With the invasion of black technology into the automotive field, will the future car still be just a four-wheeled means of transportation? At present, in order to carry out differentiated competition in terms of intelligence, some car companies are building satellites, some car companies are building car robots, and some car companies are building flying cars...
The focus of competition for electric vehicles has gradually changed from the past electrification stage to intelligence, and many companies are boldly trying various new technologies while developing autonomous driving technology. Once the human hands are freed, the car will have more room for imagination. In the view of Chen Qingtai, chairman of the China Electric Vehicle 100 Association, smart cars are subverting functional cars. It has a greater impact than smartphones subverting feature phones, and has a more profound impact on economic and social changes. This automobile revolution is not carried out in isolation, and what runs parallel and connected with it is the new energy revolution and a new generation of mobile communications, the transportation revolution and smart city; Supporting this automotive revolution is the rapid development of mobile Internet, digital economy and artificial intelligence technology, which blends and interacts with the automotive revolution, providing a technical foundation and rich use scenarios for the electrification, greening, networking, intelligence and sharing of future automobiles.
Chen Qingtai believes that it is necessary to put the future car in a larger category, evaluate its development prospects with a broader vision, and deploy its future in order to grasp the direction of progress.
He Xiaopeng wants to make smart cars fly
He Xiaopeng, chairman of Xiaopeng Motors, firmly believes that smart cars will fly at low altitudes, not just run on the ground. Every week or two, he would run to Roc Huitian to learn about the progress of the flying car.
In July 2020, He Xiaopeng and Xiaopeng Automobile jointly invested and controlled Huitian, and Xiaopeng Huitian was officially established, and He Xiaopeng concurrently served as the chairman of Xiaopeng Huitian. In less than two years, The staff of Xiaopeng Huitian has expanded from about 20 to 700 people, and it is expected to reach 1,000 people by the end of this year.
Last week, He Xiaopeng said in an interview with the first financial reporter that the coupling between flight and automobile is very difficult, but China has very good aircraft, cars and intelligent research and development personnel, and the current technology will have an inflection point effect to make cars really fly.
It is extremely challenging to open up another way to develop "road and air amphibious" means of transportation, and Zhao Deli, the founder and president of Xiaopeng Huitian, has fallen from the low air many times, and even almost took his life. In order to experience the feeling of Black Cat Sheriff flying in the air riding a flying motorcycle or Harry Potter riding a flying broomstick, he began to build a flying motorcycle in 2013, personally smashing more than 20 million yuan before and after, once in debt, and was once listed as a dishonest executor.
"On the eve of the test flight in 2018, it happened to be my mother's 70th birthday, and I specially returned to Changde to wish my mother a happy birthday, and I was still worried that the test flight three days later would be in case of an accident. In fact, I am also afraid of death. Zhao Deli said. Fortunately, the first flight was successful, and the dream that Zhao Deli insisted on was seen by more and more people, including He Xiaopeng. He Xiaopeng believes that once a smart car can fly, it will be like a tiger. In Zhao Deli's view, the market size of the automobile that can drive and fly will be larger than that of vertical take-off and landing aircraft, and with the injection of funds from He Xiaopeng and Xiaopeng Automobile, he is no longer worried about the shortage of funds and can focus more on the research and development of flight. The two hit it off.
In October 2021, Xiaopeng Huitian completed a SERIES financing of US$500 million, and many of the investors are shareholders of Xiaopeng Motors. With the increase of funds and R&D personnel, xiaopeng Huitian has accelerated its pace, combined with the core technology of the fourth-generation product traveler X1 and the design gene of Xiaopeng Automobile P7, the fifth generation of product traveler X2 has been launched. This iterative flying car contains 560 kg of batteries, can carry two passengers and has a maximum load of 200 kg.
At present, Xiaopeng Huitian is developing the sixth generation of flying cars. Conceivably, this is a flying car that can really drive on the road and fly in the sky, its size is comparable to the size of a regular car, and it can drive freely on open roads. Adopting the configuration design of "road and air integration", it can also be switched to the flight mode through the folding deformation system, vertical take-off and landing under the conditions permitted by regulations and the environment, and cross rivers, obstacles, congested road sections, etc., to meet people's short-distance low-altitude needs. At this stage of the product, the research and development direction is still based on the attributes of the car, it is planned to drive on the road surface about 90% of the time, and 10% of the time can fly in the sky; In the long run, as the mileage and mileage of flying cars continue to increase, the number of flight scenarios and the improvement of flight convenience, coupled with the user's threshold and cost reduction, flying cars may have 90% of the time to fly in the sky, 10% of the time on the ground for short-distance movement. At that time, the flying car can realize the door-to-door, end-to-end, unsupervised, autonomous driving 3D travel scenario.
Zhao Deli said that Xiaopeng Huitian has jointly developed the power battery of the flying car with the Ningde era, and it is the rapid development of domestic batteries, motors and electronic control components and intelligent cars, which will also rapidly empower the intelligent networking of the aircraft. According to the plan, Xiaopeng Huitian will achieve mass production and delivery of the sixth generation of flying cars in 2024.
Mainland policy supports the development of flying cars. Among them, the Ministry of Transport and the Ministry of Science and Technology jointly released the "Outline of the Medium- and Long-term Development Plan for Scientific and Technological Innovation in the Field of Transportation (2021-2035)" jointly released on January 24 this year, mentioning: "Deploy flying vehicle research and development, breakthrough in the integration of aircraft and vehicles, free switching between flight and ground driving and other technologies." ”
At present, there are four main types of players participating in the flying car market in the world: traditional aviation manufacturers such as Boeing, Airbus and Bell Helicopters, traditional automobile manufacturers such as Audi, Toyota, Daimler and Geely, drone companies such as DJI and EHang Intelligent, and emerging startups such as Lilium, Archer and Xiaopeng Huitian.
According to industry research reports such as "On the Market Potential of Advanced Air Traffic (AAM) in the Asia-Pacific Region" released by Roland Berger in February 2022, countries in the Asia-Pacific region will implement advanced air transportation (AAM) services by 2030, the global urban air traffic industry will reach $1.5 trillion by 2040, and by 2050, there will be nearly 100,000 flying cars worldwide as air taxis, airport shuttles and intercity aviation. AAM services revenue in the Asia-Pacific region alone amounted to $36.9 billion.
The prospect of flying cars is optimistic about some companies, but as a new species that completely subverts the original mode of travel, flying cars still need to go through a long period of development and iteration. At present, there are still few enterprises specializing in the research and development of flying cars, although there are already ultra-low-altitude aircraft put into commercial applications, but its price is often millions of dollars, and the flying car market has just started, the relevant policies and regulations have not yet been established, unlike automobiles, air traffic needs more precise planning and stricter control, and commercialization still needs time.
In addition, there are various problems to be solved in terms of technology and products of flying cars. Xiaopeng Huitian said that it is difficult and correct to do.
Musk and Li Shufu love "heaven"
Not only Is He Xiaopeng eyeing the airspace, Tesla CEO Musk and Geely Chairman Li Shufu have already acted, but the direction of their attacks is different.
At the beginning of June this year, the first orbit of the "Geely Future Planetary Constellation" was launched in a one-arrow and nine-star manner at the Xichang Satellite Launch Center, and the satellite successfully entered the predetermined orbit. Geely became the first car company in China to successfully launch a satellite.
As early as 2018, Tesla CEO Musk's space exploration technology company SpaceX's two experimental satellites have successfully "gone to heaven" and carried out ground communication tests.
In the same year, Geely Strategic invested in Zhejiang Space-time Daoyu Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Space-Time Daoyu"), an aerospace technology company, and officially began to build a high-precision space-time information system for the integration of heaven and earth. The system can provide remote sensing AI services, high-precision positioning, space-based remote sensing communication services, etc.
This is similar to Muskti's "StarLink" plan, which is to build a "satellite Internet", that is, an air base station. However, from the current point of view, Li Shufu and Musk have different application priorities after competing for "airspace rights".
Geely related people told the first financial reporter that Geely's involvement in satellites, chips, mobile phones and other businesses are based on the car as the core, all work is around the automobile business, and ultimately in order to strengthen the technology ecosystem and create the core competitiveness of the automobile.
The layout of "Geely Future Planetary Constellation" actually pays more attention to the centimeter-level high-precision positioning it can provide, and the role of high-precision positioning in the field of intelligent driving.
The reporter learned from Geely that in terms of the integration of high-precision positioning services in heaven and earth, Lynk & Co has completed two high-precision positioning national road tests together with Time and Space Daoyu, and the test shows that the high-precision positioning service achieves an accuracy of centimeter-level to meet the needs of future intelligent driving for high-precision positioning.
The space-earth integrated high-precision spatio-temporal information system can realize accurate planning of routes, and help various applications of smart travel such as vehicle cloud management, vehicle-road coordination, intelligent driving, and automatic parking. In the field of intelligent driving, users can obtain real-time high-precision positioning through on-board terminals, as well as more accurate road features, including zebra crossings, road signs, 3D building models, traffic lights, etc., which can help the perception, decision-making and control of intelligent driving.
"The future of the car is a highly integrated online and offline 'super intelligent mobile terminal', and the large-scale integration of the aerospace industry and the automobile industry will bring about far-reaching changes in commercial application scenarios." Geely said that it will also comprehensively enhance the user's intelligent travel experience of Geely's brands such as Extreme Kr, Lynk & Co, and Remote New Energy Commercial Vehicles.
Musk's "StarLink" plan makes less mention of synergies with Tesla and focuses on global coverage, low-cost communication services. Starlink was originally designed to target remote areas, areas not yet covered by ground base stations such as ocean-going ships and aircraft. In an interview with the media last September, Musk said that he hopes That Starlink will get a piece of the cake from the global Internet service providers, so as to use the increased profits to provide more funds for SpaceX and provide a source of income for the next generation of rockets.
At present, the public cooperation with Tesla by StarLink is on the supercharger station. At the end of last year, Tesla began to deploy a "StarLink" satellite Internet system for its supercharging stations, which can replace existing network connections, provide network services for charging car owners, and also help Tesla deploy superchargering stations in more remote areas.
A commercial aerospace industry insider told reporters that the current integration of Tesla and Space X satellites is mainly concentrated in the upstream, the two sides have a certain synergy in production and manufacturing, supply chain management, as for how the downstream application of "Starlink" is actually a development point of view, the future is possible, do not rule out large-scale applications in the car.
As of mid-May this year, Space X has launched more than 2,500 "Starlink" satellites, providing Internet access services for users in the United States, The United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and other countries. Musk said that by 2027, the original plan of 12,000 satellites will increase to 42,000, creating a global "star chain" network around the earth.
Geely has not yet announced the specific number of satellite plans, only indicating that the high-precision maps collected by Geely Surveying and Mapping will cover the whole country in 2023; By 2026, Geely's satellite layout will achieve "global blind zone-free" communication and centimeter-level high-precision positioning coverage. At that time, the space-earth integrated high-precision spatio-temporal information system built by Geely will be mainly used in the fields of intelligent driving, intelligent logistics, and customized remote sensing services.
The boundaries of the automotive industry are gradually blurring
The automotive industry has entered a once-in-a-century period of change, with the acceleration of technological innovation and the influx of a large amount of capital, smart cars are subverting functional vehicles and accelerating integration with other industries.
"Intelligence has brought great changes to the automotive industry, making the original hardware-led automotive products undergo essential changes, and the joint definition of automobiles by software and hardware has begun to become the consensus of the industry." In this great change, the boundaries of the automobile industry have gradually blurred, automotive products are no longer an island, and the entire industrial chain has also been reconstructed. Zhao Fuquan, dean of the Academy of Automotive Industry and Technology Strategy at Tsinghua University, said.
Under the industrial change, auto companies and technology companies are attacking each other's "self-reserved land", and in the face of uncertain risks and uncertain futures, many companies have cross-border alliances to move forward.
In addition to building cars and satellites, Li Shufu is also building automotive robots with Baidu Chairman Robin Li. Li Shufu has publicly stated that the car in his mind is a robot, which can drive, repair, refuel, charge, etc., and can become a secretary and security guard, which is very intelligent. This coincides with Robin Li's definition of automotive robots. In March last year, Baidu and Geely jointly invested in the establishment of Jidu Automobile. On June 8 this year, Jidu Automobile's first automotive robot mass production concept car ROBOT-01 was unveiled.
Xia Yiping, CEO of Jidu Automobile, said: "The era of intelligent car 3.0 is the era of automotive robots, and the starting point of the era of change is the transfer of car 'driving rights' from humans to AI, and AI drives the evolution of cars. ”
In other words, the basis of automotive robots is the landing of high-level autonomous driving.
"With the deepening of intelligence, cars will need less and less human intervention, and vehicles will have the ability to think independently and even anticipate the needs of passengers." Gu Kang, a development engineer at an autonomous driving company in Shanghai, told the first financial reporter, but the premise of these are the landing of automatic driving, the properties of the car have undergone fundamental changes, and the car wants to realize the concept of such as a third space, a second living room and even a robot, based on the realization of automatic driving, which will free people from the driving work.
In the past 10 years, the power system, form and interaction mode of the car have undergone great changes, but the attributes of the car have not changed fundamentally. "For a car to become a robot, it needs to achieve at least L4 level autonomous driving." Gu Kang said.
At present, although intelligent driving assistance systems are emerging in an endless stream, they are still far from the popularization of autonomous driving due to regulations and technical levels.
The future of the car from a dream to a reality is difficult
Electric vehicles are accelerating the encroachment on the fuel vehicle market, but more and more car companies are not only focusing on core components such as motors, motors, electronic controls and electric vehicles themselves, but accelerating the expansion of automobile boundaries, long-term layout, upgrading the two-dimensional transportation system to a three-dimensional transportation system.
"From autonomous driving to wire control, cars are replicating the path that the aviation industry has taken in the past few decades, but so far aircraft have not achieved full autonomous driving, and the traffic on land is more complicated than in the sky." An investor in a driver assistance system company told reporters.
When autonomous driving can really land, there is still a huge disagreement in the industry. Not only is there still a bottleneck in technological development, but also the issue of ownership of responsibilities for intelligent car autonomous driving is also very complicated.
Gu Kang believes that before the big foundation of automatic driving is not clear, "car robot" is more of a concept, or even a gimmick.
Flying cars, which are also based on automatic driving, are more difficult to turn from dreams to reality than "car robots". Aerial and ground autonomous driving have their own difficulties, the road surface has a variety of obstacles, the road conditions are very complex, and aerial automatic driving requires detection of longer distances and higher safety requirements. The two are superimposed, and the difficulty of autonomous driving of flying cars will increase geometrically.
Among the employees of Xiaopeng Huitian, about 45% are from the automotive industry and 20% from the aviation industry. A person in charge of technology research and development from the aviation industry to Xiaopeng Huitian said in an interview with the first financial reporter that there are differences between aviation people and auto people in terms of way of thinking, running-in is a very painful process, the iterative change of products in the aviation field is relatively slow, an aviation person in his career is often to experience one or two iterations of aircraft products, and the iteration speed of the automotive field is much faster, and in the design process to take into account more space, weight, cost and other factors, such as weight is by "grams" Calculated on a unit, autonomous driving technology in the aviation field cannot be directly transferred to flying cars.
Cross-border integration is a major challenge. Xiaopeng Automobile has experienced the pain of the integration of auto people and Internet people. The Internet industry pays attention to speed, pushes products to the market as soon as possible, and constantly modifies products through extensive participation of users, so as to achieve rapid iteration of product software and hardware. In the traditional automotive industry, it took about five years for a new car to be replaced. Although through continuous exploration, Xiaopeng Automobile has gradually found a balance between Internet thinking and automobile manufacturing, Xiaopeng Huitian is now facing the integration of aircraft, automobiles and Internet technology, which has a higher difficulty coefficient.
At present, Xiaopeng Huitian is facing many technical challenges, such as high power density and stable and reliable motor technology, power battery technology with high energy density and high safety, aerial automatic driving technology, lightweight technology, pneumatic technology, etc., but the biggest challenge is the coupling of aviation technology and intelligent electrified vehicle technology, which is not only a technical challenge, but also a challenge in the company's operation management and system.
In addition to overcoming these difficulties, the uncertainty of the development of flying cars also includes the policy level. At present, for the emerging field of flying cars, there is no existing set of special regulations in China. Therefore, relevant enterprises need to simultaneously promote the research and formulation of relevant policies and regulations in the journey of exploration of flying cars, including the basis for the airworthiness approval of flying vehicles and operating rules. In addition, the low-altitude airspace opening timetable and the speed of low-altitude air traffic control system construction are also the main challenges in the expansion of product use scenarios.
Regarding automobile innovation and integration, He Xiaopeng said that the car is closely related to everyone's life safety, talking about innovation in the automotive field, after having a good idea, we must do a good job in the car, no matter how the automotive industry develops, the essence of the car is difficult to change in a short period of time. Enterprise innovation, in addition to having innovative ideas, but also have innovative genes, enough capital and patience, Xiaopeng Automobile only this year in the ecology and automotive system research and development expenses have reached 8 billion yuan, Tesla, Huawei research and development costs are often 70 to 8 billion US dollars. In addition, in the process of innovation, you have to endure a long period of loneliness and ridicule from many people, so innovation requires courage.
It took Tesla 17 years in the electric vehicle market to turn a profit. Xiaopeng Automobile, which was established in 2014, has not yet achieved profitability. In the first quarter of this year, Xiaopeng Automobile's net loss expanded to 1.7 billion yuan. Xiaopeng Automobile explained that this is due to the doubling of R&D expenditure due to the increase in new model development and R&D personnel.
In today's intelligent car system, the time, intensity and investment in research and development are very important. In the second half of intelligence, uncertainties will increase significantly, and the market will become more complex. In order to leverage the smart electric vehicle market as soon as possible, Toyota plans to install a version of the OMG (One Motion Grip) driving control set on the Bz4X pure electric new car, but the current pre-sale of the Bz4X pure electric new car only has a circular steering wheel version, and whether the special-shaped steering wheel version can pass the relevant regulatory approvals is still unknown. Innovation in the car itself is not easy, and cross-border is even more difficult. BYD has tried to build cloud rail, cloud bar and other three-dimensional intelligent transportation systems, as early as 2016 launched a cumulative investment of 5 billion yuan to build cloud rail, and plans to let driverless technology first be installed on the cloud rail, and then introduced into electric vehicles. However, over the years, the cloud rail project has not progressed satisfactorily due to issues such as project approval and commercialization.
If the L4 and L5 high-level autonomous driving of intelligent cars will land in the future, it will first pass the levels of safety, cost, high integration of intelligent parts, data, intelligent driving, fast all-scenario and related policies. Before the breakthrough of high-level automatic driving, it is more difficult for smart cars to land in the direction of automobile robots and flying cars.
Some traditional car companies want to keep the right surprise, and some new car-making forces want to surprise them. The road to innovation is full of thorns, and no company can easily succeed, but there are always brave people who cut through the thorns.