On the afternoon of April 28, 2024, after the Wenjie M7 traffic accident in Yuncheng, Shanxi Province, where the controversy over the intelligent driving system continued to ferment, Bosch, as one of the important suppliers of the Wenjie M7 intelligent driving system, issued a statement: "After an in-depth investigation, the vehicle involved was not equipped with Bosch's intelligent driving system (including AEB). Bosch expresses its deep condolences and regrets for the casualties caused by the accident. ”
Image courtesy of Bosch
As a result, Gasgoo immediately contacted the relevant person in charge of Fortunetech, the supplier of the M7 intelligent driving system point b, but as of the release of the manuscript, there has been no effective reply.
刹不住的AEB，错究竟在谁？
On April 26, a Wenjie M7 PLUS in Yuncheng, Shanxi Province, caught fire after colliding with a maintenance vehicle in a traffic accident, resulting in the unfortunate death of three people on board. The family members of the accident questioned, "Why don't AEB and GAEB have automatic emergency braking?"
Picture of the accident scene, image source: Internet
This incident sparked a widespread public discussion about the capabilities of the M7 AEB.
In November last year, Yu Chengdong, chairman of Huawei's car BU, and He Xiaopeng, chairman of Xpeng Motors, had a heated discussion on AEB's high-speed braking ability, letting everyone know what AEB is. Taking this opportunity, many car companies, including Denza and Nezha, showed off their own intelligent driving AEB capabilities.
At the end of the "scolding war", Yu Chengdong and He Xiaopeng shook hands and said goodbye, but when it turned around, Huawei's intelligent driving system upgraded its forward AEB capability, expanding its working speed range to 4-130km/h, and the braking distance in some scenarios was also increased from 90km/h to 120km/h, with a capability improvement of 33%.
Now that AEB's capabilities have been greatly improved, why is this incident still happening?
According to the detailed configuration information of the M7, the M7 is equipped with the AEB function as standard, but it is clear that the M7 PLUS version of the accident vehicle is not equipped with Huawei's intelligent driving system.
Part of the configuration information of the M7, picture source: screenshot of the official website of HarmonyOS Zhixing
As a result, as the AEB function supplier of the M7 PLUS version, Bosch and Foretek were pushed to the forefront. In particular, Bosch, as a supplier, was pointed out that the AEB operating range in its intelligent driving solution is 4-85 km/h, and the speed of 115 km/h in a collision is far beyond the trigger range of Bosch AEB.
However, Bosch denied this, so only Foretek has not yet given any response.
L2+ may fall into the 'uncanny valley', and propaganda needs to be restrained
Until the publication of the article, the relevant authorities have not disclosed the specific information in this accident, including whether the car in front suddenly changed lanes and caused insufficient braking distance, and even whether AEB really did not work or many questions have not been answered intuitively.
However, I believe that people who have been browsing various short video platforms for a long time will occasionally brush up on the escape performance of the M7 AEB function of Wenjie, and even search for "emergency obstacle avoidance" or "intelligent driving emergency obstacle avoidance" on major platforms, and the number of views and likes of related videos of Wenjie M7 is still high. Most people may describe the performance of the M7's intelligent driving ability in four words - far ahead.
From left: Screenshots of the three major platforms of Channels, Douyin, and Xiaohongshu
As mentioned above, although the whole system is equipped with AEB as standard, how many owners clearly understand that the same M7 also has different suppliers, as well as the gap in the scope of work and trigger mechanism?
I still remember that in 2021, a video was circulated on the Internet, a 2020 Ideal ONE was driving on the highway, the main driver and co-driver were lying flat, and the assisted driver controlled the vehicle, and even took a video and posted it on the Internet to show off. After that, there was a lot of news about this kind for half a month, and in the same month, an ES8 owner passed away due to a traffic accident, pushing the discussion of "assisted driving ≠ autonomous driving" to the peak.
At that time, Li Xiang, the founder of Li Auto, once posted an article in the circle of friends, calling on the media and industry organizations to unify the standards of Chinese terms for autonomous driving, L2 = assisted driving; L3 = automatic assisted driving; L4 = automatic driving; L5 = unmanned driving. Do not have a single superfluous Chinese word to avoid exaggerated propaganda and misunderstanding of user use. And proposed, "restraint in promotion, investment in technology, long-term benefits to users, industries, and enterprises." ”
Image source: WeChat Moments
When autonomous driving was not yet fully mature, over-reliance on autonomous driving was regarded as the root cause of various accidents at that time. As a result, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the "Opinions on Strengthening the Access Management of Intelligent Networked Vehicle Manufacturers and Products", and worked together to promote the rapid development of automotive intelligence in mainland China in the past three years.
But obviously, with the extension of NOA's function from the highway field to complex urban road scenes, and the successive introduction of two red-headed documents at the end of last year, the promotion of intelligent driving technology is overwhelming.
The function of urban NOA, which is regarded as a key bridge to realize the technological leap from L2 to L3, has become a technological peak that major companies are competing to climb.
As a result, Wenjie took the lead in pushing the "NCA in the urban area without a map", claiming that it can be opened in the whole country; Weilai will also push it to the model users of the full NT2 platform on the 30th of this month to achieve global pilot assistance NOP+;The latecomer Xiaomi SU7 plans to push the urban NOA that can be used in the whole country in August;Wei Jianjun, chairman of Great Wall Motors, one of the representatives of traditional car companies, is the first time on the eve of the auto show through live broadcast, to fully display the full scene NOA of Great Wall Motors without high-precision maps to the majority of netizens.
However, as a result, a number of experts and scholars, including Zhu Xichan, a professor at the School of Automotive Engineering of Tongji University, have conveyed a common point of view to Gasgoo after visiting the new product and new planning of various enterprises: the promotion of intelligent driving technology should be more cautious and restrained.
The level of intelligent driving has improved, but the "uncanny valley" has quietly taken shape
As early as November 2023, when we saw that the current L2+ level intelligent driving has made significant progress compared with the traditional L2 level in terms of ability, and the number of takeovers has dropped from more than 20 times per 100 kilometers to 1~2 times per 1,000 kilometers, and when major car companies rushed to announce their respective NOA city opening plans, they warned: "It is precisely because of this progress that L2+ level intelligent driving has fallen into the 'uncanny valley'."
The uncanny valley theory was proposed in 1970 by Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori, that is, when robots reach a certain degree of resemblance to humans, human reactions to them will suddenly become extremely negative and disgusting. As the resemblance between robots and humans continues to rise, the human emotional response to them returns to the positive.
Zhu Xisan said that what we think of as a low-tech ADAS function is safe, because no one uses it for autonomous driving. On the contrary, L2+ intelligent driving is more likely to make consumers relax their vigilance, and they may be distracted, play with their mobile phones or even lie down to sleep, which is the L2+ stage of "one bottle is not satisfied, half a bottle is shaking" is more likely to cause accidents.
He further reminded that at present, the boundaries of NOA are still blurred, and companies are only willing to assume product responsibility for "assisted driving", but radical consumers may use L2+ intelligent driving as L3, which is easy to lead to traffic accidents, while conservative consumers fall into the "uncanny valley" after seeing the accident, and then avoid intelligent driving.
In this context, as technology promoters, we need to not abandon or give up, learn from history, find a balance between technological exploration and safety, and do a good job in user education, as consumers, we also need to maintain awe and restraint, and not be too immersed in assisted driving functions. You must know that whether it is L2+ or L2.9, it is still only L2 level assisted driving.
Here again, it is emphasized that we should grasp the steering wheel, "make good use" of assisted driving, and grasp the right to life in our own "hands". Safety first! Safety first! Safety first! Say it three times!