The "crowd tactics" developed by BYD have helped BYD win, and now BYD has copied this style of play to intelligent driving.
Text丨Si Wenwen
Editor丨Mao Shiyang
BYD attaches unprecedented importance to intelligent driving, and hopes to make the market feel this importance as soon as possible.
2024 will be a critical stage for BYD's intelligent driving. "Late Auto" learned from a number of people familiar with the matter that according to the current plan, the first batch of BYD City Pilot (NOA in the same city) will be launched on March 30, and among the more than 20 existing products, the Denza N7 will be the first model to apply high-end intelligent driving functions.
A person close to BYD revealed that BYD City is leading the first batch or opening up a number of major cities, including Shenzhen. But "Late Auto" learned that as of now, the only city close to landing is Shenzhen.
Since January, the BYD Planning Institute has also begun to recruit more intelligent driving employees. A person close to BYD said that there are hundreds of social recruitment places for intelligent driving positions. Among them, the highest level of the position being recruited is at the D level and above. BYD divides its employees into nine grades according to A-I, with the D level usually equivalent to the department manager.
A headhunter said that from the second half of 2023, BYD has been looking for high-level talents for intelligent driving chips, and the highest-level position reports directly to Han Bing, head of BYD's intelligent driving business and director of the intelligent driving R&D center.
Before 2023, almost all of BYD's sales come from the mass market, and whether it is equipped with high-end intelligent driving is not as important as 20,000 yuan cheaper. But now, BYD itself and the external environment are changing: Denza, Equation Leopard and Yangwang brands have been released one after another to enter the high-end market. Huawei, Xpeng, and Li will start the battle of NOA landing in urban areas in 2023, making intelligent driving the standard configuration of high-end cars.
As a result, the importance of intelligent driving to BYD has increased. Judging from the current actions, BYD is trying to copy the method of winning from electrification transformation to intelligent driving: relying on self-research to master core components, and using "crowd tactics" to quickly make up for the progress.
In the first half of 2023, we will start to develop our own city pilot
Like most domestic car companies, BYD has renamed its high-end intelligent driving function, calling it urban NOA (pilot assisted driving) with "city pilot" and high-speed NOA with "high-speed pilot". Yang Dongsheng, vice president of BYD and president of the Institute of Product Planning and Automotive New Technology (hereinafter referred to as the "Planning Institute"), said at the January press conference that the reason is that "the name of the general function of intelligent driving is very repetitive, and it is an English abbreviation, which has a certain threshold of understanding for users". This is one of the means for BYD's intelligent driving to reflect differentiation.
Although the names of each brand are different, the landing of urban NOA is the outlet for leading car companies to compete for since the second half of 2023. In December 2023, the ideal city NOA aims to open 110 cities, in January 2024, Xpeng, the fastest progress, announced that the urban NGP has landed in 243 cities, and in early February, Hongmeng Zhixing announced that the Wenjie model will be upgraded to urban intelligent driving pilot assistance, "the whole country can be opened".
BYD's progress is temporarily lagging behind. BYD has more than 20 models, and only 2 models have announced the timetable for high-end intelligent driving functions: in the first quarter of 2024, the Denza N7 with a starting price of 301,800 yuan will be equipped with the city pilot function, and the Yangwang U8 with a starting price of 1.098 million yuan will be equipped with high-speed pilot. In the third quarter of 2024, the U8 will be applied to the city pilot.
In the first half of 2023, the BYD Planning Institute began to work on the research and development of the urban pilot function, which took more than half a year, and the research and development time was "about the same as the industry level", said a person close to BYD's urban pilot project.
For BYD, more important than speed is to build self-research capabilities on high-end intelligent driving.
Previously, it was speculated that BYD's high-end intelligent driving research and development still relies on suppliers. However, according to the above-mentioned sources, in the urban pilot development of the Denza N7, the joint venture between BYD and the autonomous driving company Momenta, the proportion of participation is not large, "all of which are developed by BYD".
The Planning Institute is responsible for the overall direction of BYD's intelligent driving business, and is also the main force of independent research and development. The above-mentioned person said that the management style and requirements of the intelligent driving team of the Planning Institute are relatively strict, and the team sometimes needs to work overtime. In the smart driving industry, this situation is relatively common.
Previously, BYD's intelligent driving system cooperated with many suppliers such as Momenta, DJI, Neusoft Reach, and Foretek. The advantages of direct procurement are that the solution is mature, the onboarding time is short, and the R&D cost of the OEM is lower.
However, with the increasing importance of intelligent driving functions, BYD, which is accustomed to vertical integration and mastery of all core components, has begun to expand the application scope of its self-developed high-end algorithms.
A person familiar with the matter said that in the BYD Dynasty series, some versions of the Han and Tang models that are planned to be facelifted in 2024 will apply self-developed high-end algorithms and no longer cooperate with suppliers. In January, BYD announced that the Hiace 07 EV, a new product in the Ocean series, will support high-end intelligent driving functions such as high-speed piloting. The model is expected to be launched in the first half of 2024.
In addition to algorithms, the product hardware level will also catch up quickly this year. In 2023, BYD will only have 2 models equipped with lidar, which can achieve urban piloting. In 2024, that number will exceed 10.
Wang Chuanfu said at the press conference in January this year that in the future, BYD's high-end intelligent driving system will be selected for models of more than 200,000 yuan, and standard for models of more than 300,000 yuan. At present, among the models on sale by BYD, the models with a price of more than 200,000 yuan are some versions of the five models of Han, Tang, Song L, Corvette 07 and Formula Leopard Leopard 5, and the models with a price of more than 300,000 yuan are some versions of the six models of Denza, Formula Leopard and Yangwang.
According to the sales volume in 2023, BYD's models with more than 300,000 yuan will sell about 136,000 units, which is only about 6,000 units less than the annual sales scale of Xiaopeng Motors, the leading new force. In 2024, the number of BYD's models with more than 300,000 will increase to more than 10.
With the increase of high-end models, the cost of self-developed high-end intelligent driving will also be diluted. This is also one of the underlying logics of BYD's self-developed core components, when the scale reaches a certain level, self-development will be more cost-effective than external procurement.
In addition, BYD also hopes to extend the advantages of the three electric and chassis to intelligent driving. Wang Chuanfu, the founder of BYD, proposed that "vehicle intelligence is true intelligence", and electrification should be combined with intelligence.
A BYD person believes that this is conducive to BYD's amplification of advantages, "self-developed chassis control and other systems can open signals to the intelligent driving function, and you can do intelligent driving functions such as easy square parking." Easy Sifang Parking means that models equipped with Yi Sifang technology can turn in place and then park automatically.
"Crowd tactics" change speed
In order to improve the progress of self-developed high-end intelligent driving, BYD is vigorously expanding the intelligent driving team.
A person close to BYD's smart driving program said that the number of people in the DENZA high-end intelligent driving program is now about 200, and it may hire twice as many employees. Another person close to BYD denied the claim, saying it did not fit the internal organizational structure and division of labor.
At present, the intelligent driving positions recruited by the Planning Institute cover software algorithms, hardware, testing, products and other fields, including high-level positions such as "Product Director of Intelligent Driving System", "Deputy Chief Engineer of Intelligent Driving System" and "Deputy Chief Engineer of Decision Planning Algorithm". A BYD employee believes that this shows BYD's determination, "If you want to do a good job, you must recruit a chief engineer."
In the past two years, BYD has assembled a larger intelligent driving team than most new forces. Wang Chuanfu said on January 16 that the entire intelligent driving team has more than 4,000 people, including more than 1,000 algorithm engineers and hardware engineers, and more than 3,000 software engineers.
In comparison, the number of intelligent driving R&D personnel of Ideal, Xpeng, and NIO is around 1,000-1,500.
The reason why BYD needs more intelligent driving employees than the new forces is that there are more models. A person close to BYD said that BYD will set up separate projects and teams for different versions of each model. BYD currently has more than 100 versions of all models, and some of these versions can share the underlying model, but if the sensor configuration is different, the control and planning logic will be different, and it needs to be equipped with calibration, testing, and adaptation personnel, about 100 people.
The manpower requirements for this model are huge. But the person said that "this way the development is faster".
"Late Auto" confirmed the above information to BYD officially, but as of press time, no reply has been received.
The "crowd tactic" has helped BYD outperform its rivals in the electrification transformation. In the early days, BYD put forward the "301" concept, that is, to use 300% of engineers to gain 1% technological leadership. According to BYD's official information, the electrification team alone now has 25,000 engineers. By comparison, by the end of 2022, Great Wall Motor had a total of 24,000 R&D personnel.
This tactic is applied to the intelligent driving business. Wang Chuanfu said at the March 2023 performance meeting that in the next two or three years, the crowd tactics will still be adopted, and a large number of R&D personnel will be used to maintain the ability of subversive iteration, and to fight for engineers, vertical integration, market strategy, and scale.
He said that BYD will invest 100 billion yuan in the field of intelligence, including intelligent driving, intelligent cockpit, etc. Among the new forces, the fastest high-end intelligent driving process is Xiaopeng, and founder He Xiaopeng said in October 2023 that it has invested more than 3 billion yuan in the field of intelligent driving.
An industry insider commented that BYD's style of play is to speed up the pace and improve the speed with several times the investment of other manufacturers.
When the technical solution is relatively mature, car companies can rely on more manpower and larger sales to quickly increase the scale of high-end intelligent driving, but to explore more cutting-edge technical routes, the effect of "crowd tactics" is doubtful.
The shortcomings of intelligent driving in the high-end market
BYD's judgment on the importance of intelligent driving is different from that of new forces, which is amplified in the high-end market.
The DENZA N7 is BYD's representative model of intelligence, and Zhao Changjiang, general manager of DENZA sales, once said that "BYD's strongest intelligent driving is in the DENZA N7". However, when it is launched in July 2023, as a high-end car priced at more than 300,000 yuan, the Denza N7 is equipped with leather seats, ventilation and heating and other comfort configurations as standard, but intelligent driving is an option, priced at 23,000 yuan. The chip configured in the lowest version is Horizon Journey 3, with a computing power of 5TOPS, and cannot support high-speed pilot or urban pilot functions.
Compared to products of the same price or lower, the N7 is not attractive enough in terms of intelligent driving. A month before the N7 was launched, the Xpeng G6 was released, with a starting price of 229,900 yuan for the MAX version equipped with high-end intelligent driving assistance functions. The second month after the N7 was launched, the Xinwenjie M7 was equipped with Huawei's latest ADS 2.0, including high-speed and high-end intelligent driving in urban areas, with a starting price of 249,800 yuan.
The conservative smart configuration has affected the sales of the N7. Zhao Changjiang has said that the internal goal is to sell 5,000 vehicles a month. In the first month and the following month of the N7's launch, 1,480 and 1,810 units were sold, respectively.
In September 2023, the third month of the N7's launch, BYD launched the Denza N7 "core replacement" solution. Old users need to send the car back to the factory and spend 10,000 yuan to upgrade it to the NVIDIA Orin X chip, which can use high-speed piloting, but because the lidar is difficult to rear-install, it still does not support urban piloting.
What is the standard configuration and what is the option, behind it is the ranking of the needs of users in the high-end car market by car companies. From the perspective of intelligent driving planning, BYD's judgment is that by 2024, users of high-end cars will value high-end intelligent driving functions, so the first landing plan of urban intelligent driving is in 2024, and the standard price range is more than 300,000 yuan.
But both of these standards have been hit by new forces. In 2023, Huawei will release the new M7 equipped with ADS 2.0, expanding the scope of application of urban NOA from 45 cities to "open nationwide", accelerating the competition for new forces to open the city. In terms of price range, MONA, a collaboration between Xpeng and Didi, will be released in 2024, and the model equipped with high-end intelligent driving may drop to 150,000 yuan.
If Denza and Formula Leopard want to take more sales in the high-end market, they need at least the intelligent driving level of Laqi and their rivals. Models such as the Han, Tang and Seal brands of Dynasty and Ocean are also under pressure.
In 2024, the sales targets of Wenjie and Xpeng are 600,000 and 280,000 respectively, with a year-on-year increase of 536% and 99%. They will also be opponents of DENZA and Equation Leopard.
In the last round of electrification transformation, electric vehicles consume less energy and have more power than gasoline vehicles, which is the advantage of technological change. BYD seized the opportunity to provide better performance at a price similar to that of fuel vehicles, winning over traditional car companies.
Now, in the process of intelligent transformation, the new forces are using BYD's previous methods to attack, and high-end intelligent driving is equipped with the same 200,000 yuan level models faster. How quickly it can catch up with Xiaopeng, Wenjie, etc., is BYD's first battle in the high-end market.
Title image source: BYD Auto