"Frankly speaking, although I think Chery's intelligent driving is a bit late." On April 26, when communicating with Feiling Automobile and others, Gu Junli, CEO of Dazhuo Intelligent Technology (hereinafter referred to as "Dazhuo Intelligence"), said. At this time, it has been just one year and three months since the establishment of Dazhuo Intelligence. As an intelligent talent personally recruited by Chery Chairman Yin Tongyue, Gu Junli used to work at Tesla as the head of machine learning and also led the Autopilot artificial intelligence team. After returning to China, he worked at Xpeng Motors as the vice president of the autonomous driving R&D center, responsible for the Sino-American team.
The recruitment of Gu Junli is a key step for Chery to make up for the shortcomings of intelligent driving ability. It is precisely because of this that Chery's attitude towards Dazhuo Intelligence is to ask for money for money and people for people. "Guozhong President (Chery Executive General Manager Zhang Guozhong) said that it is not bad money. Mr. Yin also said that he would give us a special zone and run with all his might. Gu Junli said. According to the previous plan, Chery will invest 20 billion yuan in intelligent transformation in the next five years to speed up Chery's intelligent strategy. "It's very strong at the moment." Gu Junli described herself as "building a nest to attract phoenixes" in the past year, and recruited all her autonomous driving talent resources in China and the United States to Chery.
It is reported that Dazhuo Intelligence currently has about 400 people, recruiting 70% of the world's masters and doctors, and about 30% of the executives are from Europe and the United States. That's quite a high configuration. In terms of layout, Dazhuo Intelligent adopts the model of "four-place collaboration", and has set up R&D centers in Silicon Valley and Shanghai in the United States, and set up a product big data center in Shenzhen, and a mass production line at the headquarters in Wuhu. In this way, from the research and development of forward-looking technology, to data processing and verification, a complete set of closed-loop industrial chain has been formed.
At present, Dazhuo Intelligent has summarized four major product platforms for passenger cars and commercial vehicles: Pilot 2.0, Pilot 3.0, Pilot4.0 and Drive 1.0, an unmanned driving product for both passenger and commercial use. Pilot2.0 corresponds to L2 assisted driving, while Pilot3.0 is based on 2.0 enhancement schemes, that is, mainstream high-speed NOA, memory parking, and intersection enhancement assistance, while Pilot4.0 corresponds to urban NOA. In 2023, Dazhuo's first mass-produced ADAS product, Pilot2.0, has been mass-produced at the end of September last year with Chery Xingtu models, and the product has been assembled on three or four Chery vehicles, with a total of nearly 40,000 units. Gu Junli expects to be equipped with more than 20 models in 2024.
The L4 dual-purpose driverless product Drive 1.0 has also been preliminarily implemented, and more than a dozen unmanned trailers have been put into Chery Super Factory No. 1. According to Gu Junli's plan, in the next three years, Dazhuo Intelligent will create the ADAS product Pilot 4.0 through the self-developed intelligent driving technology stack, realize urban NOA and high-speed NOA, and L4 autonomous driving product Drive 2.0, provide fully unmanned operation, and put 10,000 intelligent commercial vehicles around Chery's 13 production bases across the country.
"We will launch a platform product every year, from the middle and low-end, the middle and high-end, step by step to advance, next year will be in the mainstream products to achieve the full range of platform." Gu Junli said.
Late-mover advantage
In such a short period of time, Dazhuo Intelligent has quickly launched products and mass production, in addition to Chery's full support, Chery has its own late-mover advantage. "It's not the same from the dimension of product design, technical path, or ecology." Gu Junli said that Chery has an excellent late-mover advantage. She talked about Chery's late-mover advantage from three perspectives: product design, industrial ecology, and supporting partners.
As far as product design is concerned, the industry used to use technology applications to promote the so-called product upward, and the hardware cost was very high. For example, a system in the new forces accounts for 10% of the BOM cost, while Tesla accounts for 5%-6% of the BOM. For Chery now, it can now use 3%-5% of the BOM to define different forms of products, and at the same time make all big data and HMI through, and do the function evolution. At the same time, Chery's annual sales volume has approached 2 million vehicles, which can solve the problem of large-scale industrial scale.
In addition, from the perspective of technical paths, the past exploration of technical paths has been more or less "detours". For example, Tesla once tried the lidar route, but later thought that the cost was too high and turned to the pure vision route. "Our team has absorbed good experience from Tesla, Xpeng, and Huawei, and can avoid stepping on pitfalls, and basically can improve efficiency by 50%." Gu Junli said. Dazhuo Intelligence has now built the entire BEV-based visual perception, taking a strong visual route to improve the cost performance.
From an ecological point of view, in the past, the industry pursued "one person has to eat everything", that is, full-stack self-development, but there are not many companies that can achieve full-stack self-developed intelligent driving. Now that the industry ecology is richer, it is possible to synergistically promote the products on Chery's vehicles at a faster speed through leveraging and industrial co-creation. For example, Dazhuo Intelligence's team has 400 people, but it can be doubled with the addition of supporting partners, reducing the cost of products and improving development efficiency.
At present, Dazhuo Intelligence's NOA technology stack has been opened, and the visual intelligent driving based on BEV has been running, but the data accumulation of Dazhuo Intelligence is not enough, which has led to a two-year gap between it and the most advanced technology in China's industry. However, through external cooperation, data accumulation can be supplemented. "We can greatly improve efficiency and reduce costs from the above three dimensions, which is the late-mover advantage. We never say that when Dazhuo comes, no one else can do it, but we will invite everyone to come and do it together. Gu Junli said.
Gu Junli revealed that with the accumulation of advantages from all parties, Dazhuo Intelligent will launch a performance version of NOA next year, including memory driving, which can achieve the level of DJI.
Four goals
Intelligent driving is the hottest track at the moment, and it is also the key word in the second half of new energy vehicles. Similarly, Dazhuo Intelligence has set very high goals for itself. In terms of technical capabilities, Dazhuo Intelligent will comprehensively benchmark new forces, and at the same time achieve mass production of domestic and international double million autonomous smart cars in 2025, and these two million products will be matched with the four major platforms of Dazhuo Intelligence. In the international market, Dazhuo Intelligence hopes to make a stronger reputation overseas.
"We hope that Dazhuo can become the second Tesla in the world, and if our high-end products can exceed 100,000 units overseas, it will also be very good." Gu Junli said. Chery has always had a very strong market position and brand appeal in overseas markets. In 2023, Chery sold nearly 1 million units overseas. This is an advantage that parts companies that do intelligent driving cannot have. "If you ask Tir1 when the NOA will go to sea, it will tell you that the user doesn't need it. But here we are, I'm the user, I'm the market, so we push overseas, and it's a perfect closed loop. Gu Junli said.
Thanks to Chery's scale effect, Dazhuo Intelligent can achieve self-hematopoietic ability faster. "Our goal is to provide the group with productized intelligent driving solutions, while completing the closed loop of business, and we must achieve profitability." As for the timing of profitability, Gu Junli initially estimated that it could achieve breakeven in the next 3-5 years. It is precisely because of this that Dazhuo Intelligent has chosen a pure vision solution on the technical route. Gu Junli said that only strong vision can break even in the end.
In terms of how to achieve profitability, Gu Junli has her own thinking. "Software charges must be charged through the city NOA, can and only? I don't think so. Gu Junli said that enterprises should develop ways to monetize through big data-driven business models.
She used Tesla's financial report to illustrate that last year, Tesla made a profit of 58 billion yuan through software and big data, of which 8 billion was autonomous driving, and 50 billion was made through big data.
Gu Junli emphasized that intelligent driving must be "productized". In terms of productization, Dazhuo Intelligence also regards DJI as a benchmarking enterprise. "Hopefully, our category will achieve the same performance and better experience next year." Gu Junli said. In addition, DJI's intelligent driving products are a typical representative of the industrial scale, and its cost is the best in the industry, and its intelligent driving solution has even been installed on the 100,000-level Wuling. "I don't think we want to be DJI, but we want to build a more complete chain than DJI." Gu Junli said.
For Chery, its user group will not be geeky in terms of new technologies, but more in pursuit of stability and security, including the same characteristics in brands such as Xingtu and Xingera, which are more expensive. "It's not that the best technology is the best product, we have planned four different platforms, equipped with cars in different price ranges, and plan to make Chery no naked cars, no brick cars within two years." Gu Junli said that Dazhuo Intelligence should consider the "unification of intelligence and price", and consider intelligence and cost performance together.
"I hope that by the end of this year, everyone can hear the mind of Chery Technology, and next year we will see the whole action on comprehensive transformation." Gu Junli said.
Empowering Star Journey
Gu Junli also has an identity as the chief intelligence officer of Xingtu. This identity also represents Dazhuo Intelligence's important responsibility in empowering Xingtu, Chery's high-end brand. At the Beijing Auto Show, Xingtu demonstrated the high-end intelligent assisted driving technology developed by Dazhuo Intelligent Driving, which can realize the linkage between intelligent driving and chassis, improve the passability and comfort of vehicles, and realize iterative updates on a global scale based on the global intelligent driving data closed-loop system, and continuously improve the safety and reliability of intelligent driving.
In addition, the AI voice model is also integrated with the cockpit intelligent driving, which can be used immediately to create a smarter and more understanding travel experience, and make people's imagination of a better trip within reach. Another cutting-edge technology, iATS intelligent electric drive all-terrain system, is the latest vehicle control technology of Xingtu, which integrates the vehicle's integrated radar, camera and other visiting perception systems, and uses big data algorithm models to predict the driving conditions of the vehicle in advance, so that the vehicle can walk on the ground in various complex road conditions, creating the strongest off-road electric four-wheel drive in the same class.
Gu Junli said that in terms of intelligent driving technology, the Xingtu brand will definitely take the lead in launching high-end products, such as NVIDIA's high-end platform, and Xingtu is now basically realizing the NOA capability of the whole system. Dazhuo Intelligence will also customize a high-end intelligent driving HMI (human-machine interface) for Xingtu. Gu Junli believes that with the development of intelligent driving technology, the entire car will definitely face breakthroughs and changes at the interactive level in the future. "I believe this is going to change dramatically in the next three to five years." Therefore, Dazhuo Intelligent should reserve technical products for Xingtu in advance.
In addition, Dazhuo Intelligent hopes to empower Xingtu with technology in overseas markets. "Can we complete the whole chain of adapting to overseas and then enter the overseas market? Our vision for Xingtu is to make a global high-end smart car. Gu Junli said. In addition, exploration, including software fees, will be tried from the star journey. In addition, Gu Junli said that Dazhuo Intelligence is also thinking about creating an interactive experience for Xingtu through the linkage of the cockpit, so that Xingtu's "comfortable" label will be further strengthened. "At this level, we didn't focus on it in the past, and the industry didn't make it transparent, so we hope to combine various scenarios and systems at this level to link it together to make the whole vehicle intelligent." Gu Junli said.
In recent months, Xingtu has continuously launched blockbuster products such as Xingtu Yaoguang C-DM, Star Era ES, ET, etc., and continues to make efforts in multiple market segments. In the first quarter of this year, Xingtu sold 23,000 units, a year-on-year increase of 44.4%. In addition, the average price of a bicycle in the first quarter reached 187,000 yuan, and with the launch of the Epoch ET in the second quarter, the average price of a bicycle will exceed 200,000 yuan. In the overall sales volume, the sales volume of Xingtu New Energy in the first quarter of this year has accounted for nearly 40%, and Xingtu also plans to realize the new energy of all products in the first half of next year.