2023 is the year of the explosion of China's automotive technology, and many people think that Chinese automobiles have stood on top of the world. Is that really the case? Let's take a look.
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The strongest intelligent driving
According to incomplete statistics, Huawei, Xpeng Motors, Li Auto, NIO, AVATAR, AITO, Baidu Apollo, Pony.ai, Momo Zhixing, DJI and other companies are actively deploying urban NOA, and each of them says that they are "the strongest intelligent driver".
At present, the direction of intelligent driving is divided into two types: "visual perception" and "lidar perception", such as Tesla and DJI's solutions, all of which use pure vision, relying on cameras, with 4D millimeter wave or 3D millimeter wave radar, to achieve intelligent assisted driving, but the pure vision solution is too much of a test of the algorithm and big data support behind it.
More companies use lidar with visual perception to achieve assisted driving, but the cost of lidar is too high. According to the survey report, the cost of high-end NOP hardware in China is between 25,000 and 30,000 yuan, and in addition to lidar and sensors, the cost of intelligent driving control chips and high-precision maps accounts for 50% to 60% of the total cost.
Among them, high-precision maps rely heavily on the data collection of map data providers, and high-precision maps must be "road mining", so they need to run through countless streets and alleys, which is not only costly, but also slow to update data. As a result, the intelligent driving system is divided into two factions, high-precision map school and mapless school.
As the name suggests, the "mapless school" means that NOP does not rely on high-precision maps, and judges the current road conditions and makes reasonable technical actions through real-time scanning of road conditions, cloud algorithms behind it and big data model verification. Among the more outstanding representatives are Tesla and Huawei, but the development of domestic cities is too fast, and the map may not be collected, and the road will be demolished and repaired.
The "high-precision map school" is not without supporters, and it is very typical of Google's autonomous driving company Waymo, in addition, GM, BMW, Volvo and other car companies also rely on high-precision maps for their intelligent driving systems. HD maps are safer and help reduce misjudgment of road conditions by the perception system. Especially in poor weather conditions, the sensor is subject to external interference and needs to be highly dependent on the map. Waymo relies on Google Maps to simulate a large-scale simulation scenario.
GAC invested 40 million yuan to cooperate with the Nanjing Institute of Surveying and Mapping to improve high-definition map data. The CEO of Situ Weixin also said, "The 'no map' technical route is actually because there is no map qualification, no intellectual property rights, and no security awe." At the same time, it is claimed that the "no map" car companies, after covering all the sensors, still have map information, that is, these companies still use the "map" scheme.
Hybrids are all about shifting
Since the outbreak of the domestic new energy market, the sales of plug-in hybrid models have also risen. Various car companies have begun to launch plug-in hybrid vehicles with multiple gears, such as Chery's two-speed DHT, Geely's three-speed DHT, and even Dongfeng Haohan has launched a four-speed hybrid car.
The background of the multi-speed hybrid transmission is because of the energy consumption problem, whether it is Honda or BYD, it is a single-speed engine direct drive, and there is no way to solve the problem of high fuel consumption and high noise at high speed. The state requires hybrid vehicles to implement the WLTC calculation standard, so plug-in hybrid vehicles, which used to rely on word games and number games to "live", are directly exposed. Therefore, in order to improve the efficiency of plug-in hybrids, a multi-speed gearbox was added.
Because of the technical patent barriers, each company has a different way to achieve multi-gear hybrid transmission, relying on the permutation and combination of multi-gear series-parallel connection and power splitting, which tests the ingenuity of each engineer.
Chery DHT hybrid relies on the connection disconnection of multi-plate clutches to achieve multi-gear series and parallel; Geely's three-speed gearbox relies on planetary gears and multi-plate clutches to achieve three-speed full-speed transmission, whether it is the motor or the engine, it can provide the best power output; what is amazing is Dongfeng Haohan four-speed DHT, there is no multi-plate clutch in the gearbox, and it completely relies on power shunt to cooperate with the two-speed gear set, which is purely physically connected, almost no power loss, and is very exquisite!
Even the fourth generation of Honda i-MMD has added a two-speed transmission, and the BYD DM-i, which is similar to Honda's hybrid, is also about to launch a DM-i model with a two-speed transmission because of Honda's upgrade.
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Solid-state batteries are just around the corner
Although the leakage rate of domestic electric vehicles has exceeded 30%, it has not solved the problem of range anxiety. The concept of "solid-state battery", which has been hyped for many years, will finally have an eyebrow in 2023.
In January 2023, Qingtao Energy announced that its solid-state battery products have passed the national compulsory inspection certification and have been carried on the Dongfeng Fengshen E70 for demonstration operation. In March, Funeng Technology announced the development of a semi-solid-state battery with an energy density of 330Wh/kg, which will be produced in small batches starting in 2023 and installed on the GAC Aion AION V model. In April, "Ningwang" released the "condensed matter" solid-state battery, with a single energy density of 500Wh/kg, and has been mass-produced and trial-installed on a small scale.
NIO announced that it will be equipped with a 150kWh semi-solid-state battery, which will be mass-produced in 2024, and has already completed the challenge of 1,000 kilometers of range at -2 degrees Celsius.
"Nikkei" reported that although Japan started late in the field of pure electric vehicles, Japan has more advantages and is in a leading position in the research and development of solid-state battery technology. With the world's largest patent application (2011-2022) for all-solid-state batteries, AGC announced in September that it had reduced the production efficiency of dynamic cells to 1/10 and planned to fully commercialize them in 2027. And said that the solid-state battery industry is a lifesaver for Japanese cars to "turn over"!
Let's change the battery together
In addition to the construction of a large number of charging piles, "battery swapping" is another way, and it may also become an effective technical route.
By the end of 2023, NIO has built 2,300 battery swap stations across the country, including 769 highway battery swap stations. Obviously, it is not realistic to rely on the power of a single enterprise to carry out the infrastructure construction of the whole country. Therefore, in November 2023, NIO reached an agreement with Changan, Geely, Chery, and JAC to form a "battery swap alliance". At the same time, NIO is also a participating drafting unit of GB/T40032-2021 "Safety Requirements for Battery Swapping of Electric Vehicles".
In the future, the battery swap interface, battery interface, battery swap equipment, and battery swap service software of these companies will be unified, and cross-brand site battery swapping can be realized. As a result, the industrial scale can not only reduce operating costs, but also reduce the financial pressure on NIO in infrastructure construction.
In the future, a Geely tram of more than 100,000 yuan can also complete the battery replacement in a few minutes, which is faster than refueling.
Domestic automotive-grade chips
At present, the vast majority of models that promote the "intelligent cockpit" cockpit are inseparable from a company, that is, Qualcomm of the United States, and even more inseparable from the "Snapdragon" automotive-grade chip. Whether it is Snapdragon 8155 or Snapdragon 8295, almost all of them have become the target of publicity by major car companies, and they are even proud of the first batch of high-end Snapdragon chips!
Fortunately, domestic automotive-grade intelligent cockpit chips have also made breakthroughs. A number of local manufacturers have begun to flock to the market with the help of the outbreak of domestic electric vehicles, and the main players include Huawei, Xinqing Technology, and Xinchi Technology...... Among them, Huawei's intelligent cockpit chips are mainly Kirin series, including 710A, 980A, and 990A. At present, the Kirin 990A, which is widely used, has been equipped with many models such as Wenjie M5, AVATR 11, BAIC Rubik's Cube, and BAIC Polar Fox Alpha S.
The most notable is a company established in 2018 - SiEngine Technology. At the end of 2022, the first intelligent cockpit chip "Dragon Eagle No. 1" was successfully mass-produced, with 7nm advanced process, CPU computing power of up to 100K DMIPS, GPU computing power of 900GFLOPS, and 8 TOPS NPU computing power, and the performance is comparable to that of Snapdragon 8155. In 2023, it will begin to be delivered in batches to Geely and be used on the Lynk & Co 08, becoming China's first 7nm automotive-grade intelligent cockpit chip.
GPT is a lifesaver for European car companies
Due to the widespread use of large language models, the Internet has been elevated to another level. Because of the particularity of Chinese, model training cannot be compared with the global English popularity, so in the field of GTP and AI, Chinese mainland may become an "island", and the advantages of Internet applications may no longer exist.
At the recent CES exhibition in the United States, Volkswagen demonstrated that it is equipped with a large language model ChatGTP, making it a personal voice assistant for car owners. Through real-time uninterrupted dialogue, the operation and execution of complex functions of the vehicle and machine can be completed. Whether it is navigation, air conditioning, audio-visual entertainment, or even simulated chat, it can be completed through ChatGTP, and the dialogue is rich and the communication is natural, which can extend more Internet applications.
The application of ChatGTP in the car may allow European car companies to shorten or surpass the gap with China's in-car Internet. When some of our car companies are still playing with car skins and colorful atmosphere lights, people may have completed the transcendence in an instant.
sweat blood
Our Chinese car companies have indeed made some achievements in the field of new energy and Internet applications, and have also received global attention, but we cannot be complacent because of this, we are in a catch-up position in solid-state batteries and large language models, and a little slack means facing elimination. Therefore, any blind optimism is irresponsible to enterprises and national industries!