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Just a few days ago, the Beijing Auto Show came to a hot end. As the first international A-class auto show in China in 2024, the Beijing Auto Show is regarded as the vane of technological development in the automotive industry. Following electrification, the trend of intelligent vehicles represented by intelligent driving has gradually become the mainstream. As an important engine for the development of new quality productivity in the mainland, what kind of leap is the intelligent networked vehicle industry undergoing and how will it affect our lives?
Returning after a four-year absence, the 2024 Beijing Auto Show attracted many automakers and technology companies to participate in the exhibition. Intelligent driving has become a high-profile element at the auto show. From unmanned buses without cockpits to all-in-one flying cars, to intelligent applications such as autonomous parking and AI driving, smarter cars are redefining the way people travel.
At this year's Beijing International Auto Show, in addition to the release of new models, many manufacturers have brought their own intelligent driving products and solutions, which are defined as the intelligence of the second half of the automobile industry and have become an area that automobile companies are competing to chase.
According to the mainland's "Classification Standard for Automobile Driving Automation", there are six levels of intelligent driving from L0 to L5, L3 is the dividing line, the following is assisted driving, the above is automatic driving, and L4 means that in most scenarios, the vehicle can achieve automatic driving, but in extreme cases, human intervention is required; L5 is autonomous driving in any scenario, that is, unmanned driving in the true sense. Due to technical and legal restrictions, it may be too early for unmanned driving, but the era of intelligent driving has undoubtedly arrived.
Liang Weiqiang, Vice President of GAC Research Institute and Director of Intelligent Connected Technology R&D Center: Intelligent driving is one of the most important products in our intelligent networked vehicles and has the most direct user experience, so in the field of intelligent driving, every car company will invest huge manpower and material resources in the development of it.
In China, many car companies are currently launching passenger models equipped with Level 2, that is, assisted driving functions. It should be noted that according to the relevant laws of the mainland, even if this function is turned on, the driver's hands must not take off the steering wheel while driving. L3 and above intelligent networked vehicles can only be driven on public roads under specified conditions. In order for a car to meet the conditions for autonomous driving with no one in the driver's seat, it not only needs to go through a strict testing process in terms of technology, but also needs to be approved by laws and regulations.
Zheng Jihu, executive deputy director of the National Intelligent Connected Vehicle Innovation Center: All those who are not in the driver's seat are test vehicles or demonstration vehicles, and the real commercial vehicles must be in the driver's seat according to traffic regulations or road traffic laws, so we see that there must be 17 demonstration areas plus 16 "double intelligence" cities and 7 pilot areas in the driver's seat, and there are some such vehicles in operation.
It is precisely with the rapid iteration of technology and the coordinated promotion of local innovation policies that in recent years, L4 autonomous vehicles with a driver, a person in the back, and even a completely unmanned L4 autonomous driving car have also begun to carry out test demonstrations in cities with conditions. In particular, self-driving taxis are attracting the most attention, and they are also the closest to people's lives. Starting from December 2023, Nansha District of Guangzhou City will carry out a pilot project of autonomous driving and unmanned commercial mixed traffic of intelligent networked vehicles, and self-driving taxis will officially start charging operations. At present, self-driving vehicle toll stations have covered the main areas of Nansha urban area, and citizens can call self-driving taxis without safety officers through mobile phone software.
These self-driving taxis operate from 7:30 a.m. to 10:30 p.m., and the fare is the same as that of taxis in Guangzhou. Taking Guangzhou as an example, an autonomous vehicle without a safety officer needs to obtain a remote test permit, a remote passenger test permit, and an unmanned commercial mixed traffic pilot in turn, from road testing to commercial charging. In the meantime, it is also necessary to meet the corresponding requirements in terms of operating mileage, vehicle emergency disposal, and safety redundancy design.
Starting from the end of 2022, the testing and demonstration application of fully driverless vehicles have been opened in specific areas of many cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen. In a business district with a relatively large amount of traffic in the Beijing Economic Development Zone, and it is the rush hour after work, an unmanned taxi, whether it is braking, avoiding or changing lanes, is extremely calm, like a mature and stable old driver, and his mood is extremely stable.
Hou Fushen, vice chairman and secretary general of the Society of Automotive Engineers of China: I think intelligent driving mainly solves the problem of safety, traffic efficiency, and user experience, that is, to make our travel safer, more comfortable, more convenient and more reliable in the future.
A terminal distribution logistics vehicle has L4 autonomous driving capability and realizes unmanned delivery according to the planned route, and has obtained relevant test operation qualifications in Yizhuang and Shunyi districts of Beijing. Relying on the perception system composed of high-definition cameras, lidars, millimeter-wave radars, etc., it can accurately identify traffic lights and obstacles, and combine with high-computing chip domain controllers to make timely decisions such as avoidance and braking.
Intelligent networked vehicles, which are running farther and farther, are becoming more and more "smart", and with the promotion of relevant laws and policies, more intelligent driving scenarios are also steadily landing. In Suzhou, intelligent heavy trucks equipped with intelligent driving systems have obtained relevant qualifications and participated in the trunk logistics business; At the Heidaigou open-pit coal mine site in Inner Mongolia, the average operating efficiency of unmanned mining trucks has reached more than 85% of that of manned trucks.
Zheng Jihu, Executive Deputy Director of the National Intelligent Connected Vehicle Innovation Center: The development of any technology is to save costs and improve efficiency, for example, we have begun to use unmanned driving in closed areas, such as warehouses, docks, and mining areas.
Liang Weiqiang, vice president of GAC Research Institute and director of the Intelligent Network Technology R&D Center: Our country is gradual in terms of industrial policy, first of all, with safety as the most basic guarantee, through the past demonstration area and the current demonstration enterprises, demonstration sites to promote step by step, to guide the development of some technologies of enterprises.
With a new round of global scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation, ICVs have become one of the most active areas of innovation and practice, and are also an important area of new infrastructure construction and an important part of the digital economy.
Hou Fushen, Vice President and Secretary-General of the Society of Automotive Engineers of China: According to our preliminary estimates, by 2030, intelligent networked vehicles will bring trillions of value increments to the entire automobile industry, and at the same time, it can further strengthen the status and role of the pillar industry of the automobile industry. At the same time, the development of intelligent networked vehicles can also drive the development and growth of artificial intelligence, chips, information and communication and other related industries.
It is one thing for a car to achieve autonomous driving, but it is much more complicated for thousands of different vehicles to achieve autonomous driving at the same time, in addition to a complete infrastructure, it must also rely on a unified technical architecture and standards, and it is driven by such industrial needs that the National Intelligent Connected Vehicle Innovation Center came into being.
In May 2019, the National Innovation Center for Intelligent Connected Vehicles was established, becoming the first national manufacturing innovation center in the field of intelligent networked vehicles in mainland China. One of its goals is to promote common basic research on intelligent networked vehicles, so as to reduce the overall R&D cost of the industry. In addition, the center also promotes the implementation of vehicle-road-cloud integration technology in many places with a unified vehicle-road-cloud integration architecture and standards.
Yuan Yu, Chief Designer of Hebei District Intelligent Connected Vehicle Road-Cloud Integration Demonstration Zone and Deputy General Manager of China Automobile Zhilian: Vehicle-road-cloud integration can touch the information in the vehicle operation environment to the car in a timely manner through the cloud, and participate in the integrated perception and role control of the vehicle. In this way, each car will become an intelligent car, and the operation of the whole city will be very orderly, and it will become a coupled state between the car and the road, and the car on the highway is a bit like a high-speed railway, relying on the road test facilities to direct the operation of the vehicle.
In recent years, with the gradual improvement of the technical route of vehicle-road-cloud integration, through the application of technologies such as vehicle-road-cloud collaboration, it has made up for the technical shortcomings of single-vehicle intelligence to deal with extreme situations and fragmented scenarios, making this technology the key to promoting the large-scale industrial application of intelligent networked vehicles in the next stage. Located along the Haihe River in Hebei District, Tianjin, the vehicle-road collaborative demonstration road has just completed the construction of 7.3 kilometers, which is different from other places, this is also the first time that the mainland has promoted the construction of vehicle-road-cloud integration project in the central area of a megacity.
As of February 2024, more than 28,000 kilometers of test demonstration roads have been opened across the country, more than 6,600 test demonstration licenses have been issued, and the cumulative total mileage of road tests is 88 million kilometers.
It should be reminded that some passenger cars currently sold on the market have L2 level intelligent assisted driving functions, but this is not automatic driving, but only to assist the driver in driving and reduce the driving burden, and cannot replace the owner's hands, and the driver is still the first person in charge of the vehicle. The emphasis on safety is precisely to ensure the healthy and steady development of this emerging industry. The development momentum of intelligent networked new energy vehicles in the mainland is strong, especially relying on the complete industrial system, continuous innovation investment, in the market competition, open cooperation in the formation of a leading advantage, in the future, we must continue to work hard to maintain this advantage, develop well, seize this round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation of the major opportunities.
Editor丨Gao Qi, Sun Qiang, Li Xiao, Yu Qianqian
Camera丨Pan Ming, Bi Bochao, Gao Qi
Planning丨Niu Yanmin
Editing丨Miao Jialiang Tong Yongjie
Editor in charge: Liu Bo