Policy side: Foreign regulations and policies have been introduced, and the L3 mass production plan has been accelerated.
Level 3 intelligent driving systems are considered to be the watershed between assisted driving and autonomous driving, and after Level 3, the driving leadership gradually shifts from the driver to the autonomous driving system. Under the trend of intelligence, domestic and foreign countries have supported the commercialization of L3 and higher-level intelligent driving, and many car companies are ready to mass-produce L3 vehicles. At present, some foreign countries have issued policies related to L3 intelligent driving.
The mainland attaches great importance to the promotion of laws and policies, the formulation of technical standards, and the construction of industrial ecology for intelligent networked vehicles, and has adopted a model of local experimental legislation first, and the central government summarizes legislation later. In 2023, national + local intelligent driving policies will be introduced one after another, starting from the upper-level policy framework, road testing, data management, demonstration applications and other aspects, and gradually improve the policy system, and the implementation of L3 level intelligent driving is expected to achieve breakthroughs.
Technical side: BEV + Transformer + occupancy network to improve the perception ability of intelligent driving
Under the leadership of Tesla, the intelligent driving algorithm has achieved a breakthrough, the technical route has been temporarily converged, and all manufacturers have taken "BEV+Transformer+Occupancy Network" as the core architecture of the latest generation of mass production systems to realize the upgrade of environmental perception and cognitive capabilities, and the urban navigation function has gradually reduced the dependence on high-precision maps, and is expected to achieve end-to-end autonomous driving.
With the improvement of consumers' acceptance of intelligent driving, it is expected to form a spiral upward trend of sales-data-algorithm upgrading.
Compared with the traditional millimeter-wave radar, the 4D millimeter-wave imaging radar has increased the information perception ability of the pitch angle, and can identify the longitudinal target with high resolution, and the "imaging" is similar to the point cloud imaging effect of the lidar. Compared with the traditional millimeter wave, the number of RF transceiver channels of 4D imaging radar is more than ten times, and with the resolution of the pitch angle is greatly improved, it can present rich point cloud images and distance, speed and angle information to the target and the environment, and can adapt to more complex road conditions (such as small objects, occluding objects, stationary objects and lateral moving obstacle detection, etc.). Compared with LiDAR, some indicators approximate the performance of 16-line LiDAR, but the cost is only one-tenth of that of LiDAR.
We believe that 4D millimeter-wave radar is a more economical and stable on-board sensor, or will completely replace 3D millimeter-wave radar, and replace low-line lidar, to achieve the same performance while reducing the cost of vehicle hardware, is conducive to the popularization of intelligent driving.
Commercial: The NOA scenario is generalized to urban areas, and the price of standard models is gradually penetrating downward
In 2023, NOA will move from high-speed to urban areas, and independent car companies represented by new forces (Ideal, Xpeng, NIO, and Huawei) will have urban assisted driving landing plans within the year (in terms of the total mileage of Xiaopeng users, urban roads account for 71%, and the driving time will reach 90%). The "no-picture" version of some manufacturers will also be launched within the year, and the generalization ability will be greatly enhanced.
According to the data of Gaogong Intelligent Vehicle, from January to April 2023, the actual delivery of standard NOA models was 112,000, a year-on-year increase of 85.3%, and the number of newly delivered NOA models increased by about 20%. At the same time, the average price of standard NOA function models continued to decline, and the average price of delivered models was 353,000 yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 9.4%.
With the optimization of high-end intelligent driving functions and the education of consumers' minds, the purchase rate and usage rate of intelligent driving continue to grow, and the intelligent driving function is becoming a new important decision-making reference for consumers to buy cars.
As of January 2023, more than 400,000 Tesla owners have paid to test the FSD feature. By June of this year, FSD Beta had accumulated more than 300 million miles (about 483 million kilometers), especially in Q2 alone, an increase of 100 million miles.
Among the more than 50,000 orders for the new M7 of domestic car companies, about 33,000 units are intelligent driving versions (including five-seat MAX and six-seat MAX versions). Xpeng's facelifted G9 has been on the market for more than 15,000 units in 15 days, of which more than 80% are the MAX version with high-end intelligent driving, and more than 70% are scheduled for the MAX version of the G6. In July, in the first week of Xpeng City's NGP Beijing full push, the penetration rate of high-frequency users was 99.31%, the mileage penetration rate was 98.97%, and the duration penetration rate reached 98.91%. As of the beginning of July this year, the cumulative mileage of Xpeng Motors' high-speed NGP reached 31.6 million kilometers.
Panorama of the intelligent driving industry chain
Vehicle camera industry chain
The vehicle camera is the main visual sensor of the ADAS system, which is mainly composed of a lens group, an image sensor (CIS), and a digital image signal processing (DSP). Among them, the image sensor is the core technology of the vehicle camera. The lens group, adhesive material, and image sensor are packaged to form a lens module, and the lens module transmits the photoelectric signal to the DSP for image signal processing. The DSP converts the analog signal into a digital signal and integrates it with the lens module package to form a terminal system.
Domain controller industry chain
The upstream hardware of the domain controller is mainly SoC chips, memory chips, and MCUs, and the software includes the underlying operating system, middleware, and upper-layer application software. OEMs pursue differentiation in upper-layer application algorithms, so OEMs have a strong trend of self-development in algorithms, and we believe that OEMs' demand for Tier1 domain controller manufacturers may mainly focus on hardware and underlying software integration. We believe that with the rapid growth of intelligent penetration, domain controller suppliers who are deeply bound to high-quality chip manufacturers may continue to benefit.
Air suspension industry chain
The air suspension system includes a shock absorption system, an air circuit system, and an electronic control system. The shock absorption system includes air springs and variable damping shock absorbers, the air circuit system includes air compressors, air storage tanks, air pumps and distribution valves, and the electronic control system includes sensors, controller ECUs, etc.
Brake-by-wire industry chain
Brake-by-wire is divided into electro-hydraulic braking (EHB) and electromechanical braking (EMB). Both EHB and EMB cancel the brake master cylinder and vacuum power assist and other parts, and use non-human power source, and the braking efficiency is relatively high. The difference is that EHB still retains some hydraulic components, and EMB uses an electric motor as a power source, which responds faster, improves braking response and is easier to integrate with other electronic control systems, and EMB may become the mainstream in the future.
Wire control steering industry chain
The biggest advantage of steer-by-wire (SBW) and EPS is that the mechanical connection between the steering wheel and the rack is removed, and the ECU is used to transmit commands to the steering motor to control the wheel steering. SBW is the only way to move towards autonomous driving with faster response time, more flexible installation, lighter weight, and higher crash safety than EPS.
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