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Chedong May 18 news, today Light Boat Zhihang held an online brand strategy conference, officially interpreted its own technical methodology, as well as the latest "double engine" development strategy, and three major products - unmanned minibus dragon boat SPACE, the fourth generation of mass production vehicle regulation-level automatic driving program DBQ V4, and automatic driving research and development tool chain light boat matrix.
Among them, The methodology of Qingzhou's "autonomous driving super factory" helps it to achieve the landing of the all-scenario large-scale mass production perception scheme with "data efficiency, model efficiency, and evaluation efficiency" in terms of perception.
Light Boat Intelligent Navigation Autonomous Driving Factory Methodology
The so-called "dual engine" strategy refers to the "power engine" and "innovation engine" of the light boat. The former is The L4 level automatic driving software and hardware scheme of Qingzhou, based on this scheme, it gradually realizes the driving ability of completely unmanned driving in more scenarios; the latter refers to the freely configured automatic driving front-loading mass production scheme, through which the scheme can help Qingzhou's L4-level automatic driving technology accelerate the expansion of horizontal scenarios and realize the large-scale landing of automatic driving technology.
At the press conference, Qingzhou Zhihang also announced that it has reached a strategic partnership with Volcano Engine, T3 Travel, and Horizon.
After the meeting, Yu Qian, CEO of Qingzhou Zhihang, and Yu Kai, CEO of Horizon, were interviewed by Che dong and other media, and introduced the cooperation details of DBQ V4, the fourth-generation mass production vehicle regulation-level automatic driving program of Qingzhou Zhihang, as well as future development plans.
First, the release of the fourth generation of mass production vehicle regulation-level automatic driving program In the third quarter of this year, a road test will be launched
At the end of last year, Qingzhou Zhihang has officially announced the cooperation with the volcano engine, according to Yu Qian, the light boat and the volcano engine to create an automatic driving tool chain light boat matrix, this set of tool chain with simulation as the core, can open up the whole process from research and development to test operation.
At present, the light boat matrix has been fully applied to the development system of light boat zhihang itself, and has become an important support for the landing ability of light boat zhihang. In just one year, Qingzhou Zhihang's self-driving cars have been tested and commercialized in public roads in 10 cities around the world, covering 10 models and fleets of nearly 100 vehicles.
Light boat intelligent navigation unmanned minibus dragon boat SPACE
In addition, through the cooperation with T3 Mobility, Qingzhou will also officially launch the open operation of Robotaxi, entering a new stage of joint development of technology verification and commercialization.
It is worth noting that the light boat also announced that it will jointly build an autonomous driving front-loading mass production solution with the domestic chip company Horizon.
Yu Qian, CEO of Light Boat Zhihang (right), and Yu Kai, CEO of Horizon (left)
For this cooperation, Yu Kai said in an interview that from the general direction, it is also an attempt by Chinese companies to propose a Chinese plan on the track of automatic driving, and it is also an opportunity for China's industrial upgrading and transformation in the era of intelligent vehicles.
As a chip start-up with great potential in China, Horizon has also won many orders from autonomous driving companies and car companies this year; Yu Kai told Che Dong that Horizon implements the Tier 2 route, and by providing chips to support partners to develop their own perception algorithms and scale algorithms on chips, the degree of openness will be higher.
At the same time, Yu Qian revealed that it is expected that in the third quarter of this year, the mass production vehicle-level automatic driving program based on the five chips of the journey jointly built by the two sides will be put on the car to start the official road test, and it is planned to be put into mass production next year.
Second, the cost of mass production L4 is as low as 10,000 yuan, and the goal is that consumers can use it next year
Yu Qian told Che Dong that the fourth-generation mass production vehicle-level automatic driving program DBQ V4 of Qingzhou is a super cost-effective solution that integrates Qingzhou's self-developed automatic driving software and hardware technology, and the mass production cost is as low as 10,000 yuan.
At present, a few companies in the industry have also come up with their own L4 level autonomous driving mass production programs, but the cost of light boat has compressed to the level of 10,000 yuan this time, which is indeed unexpected.
So how does Light Boat do it? Yu Qian said that the configuration of this DBQ V4 is "adaptable to change". What does that mean? In simple terms, it can not only realize the configuration of national production, but also flexibly select different configuration schemes according to the needs of different customers or OEMs, and at the same time, a set of technology stacks can meet the application needs of different models and scenarios.
The fourth generation of light boat zhihang mass production vehicle regulation-level autonomous driving program DBQ V4
Then the demand for mass production L4 automatic driving for the vehicle specification level is different, combined with the iterative technology of the bottom layer of the light boat, so in the most ideal case, it is possible to reduce the cost to the level of only 10,000 yuan.
So when will consumers actually be able to use L4? Yu Qian told us that 2023 is the goal that Qingzhou hopes to achieve, but based on the current reality, it is still possible that it is based on L4 automatic driving in some limited areas.
He believes that in order to achieve fully unmanned driving, there is still a lot of low-level and in-depth work that needs to be done. Combined with the above-mentioned two-engine strategy of light boats, it is actually proposed for the full realization of unmanned driving - on the one hand, through the improvement of technology, the ability of L4 level automatic driving is ensured from the technical level; on the other hand, through practice, extensive testing, and accumulation of data and then reverse verification of the reliability of technology.
In terms of technology, Yu Qian introduced that Qingzhou is the first autonomous driving company in China to adopt space-time joint planning. Different from the current industry's widely adopted "space-time separation planning" automatic driving scheme, this spatio-temporal joint planning scheme can give the vehicle a more sensitive ability to grasp the timing, and can smoothly complete the continuous obstacle bypass in various complex road problems, that is, it has a better performance at the perceptual level.
"The autonomous driving industry is ushering in a golden inflection point in development, with more friendly policies and regulations, more powerful technical algorithms, sensors and computing moving closer to the vehicle standard level, and more and more industry champions." Yu Qian said.
Conclusion: Mass production L4 autonomous driving is accelerating
With the continuous development of the autonomous driving industry, the L4 level of fully unmanned autonomous driving technology has become more and more mature. In recent years, many autonomous driving companies have targeted the automatic driving solutions of mass production vehicles and launched their own products.
Although limited by laws and regulations and some actual long-tail scenario problems, there are still many practical difficulties in the full rollout of L4-level automatic driving, but the mass production L4-level automatic driving that can be achieved in a small range is likely to become a reality.
At present, autonomous driving companies such as Qingzhou Zhihang have made many breakthroughs in technology and data accumulation, and it is believed that an era of L4 level automatic driving for mass production is accelerating.