BYD smashed 100 billion yuan: the team increased by 5 times to 4,000 people, almost all of them are masters of 985 and 211
Many changes have quietly occurred in the BYD intelligent driving team.
In a year, Yan Yu found that new people were constantly joining his group, and he saw the team expand from 20 to more than 100 people, and the number of people directly increased fivefold. Wang Chuanfu gave a more macro figure at BYD's Dream Day - the intelligent driving team has exceeded 4,000 people.
Not only is the scale expanding, but the team ladder is also jumping.
Yan Yu has a strong feeling about this, "The people who came in after me are almost all 985, 211 masters, and there are many doctors", and before that, the recruitment standards of the intelligent driving team were not so high, and ordinary undergraduates could also come in.
The soldiers and horses are fully prepared, and BYD is driving intelligently. The intelligent driving system is almost "iterating at the rate of a small version a day and a large version a week". On January 16, BYD handed over the first phase of intelligent driving results.
Text | Wei Bing
Edit | Li Huanhuan
Operations | potato
BYD has invested in the battle of intelligent driving
In the intelligent driving track of the car circle, it is Huawei and Xiaopeng that have always been lively, and new forces such as Weilai and Ideal are fighting among them. BYD is almost nowhere to be seen on the track.
But since the investor communication meeting, BYD Chairman Wang Chuanfu publicly stated that high-end assisted driving is practical and easier to land. Lin Qi, a staff member of BYD's intelligent driving department, clearly felt the change in the attitude of the upper echelons.
When reporting to the direct leader, the other party's attention to intelligent driving has increased significantly, and they will often ask about the progress in the field of intelligent driving. On the other hand, the execution efficiency of the intelligent driving project has also been improved, "it only takes one and a half months from project approval to delivery at the earliest", compared with other business projects that often take half a year, intelligent driving is obviously more "important".
Peers quickly landed a series of intelligent driving functions, which made BYD feel urgent, "whether it is from the perspective of the right to speak or the intensity of investment", BYD's attention to the field of intelligent driving has become visibly higher with the naked eye.
On January 16, BYD held the 2024 Dream Day to showcase its latest achievements in the field of intelligent driving. BYD, the first brother of new energy, officially participated in the war.
On the dream day, BYD proposed a new core for automotive intelligence - vehicle intelligence, which is true intelligence. The so-called vehicle intelligence means that a "brain" controls intelligent functions such as intelligent cockpit and intelligent driving. This brain is BYD's self-developed intelligent architecture "Xuanji". Each module of the automotive system is relatively independent, each module has its own mode of operation, and the role of the Xuanji architecture is equivalent to a coordinator, through unified information processing and transmission, to improve the response speed and efficiency of each module of the vehicle.
▲ Xuanji architecture. Photo / BYD official
The experience of the smart cockpit has also been upgraded, such as BYD's launch of the palm key. The user enters the palm vein data in the system, without the need for physical keys such as mobile phones and car keys, and can quickly unlock the vehicle through the palm information. However, after unlocking, the user still needs to have an NFC-enabled mobile phone "key" or the original car key to start the car.
In terms of entertainment, BYD has also made some innovations. For example, when the owner is playing a game in the car, the steering wheel directly becomes a gamepad, and new functions such as continuous dialogue and smooth connection between car friends are also provided.
From the above two new features, it can be seen that BYD is trying its best to subtract, just like when Apple launched the original iPhone and abandoned the stylus - the fewer accessories needed, the better the experience.
In the intelligent driving sector, BYD released the "Eye of the Gods" high-end intelligent driving assistance system. According to official information, the system pioneered the distributed bureau of control algorithms, which can improve the response speed and driving experience of vehicle intelligent driving perception-decision-control.
▲ BYD's "Eye of the Gods" high-end intelligent driving assistance system. Photo / BYD's official Weibo
Each Auto experienced BYD's high-speed and urban intelligent assisted driving respectively, and in the 40-minute trip, there were only two situations where manual takeover was required. Of course, "compared with Xiaopeng, Huawei and other head players, there is still a big gap", a new force intelligent driving staff told everyone Auto, half a year ago its test drive Xiaopeng and Huawei's urban assisted driving function, within 1 hour zero takeover, however, he admitted that this "also depends on the specific road conditions".
can reach the current level of intelligent driving, BYD intelligent driving employees commented that there should be technology, "I can't say to catch up (head players), but fortunately, I didn't fall behind."
One small change a day, one big change in seven days
Not being left behind is already a hard-won result. This is the result of thousands of intelligent driving employees working overtime and staying up late.
At 6 o'clock in the evening, Qin Chu, who was engaged in R&D work in BYD, finished the work at hand and was ready to get off work.
Since the beginning of last year, the workload of the intelligent driving department next door has increased significantly. At noon, when Qin Chu and his colleagues in the intelligent driving department eat together, they can always hear each other complaining that "they often work overtime until 10 o'clock or 11 o'clock in the evening", compared with other departments that usually get off work at half past 5, "they seem to have two shifts", every time they encounter such complaints, Qin Chu can only comfort the other party, "worthy of being the core department".
▲ Late night overtime. Photo / Visual China
In BYD's intelligent driving department, Yan Yu is used to working overtime, and the end of work is usually after 9 p.m., "It is common to work until the early hours of the morning when the project is delivered in a hurry."
Every time a car company launches a new feature, it needs to go through more than 10,000 tests to ensure that it can run stably after being pushed to users.
The team in which Yan Yu is located has to get on the car to test new functions almost every day, and the staff stays in the test car for 9 or 10 hours, and when there is a problem, it is immediately fed back to the internal group, and the engineer is always on standby, and the feedback is immediately modified, and the system is updated after the change, and then goes through a new round of testing, and so on.
▲ BYD factory. Photo / Visual China
The more tests you have, the better you can fix potential vulnerabilities as much as possible. In order to do a few more tests, there are often groups that delay returning the car. Inside BYD, each test car is arranged with a detailed schedule, the front group is delayed, and the group behind can only work overtime for testing. Therefore, not only are people busy with spinning, but even the test car is not idle.
The class was running at full capacity, and the results were immediate. The metaphor revealed that BYD's intelligent driving system is almost "iterating at the rate of a small version a day and a large version a week".
The number of people has increased fivefold
To achieve such an iterative speed, the first thing to fight is manpower.
Lin Qi found that from the end of 2022, the company's intelligent driving department began to expand. In that year's school recruitment, BYD provided a large number of positions such as autonomous driving software engineers and autonomous driving control algorithm engineers.
According to Lin Qi, in 2022, BYD's intelligent driving team will release 1,000 places, and by 2023, this number will be expanded to 3,000. A large number of recruits and horses were recruited, and BYD's intelligent driving business was rapidly expanded. On January 16 this year, at BYD's Dream Day, Wang Chuanfu revealed that the current BYD intelligent driving team has more than 4,000 people.
▲ BYD engineer group. Photo / BYD official
The metaphor is to join BYD in the batch of school recruitment at the beginning of 2023. In a year, Yan Yu saw that new people continued to join his group, and the number of people swelled from 20 to more than 100 now, and the number of people directly increased fivefold.
Not only is the scale expanding, but the team ladder is also jumping.
Yan Yu has a strong feeling about this, "The people who came in after me are almost all 985, 211 masters, and there are many doctors", and before that, the recruitment standards of the intelligent driving team were not so high, and ordinary undergraduates could also come in.
This reflects BYD's idea of doing intelligent driving, taking high-end talents as the project leader, and relying on the "crowd tactics" to achieve some basic work, and strive to make the project online quickly and well.
In May 2023, Han Bing, assistant to the president of BYD Product Planning Institute and director of the Electronic Integration Department, replaced Wang Huan and took charge of the intelligent driving business of BYD Planning Institute. A person close to BYD Intelligent Driving told everyone that "Wang Huan was removed because there were no obvious results in BYD's intelligent driving during his tenure, and the senior management was not satisfied with the progress of intelligent driving."
After Han Bing took office, BYD's exploration in the field of intelligent driving has become more bold, and the results are obvious, in only half a year, BYD released a series of related functions on the dream day.
▲ BYD Dream Day. Photo / BYD official
Immediately afterwards, Liao Jie, the former R&D director of intelligent driving at Horizon, joined BYD, and at the same time, BYD absorbed middle-level intelligent driving talents from Volvo, Gaohe and other car companies. Liao Jie was mainly responsible for the autonomous driving function algorithm of the Journey series chip at Horizon Robotics, and at last year's Guangzhou Auto Show, BYD was included in the first batch of intended customers for Horizon's "Journey 6" chip.
According to Zhang Yi, a veteran employee of BYD, after Liao Jie joined BYD, he "rented an office building in Hongqiao and formed a Shanghai intelligent driving team".
Behind this, BYD has spent a lot of money. According to the financial report data, in the third quarter of 2023, BYD's R&D expenses soared, reaching 11.1 billion yuan, a 46% increase from the previous quarter.
Of course, this is just the beginning, in the 2024 BYD Dream Day, Wang Chuanfu revealed that in the future, BYD will invest 100 billion yuan in the field of intelligence, and BYD's high-end intelligent driving system will be equipped with BYD's high-end intelligent driving system in its models of 300,000 yuan and above.
Intelligent driving rolls to affordable models
In fact, it is not too late for BYD to deploy intelligent driving. In 2011, BYD independently developed the Internet of Vehicles product "BYD Cloud Service", which supports remote control of in-car air conditioning, doors and other functions. In 2018, BYD joined hands with Baidu, and at that time, Wang Chuanfu said that the L3 autonomous driving car jointly developed by the two sides will be mass-produced in the "near future".
But at that time, BYD did not really make efforts in the field of intelligence, "some of the interactive functions done in Han (model) before were average, and they were often pulled out by colleagues to 'whip the corpse'," to put it bluntly, BYD's strategy is to "first grasp sales, form a certain sales scale, and then start to grasp intelligence".
In the view of veteran employee Zhang Yi, BYD really began to invest in intelligent driving in 2021, but the rhythm at that time was unhurried and had not yet entered the current crazy mode.
A large part of BYD's transformation is driven by external sources.
Shen Jia, who was looking at the car recently, saw the first sentence of the sales was "Does this car have intelligent driving?" In Shen Jia's eyes, intelligent driving is the key element that distinguishes new energy vehicles from fuel vehicles, "If there is no intelligent driving, I might as well buy a fuel car."
"Every time a car is released, the most commented by netizens is whether there is intelligent driving. Zhang Yi also told everyone Auto, "No matter what selling points you come up with, handling, suspension, and cockpit, they (netizens) will attack you for not driving intelligently." ”
Yu Kai, founder and CEO of Horizon, once speculated that "at the level of more than 300,000 yuan, the assembly rate of the autonomous driving function of the Chinese brand's intelligent navigation assistance pilot system L2+ has reached 82%". Obviously, the ability to drive intelligently has become an important indicator for users to buy a car.
▲ Conceptual diagram of intelligent driving and road traffic. Photo / Visual China
An obvious change is that at the new car launch, the intelligent driving and intelligent cabin sectors have increasingly become the highlight of car companies.
Various car companies are also working hard to roll up the progress of intelligent driving. In September 2022, Xpeng successively pushed urban NGPs in Guangzhou, and the "Battle of Kaesong" officially kicked off. Huawei's initial goal was to launch intelligent driving in 45 cities, but with the opening of cities getting faster and faster, Huawei's goal has been adjusted to "open the whole country" in half a year. On the first day of 2024, Xpeng officially announced that it has completed the implementation of intelligent driving in 243 cities across the country.
A new trend is that in order to attract more consumers in the price range, smart driving is opening up to users with lower consumption levels. He Xiaopeng said that he is confident that it will launch a 150,000-level high-end intelligent assisted driving car, and DJI will popularize intelligent driving to a 100,000-level model, the 2023 Baojun.
BYD also has this plan, and on the dream day, Wang Chuanfu revealed: "In the future, BYD's high-end intelligent driving system will be open for models of more than 200,000 yuan. ”
(At the request of the interviewee, Qin Chu, Yan Yu, Zhang Yi, Lin Qi, and Shen Jia are pseudonyms)
The article is original by each Auto, and infringement must be investigated.