligent cockpit Hongmeng car machine OS.

Yu Chengdong, managing director of Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd., CEO of terminal BG, and CEO of smart car solution BU, commented at the press conference that it is "the model with the strongest hardware architecture capability in the world".

Source: Polar Fox Official

Huawei has many friends in the automotive circle, and has cooperated with Xiaokang to successively launch two models, the Xilis SF5 and the AITO Q&I M5. With Huawei's blessing, from January to April, Xiaokang co., Ltd. sold a total of 22,752 new energy vehicles, up 199.64% year-on-year. Beiqi Polar Fox, which has been silent for a long time, can you use the New HI Version of Polar Fox Alpha S to fight a turnaround battle?

Grab the city's high-end intelligent driving

As early as April 2021, during the Shanghai Auto Show, the Polar Fox Alpha S has appeared and opened pre-sales, but the listing time has repeatedly jumped tickets, which has satisfied everyone's appetite.

Yu Chengdong explained the reason for the delay in delivery in an interview with Future Auto Daily, "After we released this product last year, the time to go public was postponed due to the epidemic, (chip) sanctions, and various technical verification cycles. However, everything seems to be worth waiting, and Yu Chengdong is extremely confident in the car's intelligent driving ability, "its intelligent driving system is currently the most advanced in the world."

Source: Future Automotive Daily

According to the information revealed at the press conference, the car has 34 high-perception hardware, including 3 mass-produced lidar, forming a set of ultra-high fusion perception system with 360-degree full coverage, with MDC810 intelligent driving computing platform, supporting 400 TOPS super computing power, which can realize advanced functions in the field of mass-produced automatic driving such as urban L2 automatic driving, high-speed NOA, and memory parking.

Yu Chengdong is extremely confident in the hardware and software configuration of this car, "At least until the end of this year, there will be no stronger intelligent driving ability than us (models), including hardware, perception and algorithm systems." ”

Taking lidar as an example, in the past two years, more and more car companies have begun to install lidar, but the real mass production of models is very few, currently only Xiaopeng P5, Weilai ET7 and other models, lidar is also an important part of Huawei's HI full-stack intelligent car solutions, Jihu Alpha S is equipped with 3 Huawei's self-developed 96-line lidar.

Intelligent navigation assisted driving based on urban scenarios is recognized as the commanding heights of the next autonomous driving technology, through which vehicles can realize intelligent driver assistance from point A to point B based on the navigation route set by the user.

However, at present, almost no mass production models can implement the above functions. Even Xiaopeng, whose automatic driving capabilities are relatively advanced, can only implement this function on highways and some urban expressways covered by high-precision maps, and this function is not yet supported on roads and loops within the city. Jidu's first mass-produced model also takes this as a core selling point. In an interview with Future Auto Daily, Xia Yiping, CEO of Jidu Automobile, revealed that the first version of its first car can already be done: in the city, when the user uses navigation, the vehicle can automatically stop when it recognizes the red light; the navigation requires left turn, and the car will drive to the left turn lane by itself (that is, automatic driving according to map navigation).

At the press conference, Wang Jun, chief operating officer of Huawei's intelligent vehicle solution BU, introduced that the Polar Fox Alpha S HI version can automatically go up and down the ramp, automatically change lanes, automatically pass through etc toll stations and other functions according to the navigation route, and in urban road scenarios, it can also identify non-motorized vehicles on the road to achieve active avoidance.

Source: Huawei Smart Car Solution BU

According to Yu Chengdong, he often drives this car to and from Dongguan and Shenzhen, and when using the city's auxiliary driving function, the performance of this car on the highway is very good, but the high-precision map of the urban area may take time to improve, and the domestic roads are constantly changing, causing some trouble to the collection and production of maps.

Indeed, high-level intelligent driving requires a lot of data, training, testing, simulation, and AI learning, so this is a gradually improved and iterative process. Yu Chengdong admitted that when consumers get this car, its intelligent driving ability is only a starting point, the software will continue to iterate, and the experience brought by the new version will become better and better. "Just like (human) drivers, just starting out as a novice, the more cars you drive, the more you learn and train, the more capable you become."

Source: Huawei Smart Car Solution BU

The new HI version of Jihu Alpha S is equipped with Huawei's intelligent cockpit Hongmeng car machine OS system, which has core capabilities such as voice control, visual perception, on-board payment, and seamless circulation specially created for in-vehicle scenes, and is deeply integrated with applications, in other words, this is the most advanced system that Huawei can come up with in the car-machine experience.

"Sold out of stock, no stock"

After the product is officially launched, the next step is to start to accept the verification of the real knife and gun in the market. According to the official introduction, this car mainly relies on the sales network and sales system of Jihu, and Huawei may provide some retail store support.

Speaking of sales expectations, Liu Yu, deputy general manager of BAIC Group and chairman of BAIC BJEV, did not put forward a specific numerical target, but he seemed very confident, "To sell out of stock, there is no inventory, no matter how much (sales) is not enough to support such a good technology, such a good product." ”

Source: Polar Fox Official

To make Liu Yu have such a strong confidence, in addition to the product strength of the new HI version of Polar Fox Alpha S, there is also a judgment based on market data. There is a theory in economics that product penetration driven by new technologies exceeds 16% and then enters popular consumption. According to the data released by the Association of Automobile Manufacturers, the domestic retail penetration rate of new energy vehicles reached 28.2% in March, a significant increase of 17.6 percentage points over the penetration rate of 10.6% in March 2021, far exceeding the "standard line" of 16%, and from the perspective of the penetration rate of new energy vehicles, this year should enter a blowout state.

"If there is no epidemic, this year should enter the popularization period of new energy vehicles based on pure electricity, and the market demand is not too big a problem, and now it is mainly necessary to solve the resource problem." Liu Yu said.

Yu Chengdong also expressed concern about the supply chain: "We cooperate with a number of car companies, each car company is different, some rely on the supply chain in Shanghai and its surroundings, so this year's impact is relatively large, Huawei will find every way to help our partners increase production capacity." ”

Even so, Liu Yu also said that BAIC's sales target this year will not be adjusted, "we are still trying to grab resources."

BAIC Polar Fox led, with Huawei assistance

In 2021, the "soul theory" published by Chen Hong, chairman of SAIC Motor, triggered a wave of intelligent driving discourse power disputes, some people think that this is unfounded, and some people think that Chen Hong has expressed the worries of many car companies.

Whether Huawei will really "ingest" the soul of car companies is debatable, but one thing is certain, for some car companies, cooperation with Huawei is the fastest way to achieve intelligence and enhance competitiveness.

BAIC has enjoyed this "technical dividend", which is favored by the news of the listing of the new HI version of Jihu Alpha S, and the stock price of Beiqi Blue Valley has risen for several consecutive days, which fully demonstrates the market's attention and recognition of huawei and Jihu this cooperation.

Source: Polar Fox Official

Yu Chengdong also stressed in interviews many times that "in the HI cooperation model, Jihu is the main body of operation and Huawei is the assistance."

Yu Chengdong said, "The idea of electric vehicle manufacturing is different from traditional fuel vehicles, based on user scenarios to create products, in the era of intelligent electric, Huawei and car companies cooperation model has undergone great changes, not the relationship between Party A and Party B." ”

Liu Yu gave an example, "The original Polar Fox Alpha S body anti-collision beam is 1.5 mm, but because the installation process of lidar needs to be increased to 0.5 mm, which will affect the stamping, welding and other processes, the two sides need to cooperate from the early days, we have been polishing this product from 2018 to the present, is through this process." ”

Car companies that cooperate with Huawei through huawei's Huawei Inside model are Changan and GAC, and at present, the models cooperated by these two car companies and Huawei have not yet been officially mass-produced, and BAIC Jihu has a first-mover advantage. However, for an autonomous model priced at up to 400,000 yuan, even if it hugs Huawei's thigh, it is difficult to conclude that it will be successful.

Everything also needs to be verified by the market.

The author | Li Yupeng

Edit the | Li Huanhuan