In 1995, the first electric car in mainland China was born, named "Yuanwang", which not only implies the heroism of Wangyuan, but also contains the ambition of arrival.
In 2023, China's automobile production and sales will reach 30 million units for the first time, making it the world's largest auto exporter. Among them, the production and sales of new energy vehicles accounted for more than 60% of the world, ranking first in the world for nine consecutive years.
From "electrification" to "intelligence", the development of new energy vehicles has entered the second half.
In the past few decades, Chinese brands have developed rapidly, and the industrial foundation behind them has gradually grown, from struggling to catch up, keep pace with each other, and overtake in corners, to today's "global car companies look at China, and development opportunities are in China".
In the race to the future of travel, new energy vehicles have changes, opportunities, challenges, and broad development space. People's Daily Online invited the heads of 8 car companies to talk about the "new decade" of new energy vehicles.
He Xiaopeng: AI fever is building a new highland for smart car competition
The advent of AI has injected new vitality into the development of full-stack solutions for intelligent vehicles, and the electronic and electrical architectures represented by intelligent driving and intelligent cockpits are highly integrated, which will operate flexibly and efficiently with a complete set of solutions, so that the anthropomorphism of cars can achieve "thinking and thinking". For example, the "next-generation" operating system "AI Dimensity System", which was developed and deployed by Xpeng Motors two years in advance, has been fully connected to the AI large model, and its perception and understanding capabilities have been greatly improved, and it has excellent ability to understand, learn and grow while serving drivers and passengers.
A number of domestic and foreign car companies, represented by Xpeng, Geely, and GAC, are developing "flying cars" that combine the entire electric, flight control and AI to achieve more intelligent and safe air travel in the future. With the mass production and commercialization of "flying cars", the low-altitude economy is likely to be the next decisive point.
Tao Lin, Vice President of Tesla: Autonomous driving, the key driving force for the development of new energy vehicles and new quality productivity
Tesla has been deeply engaged in the field of autonomous driving for many years, and its self-developed Dojo supercomputer and FSD fully autonomous driving capability chip provide super underlying technical support. Autonomous driving adopts the pure vision technology route, through the pure vision architecture and end-to-end neural network, and is trained with large-scale real-world data. Tesla's "end-to-end neural network" technology, through deep learning of more than one million driving data, uses artificial intelligence technology to affect vehicle control, with a higher performance ceiling, a more anthropomorphic driving style, and a faster model convergence speed.
The development of autonomous driving technology will also promote the upgrading and innovation of related industries, including sensor technology, artificial intelligence algorithms, big data processing and other fields, which not only brings technological progress to autonomous vehicles themselves, but also provides impetus for the intelligent upgrading of the entire automotive industry chain.
Volkswagen China CEO Richard Brady: Helping China's smart electric vehicle development reach a new level
At the beginning of this year, Volkswagen Group launched a 1 billion euro Volkswagen (China) Technology Co., Ltd. in Hefei, Anhui Province. It is the largest R&D center outside of the German headquarters, focusing on R&D, innovation and procurement of intelligent and connected electric vehicles, and is also an important interface for the Group to connect with joint ventures and local partners in China. Volkswagen Group has announced an additional €2.5 billion investment in China to further expand its production and innovation center in Hefei.
In addition, through a strategic partnership with Chinese new energy vehicle manufacturer Xpeng Motors, the company will not only jointly develop two smart electric models for the mid-size car market, but also jointly develop a leading E/E architecture CEA, so as to continuously provide Chinese consumers with the latest digital services and leading intelligent features. In the fields of autonomous driving, infotainment systems, and power batteries, the Group has cooperated with Chinese technology companies such as Horizon Robotics, Thunderda, and Gotion Hi-Tech, and continues to explore and deepen innovation cooperation with the three major vehicle joint ventures in China.
Toyota China Dong Long March: Create a win-win situation and build a new future for China's auto industry through multi-path development
To promote the green and low-carbon development of the automotive industry, it is necessary to take into account the diversified energy supply system and provide consumers with diversified choices. Multi-path electrification products, including hybrid vehicles (HEVs), plug-in hybrid vehicles (PHEVs), battery electric vehicles (BEVs), and fuel cell vehicles (FCEVs), are being launched one after another. In the future, the automotive industry will be a development trend of coexistence of multiple energy sources and the integration and symbiosis of multiple technologies.
In recent years, Toyota, together with BYD and GAC Group, has made full use of their respective advantages in technology, manufacturing, quality control, and industrial chain to exceed the expectations of Chinese users and create new electrified models with more local characteristics. The multi-path electrification technology route and co-creation cooperation model have brought more vitality to the automotive industry and provided more new ideas for development. For foreign brands, localization is the foundation of the Chinese market, and it is necessary to continuously strengthen the integration and linkage with Chinese partners, including not only domestic car companies, but also the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain, and even other industries.
Li Bin, Chairman of NIO: Work together to promote a standardized and unified charging and swapping infrastructure network
Competitive automotive products must be built on the control and breakthrough of core technologies. At present, NIO's core technologies have covered all segments of the smart electric vehicle business, and have established a "NIO Technology Full Stack" composed of 12 major technologies, including chips and on-board intelligent hardware, battery systems, electric drive and high-voltage systems, vehicle engineering, vehicle global operating systems, panoramic interconnection, intelligent driving, intelligent cockpit, smart energy, intelligent manufacturing, artificial intelligence, and global digital operations, and has achieved industry-leading technological achievements, such as the first full-stack self-developed intelligent chassis domain controller (ICC) in China , Tianshu SkyOS, the first vehicle global operating system in China, the industry's first self-developed and mass-produced LiDAR main control chip "Yang Jian", and NIO Link NIO panoramic interconnection technology.
Since its inception, NIO has continued to build energy replenishment infrastructure based on the vision of "clear skies", and has built an energy service system that can be recharged, replaced, and upgraded based on NIO cloud technology. As of April 25, NIO has deployed 2,404 battery swap stations across the country, with 3,776 self-built charging stations and 21,995 charging piles. Since November 2023, NIO has reached strategic cooperation agreements with Changan, Geely, Chery, JAC, Lotus and other companies to jointly work on battery charging and battery swap technology innovation and unified standard systems, and jointly promote a larger-scale, standardized, and unified energy infrastructure network, bringing users a more efficient and convenient energy replenishment service experience.
Ke Shimai, President of Porsche China: China's new energy vehicle industry is full of vitality, and competition makes Porsche do better
On the road to accelerating electrification, Porsche is determined and fully committed. By the end of 2023, the number of pure electric and plug-in hybrid models introduced by Porsche to the Chinese market has increased to 27, with new energy models accounting for 16% of Porsche's new car deliveries. Porsche is continuing to pursue its electrification strategy, aiming to have more than 80 percent of global new car deliveries with all-electric models by 2030.
In recent years, China has made significant progress in areas such as electric vehicles and intelligent driving technology, while Germany has extensive experience in traditional automotive processes and engineering technologies. Car companies of the two countries can carry out in-depth cooperation in R&D, design and production, and jointly explore new technologies, new materials and new processes, so as to promote the development of the automotive industry in the direction of more environmental protection, energy conservation and intelligence.
Li Xiang, Chairman of Li Auto: Intelligence has become the core competitiveness of China's new energy vehicle brands
The excellent user experience of intelligent driving and intelligent space has become the core competitiveness of products. Li Auto's full-scene intelligent driving (NOA) function has covered high-speed and urban roads, completely restored the road environment through the BEV large model and Occupancy network algorithm, and planned a better driving path through the spatio-temporal joint algorithm. In addition, the innovation in the three-dimensional interaction mode of intelligent space has also been recognized by the industry. The most familiar voice assistant "Ideal Classmate" integrates multimodal perception of hearing and vision in interaction, and the addition of Mind GPT, a self-developed multimodal cognitive model, has enabled voice interaction to enter the era of natural dialogue from traditional commands.
At the level of production and manufacturing, Li Auto put forward three insistences: adhere to the user value-driven, adhere to the self-built factory and self-manufacturing route at the beginning of its establishment, and fully ensure the consistency of product quality and product experience from the very front; adhere to the self-research of core technologies, with self-developed intelligent manufacturing systems, visual algorithms, equipment, quality prediction models, etc., to drive to improve manufacturing efficiency, quickly iterate production technology, and achieve higher product quality; adhere to the end-to-end big data closed loop, through the closed-loop big data model, open up the product research and development, The entire process of parts R&D and procurement, factory R&D and manufacturing, sales data, and after-sales NPS realizes full closed-loop management.
Zhu Jiangming, founder of Leapmotor: Let the world see the technological innovation of China's new energy vehicles
At present, China's new energy vehicles have comprehensive advantages in technology, cost, and system. In terms of technological advantages, China's new energy vehicle battery, motor, electronic control - "three electrics" technology has been leading in the world. Among them, the most competitive advantage is the battery, and more than half of the top ten companies in the world's power battery sales come from China. In terms of cost, China's new energy vehicles continue to achieve consumption equality, such as the industry's high-end 800V platform architecture, 8295 vehicle specification chips to achieve less than 200,000 yuan on the car, new energy vehicles from the past "oil and electricity at the same price" to "electricity than oil" change. In terms of intelligence, China's new energy vehicles have also made important breakthroughs. Many domestic car companies have launched new energy vehicle products with automatic driving functions, and have achieved good results in practical applications.
In the past 20 years, China's new energy vehicle industry has ushered in a hundred blossoms of technology and a blossoming market. There is no doubt that the future belongs to new energy and intelligent networked vehicles, and China has become the most developed market for intelligent networked vehicles in the world. Multinational automakers, independent brands, and new EV manufacturers are working together to promote the development of China's auto industry, leading the industry from the first half of "rapid development" to the second half of "high-quality development".
Source: People's Online Commentary