Automotive autonomous driving technology is currently a hot topic in the world's technology field, relying on artificial intelligence, visual computing, radar, monitoring devices, global positioning systems and other synergies to allow cars to drive automatically and safely on the road without any active operation. The application of autonomous driving technology not only brings more convenient, efficient and safe transportation experience to humans, but also brings effective solutions to urban traffic congestion problems and environmental pollution problems. In this field, there is a high-profile young entrepreneur, known as "China's first autonomous driving person", who led the team to realize the road test and demonstration of unmanned vehicles on Beijing's public roads for the first time in China, and he is the protagonist of this issue of "Cheer for You" Heduo Technology founder - Ni Kai.
Showing its edge, he founded Heduo Technology to stand firm in the industry
As a graduate of Tsinghua University majoring in automation and computer, he is the first batch of young people in China to be exposed to automatic driving, and the THMR-5 designed by him reached an automatic driving speed of 150 kilometers per hour in 2001. After graduating from Tsinghua, Ni Kai went to the United States for further study, when the United States was the absolute boss in the field of autonomous driving, in 2015, Ni Kai returned to China to enter Baidu, becoming the first batch of practitioners in China to join the research and development of autonomous driving civilian products, during this period, Ni Kai led the team to achieve the first road test and demonstration of unmanned vehicles in Beijing public roads in China, and he was also known in the industry as "China's first person to drive autopilot".
In 2016, the first domestic "National Intelligent Networked Vehicle Pilot Demonstration Zone" closed test area approved by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology officially opened for business, which means that China's intelligent Internet and driverless cars officially entered the practical operation stage from the national strategic height, and it was during that period that many new forces in car manufacturing entered the field of car manufacturing, and Ni Kai also left Baidu to establish Croda Technology, from a developer to the controller of a company.
After experiencing this transformation of identity, Ni Kai found that everything was not as simple as he imagined. At first, they thought that when all the prerequisites were met, a system with intelligent cooperation of parking lots could bring the best experience to users, but in the process of subsequent actual promotion, it was found that it was extremely difficult to implement a synchronous supporting intelligent system in a large number of parking lots, which not only required a lot of ground pushing work, but also brought huge capital costs, which made it difficult for Croda Technology to form a virtuous business cycle.
Two years of R&D and suddenly discovering that the direction was wrong was undoubtedly a fatal blow for a startup. But fate did not give Ni Kai a chance to breathe, while the technology research and development route was deviated, due to the influx of too many enterprises and the impact of various problems such as the epidemic, the investment enthusiasm of the autonomous driving industry gradually weakened, and Heduo Technology was also facing the crisis of broken capital chain. At that time, Ni Kai was under great pressure, and he really understood the responsibility of being the controller of a company, if he was only responsible for technology in Baidu like in the past, Ni Kai could have walked away, but now in the face of his brothers who worked hard with him, he could not choose to give up. "When you are a child, you are carefree, after reading you may begin to be responsible for yourself, when you enter the society, you have to be responsible for your small circle, and when you start a business, you have to be responsible for the entire company and customers." He knew that the responsibility on his shoulders was increasing, and he was not willing to stop and accept the result of failure, so in that capital winter he made countless calls to strive for new investment, and in terms of technology research and development, he also gave up the plan to transform the parking lot and strengthen the vehicle-end intelligent system, and finally, the mature integrated parking program was finally born, and Heduo Technology also survived the most difficult period and successfully gained a foothold in the industry.
Grow against the trend and realize mass production and expand commercial territory
In Heduo, in order to avoid too obvious distinction between colleagues and subordinates, the company will let each new employee choose a "flower name" for himself, and "Shajia" is Ni Kai's "flower name" in the company. The name comes from the manga "Saint Seiya", which represents the Saint Seiya of Virgo, Ni Kai himself ridiculed, "Because I am a Virgo, Virgo has many jokes on the Internet, always hacked by others, my idea at that time was that I was always hacked anyway, then I first blackened myself, so I took the name of the Virgo Gold Saint Seiya in "Saint Seiya". Behind this seemingly joke, it is actually a reflection of Ni Kai's pursuit of perfection and constantly surpassing himself, and Saga, who has strong combat power, is also the closest person to God among all the characters in the "Saint Seiya" manga.
The name of Heduo comes from the "move" of "mobility", and Ni Kai's original intention in establishing the company is also to upgrade the future mobility mode through automatic driving. From its establishment in June '17, to the completion of the research and development of the integrated pedestrian parking system in 18 and 19, and then to the start of mass production in 2020, Ni Kai led Heduo to realize the transformation of a start-up company to the backbone of the industry. Mass production, means the landing of the product, but also means that the company to achieve the possibility of self-hematopoiesis, this is Ni Kai's painful transformation from a developer in the autonomous driving industry to a technology company CEO in the process of transformation, as a developer, making the perfect product is the ultimate ideal, but as the helm of a company, excessive idealization may mean that there is no return, and how to choose between this has always been Ni Kai's exploration. In the process of Heduo's development, Ni Kai has always chosen to launch products in stages, which allows Heduo to do its best to develop more perfect products in the stage, but on the other hand, it is difficult for Ni Kai to judge whether his decision is correct before it is really realized. Considering the issues of R&D time and product cycle, he must choose to compromise, which things need to be abandoned, and make some trade-offs to gradually improve the development roadmap of technology and products.
2023 is not easy for all practitioners in the autonomous driving industry, many autonomous driving companies began to feel the chill, in March this year, the US autonomous driving company Embark, which had a market value of $5.2 billion, announced the closure of Embark, Google's self-driving company Waymo announced layoffs, and General Motors' autonomous driving company closed factories, but in this context, Ni Kai and his Heduo Technology grew against the trend, under his leadership, The products of Croda Technology have finally gradually achieved mass production in recent years. Today, Croda Technology has moved to a new independent office building, expanded its staff several times, and established branches in Guangzhou, Suzhou, Shanghai and other places centered on Beijing.
Going to the world, new forces lead the development of China's automobiles
Now, new forces in the Chinese automotive industry like Ni Kai have gradually emerged, they are not willing to focus only on the domestic market, but look at the world, according to the statistics of the just-concluded Shanghai Auto Show, in the past two years Chinese automobile exports have achieved 994,000 units, a year-on-year increase of 70.6%, of which the export of new energy vehicles reached 248,000 units, an increase of 1.1 times year-on-year, a large part of which is equipped with autonomous driving systems independently developed by Continental.
China's autonomous driving industry can come to this point, not only can not be separated from the efforts of technology entrepreneurs like Ni Kai, the national policy to escort these new enterprises also plays an important role in it, "As a seed enterprise of entrepreneurship and innovation in Beijing, Heduo has also received support from many industries and talents, which has played a very important role in the development of Croda at this stage." Ni Kai said.
Entrepreneurs are seeds, and policy support is soil, and both are indispensable. A hundred years ago, the first self-driving car made a stunning appearance on the other side of the ocean, when China was full of holes and still fighting for its survival; Fifteen years ago, China's autonomous cars were just getting started, and they were not favored; Today, the domestic autonomous driving field can even be on par with the United States after just a few years of development, which is undoubtedly the result of the joint efforts of generations of industry youth who pursue breakthroughs. It is believed that in the near future, these rolling new forces will lead China's automotive industry to a broader new world.
Today at 21:45, please lock in Beijing Satellite TV's "Cheer for You", let's get closer to the entrepreneurial road of Ni Kai, a young entrepreneur with automatic driving.