Bund Technology looks at the automatic driving on the eve of mass production: is it "the emperor's new clothes"?

21st Century Business Herald reporter Zhang Zitong reported from Shanghai

Recently, there have been many controversies in the autonomous driving industry around the necessity and future prospects of the realization of "truly driverless driving".

First, BYD Chairman Wang Chuanfu "fired" at the BYD 2022 Annual Report Exchange Conference: "Unmanned driving is, a dummy thing, that is all fooling, it is an emperor's new clothes." BYD has more than 600,000 employees, and it can't replace labor with machines. Even the work on a fixed production line cannot be unmanned, let alone complex actual road conditions? ”

A few days ago, Huawei, which had just made it clear that "does not build cars", stood up and shot back: "Recently, some industry bosses said that intelligent driving is fooling and nonsense, I think there are two reasons, the industry does not understand the intentional so, or his ability in this area has not been done, deliberately hit the industry." On the afternoon of April 17, Yu Chengdong, Executive Director of Huawei, CEO of Device BG, and CEO of Intelligent Vehicle Solution BU, made this statement at a press conference.

In the midst of the uproar, the market began to wonder, the industry seems to have returned to calm, return to the essence of business and user value, and the current user demand for driving is really unmanned, and when can unmanned driving land? To this end, the 21st Century Business Herald reporter interviewed a number of industry insiders in order to seek an answer.

L2 vs L4

After start-up companies released "advanced assisted driving" systems, Baidu and Huawei and other large manufacturers also entered the market with high profile.

On April 16, Baidu Apollo launched its flagship product Apollo City Driving Max, equipped with two NVIDIA Orin X chips and a computing power of 508TOPS.

On the same day, Huawei officially released ADS 2.0, an intelligent driver assistance solution system. Yu Chengdong said that the system can be achieved without relying on high-definition maps, which is also the most significant breakthrough of ADS 2.0. According to the plan, Huawei ADS 2.0 will be available in 15 and 45 cities across the country in Q3 and Q4 this year.

The 21st Century Business Herald reporter learned that the core reason why many autonomous driving technology companies turn to high-end assisted driving in passenger cars is also huge commercialization pressure.

At present, whether it is going to the secondary market or obtaining a new round of financing, it is crucial for autonomous driving to prove to the market that it has the ability to "make blood" and can obtain orders for mass production.

On the other hand, the mass production of high-end assisted driving functions has also paved the way for the eventual large-scale use of unmanned driving.

"The early assisted driving of unmanned driving is a very important education for the market, which makes Chinese consumers' understanding of unmanned driving more open than abroad, especially after the opening of a large number of unmanned pilot pilots in Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Shanghai, users are more open to unmanned driving."

Jin Jun, PwC China automotive industry leader, told the 21st Century Business Herald reporter that the two functions behind high-end assisted driving have been rapidly improved in recent years, one is automatic assisted driving when congestion, and the other is parking navigation, he said that if you compare the proportion of these two functions in Germany, the United States and China, you can see a very big difference, these two functions are relatively backward in Germany and the United States, but ranked very high in China.

"This means that China is relatively ahead of the curve in terms of car connection functions, and this is also a very obvious market trend this year." Jin Jun said.

In the view of Yu Kai, CEO of Horizon, there is no need to truly realize unmanned driving, and it has been creating value for users since the beginning of advanced assisted driving.

Yu Kai analyzed the similarities and differences between Chinese and foreign autonomous driving routes that assisted driving in Japan and Europe is mainly dominated by safety regulations-driven Autonomous Emergency Braking (AEB) and Lane Center Assist (LCC). But in China, it is completely different, China's security requirements are only a passing line, and beyond that, it is more driven by user experience and user value.

Therefore, he believes that from the user's point of view, what the industry really wants to accomplish from now until 2025 is to "make the automatic driving of closed roads such as high-speed NOA (automatic assisted navigation driving) and loop NOA silky smooth at a reasonable cost performance, but the price cannot be too expensive, and at the same time there must be considerable time and energy to really make urban NOA available." ”

Jin Jun also shared a similar view to reporters, in his opinion, the industry will eventually return to whether it can solve the pain point problem for users.

"At present, the solution of autonomous driving brings more to consumers the solution of the scene, in other words, to solve the pain points of consumers in the driving process." Through such pain points, everyone has a better understanding and awareness of autonomous driving solutions, and promotes everyone's enthusiasm to use automatic driving and assisted driving functions. In this case, autonomous driving solutions can be promoted more actively and quickly. Jin Jun said.

According to the "2023 Digital Vehicle Report" released by PwC recently, Chinese consumers especially hope to achieve breakthroughs in congestion autonomous driving assistance, parking navigation and extended range. Although Chinese consumers are much more receptive to Level 4 and Level 5 autonomous driving than in Germany and the United States, more than half of respondents are still unwilling to pay a premium for driverless taxis.

Policy strength

In addition to the constraints of technology, the lag of relevant laws and policies has also led to a long way to achieve a breakthrough in autonomous driving from "demonstration application" to "demonstration operation".

In Yu Kai's view, ten years later, the industry may not even really achieve L3, and the reason for this is still the lag of relevant laws and regulations. "If you let the car factory take this responsibility, then innovation cannot be done, and all car manufacturers dare not invest in research and development." In the future, the relationship between people and cars is still the same as the relationship between people and horses when riding horses, and I think the driver will still be responsible for the real problem. ”

However, Yu Kai also pointed out that there is a great possibility of realizing unmanned people on the road dedicated to autonomous driving with vehicle-cloud coordination. "But there is a premise that no one is allowed to drive in this environment, and all autonomous vehicles must participate in the dedicated road, and I think that complete autonomous driving can be achieved under this condition."

He Xiaopeng, chairman of Xpeng Motors, also pointed out the relative lag in the determination of traffic accident liability in the relevant laws and regulations of the mainland: "The current relevant laws and regulations in the mainland have not improved the determination of traffic accident liability and product access standards that may occur during the operation of intelligent networked vehicles. The responsible entity is difficult to define, the accident compensation rules are missing, the definition of claims is difficult, and the relevant data is insufficient, resulting in the absence of mature autonomous driving insurance products in China. Existing laws and regulations such as the Insurance Law have not elaborated and regulated the insurance of autonomous driving, and the state has not yet issued a special development strategy, policy or relevant guidance. ”

In fact, many places in the mainland have already tried to demonstrate the operation of autonomous driving. On March 22, the Implementation Rules for Promoting the Innovative Application of Driverless Intelligent Networked Vehicles in Shanghai Pudong New Area (hereinafter referred to as the "Implementation Rules") were officially released, which is the first local regulation on the innovative application of driverless intelligent networked vehicles in mainland China.

The Implementation Rules specify that the Pudong New Area will accelerate the commercialization of Level 4 fully driverless vehicles, and provide a legal basis and institutional guarantee for driverless intelligent networked vehicles to carry out innovative application activities such as road testing, demonstration application, demonstration operation and commercial operation in the Lingang New Area.

Wu Jincheng, director of the Shanghai Municipal Economic and Information Commission, recently revealed that the number of intelligent networked vehicle testing enterprises, license issuance, open road mileage, road test mileage, and scene richness in Shanghai ranked first in the country.

At present, 926 1,800-kilometer intelligent networked vehicle test roads have been opened (including 285 kilometers of vehicle-road coordination roads), and two 41-kilometer expressways have been opened for the first time, achieving a major breakthrough in the first expressway scenario in China. A total of 612 vehicles from 28 enterprises have been issued road test and demonstration application licenses, with a test mileage of more than 13.27 million kilometers, and a total of 180,000 manned demonstration applications have been completed.

For more information, please download 21 Finance APP