Wen Luoning

On the evening of August 4th, an obituary once again aroused people's concerns about the safety of Weilai automobile and autonomous driving.

The public account named "Meiyihao" published the content, saying that on August 2nd, Lin Wenqin, the founder of Shangshan Ruoshui Investment Management Company, Yitong Tianxia Catering Management Company and Meiyihao Brand Management Company, had a traffic accident driving Weilai ES8 in Hanjiang section of Shenhai Expressway and died at the age of 31. In the obituary, it was specifically mentioned that in the event of an accident, Lin Wenqin activated the autopilot function (NOP pilot status).

For Wei, this is the second fatal traffic accident in a month.

In fact, in the early morning of July 31th, a Weilai car owner drove Weilai EC6 in Lingang Avenue, Pudong New Area, Shanghai. After the Weilai car hit the isolation stone pier, the vehicle caught fire and the driver died unfortunately. Up to now, Weilai officials have not announced the details of the accident.

Although the two traffic accidents are not the same in specific circumstances, the doubts that Weilai has received in recent days are very similar. Many consumers, including professional car critics, have begun to question the automatic driving assistance function of the new force.

The Opinions on Strengthening the Access Management of Intelligent Networked Vehicle Manufacturers and Products recently issued by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has once again revealed various problems in data and network security, data recording and process guarantee of intelligent Networked Vehicles in the hot market and investment background.

consumers' worries about the new forces of car-making are largely due to the excessive publicity and guidance of these enterprises, especially Wei Xiaoli, who is called "electric three fools", usually gives users an illusion of "black technology" in official publicity.

The full name of NOP of Weilai Automobile is Navigate on Pilot. According to the official statement, NOP is "the deep integration of navigation system, high-precision map and NIO Pilot's automatic assisted driving system. On the basis of the cruise speed control, distance keeping, steering assistance and turn signal control lane change functions realized by the pilot function, In most expressway and urban elevated sections covered by the high-speed map, vehicles can automatically merge into the main road according to the navigation planning path, cruise on the main road and intelligently select the optimal lane, automatically switch to the next high-speed/elevated road according to the navigation planning, and automatically leave the main road. "

does this sound like a real driver? Not only Weilai, but also Xpeng Motors's NGP(Navigation Guided Pilot) and Tesla's NOA(Navigate on Autopilot) are very similar in function. In the official publicity, this function is too obvious for users to leave their hands behind the steering wheel, which has become a potential hidden danger of traffic accidents.

For example, in Tucki's previous official promotional video, it was very intuitive to tell consumers that after turning on NGP function, drivers can take selfies or even drink coffee in the car (related videos have been deleted). Weibo Zhong, vice president of Weilai, Shen Fei, also mentioned that he can "eat and drive with confidence" by using his automatic assisted driving function (related content has been deleted).

I would like to ask, this kind of manufacturer's publicity, coupled with the test drive of prospective car buyers on low-speed roads, will make them have basic trust, and will it affect the actual driving after purchase?

A Weilai car owner told the Business Data School that Lin Wenqin, the driver of the 8.12 Weilai car accident, had been driving for less than one year after purchasing the Weilai ES8, and during this period, he was very fond of Weilai's automatic driving function. Perhaps this love has caused excessive trust in the automatic driving assistance system, and excessive trust has affected its judgment in daily driving.

But in fact, even Tesla, which is the most technologically advanced in this field, now has to admit that the so-called "autonomous driving" is still far away from us, as Musk himself said:

"Generalized autonomous driving is a difficult problem because it needs to solve many artificial intelligence problems in the real world. I didn't expect it to be so difficult before, but the difficulty in retrospect is obvious. "

From the consumer's point of view, no matter whether they are using NOA, NGP or NOP, these systems are still just testing systems. Although they have even paid a high price for this, they have not been guaranteed safety, and even manufacturers have taken precautions before using them. For example, the manual of NOP function in Weilai suggests:

"Pilot-assisted Beta version is an open beta version, and its functions are still in the stage of continuous optimization."

"Like Pilot and other driver assistance functions, the pilot assistance cannot respond to static obstacles (such as roadblocks and triangle warning signs). If there is an accident or construction area ahead, please take over the vehicle immediately to control the direction and speed."

This means that in the traffic accidents caused by users' use of NOP function, manufacturers have already evaded their own responsibilities in advance. Users choose these brands because of the excessive publicity of manufacturers, but in the subsequent use, their lives may be in danger at any time because of the immature automatic driving assistance system. Such dangers may be more and more among automobile users such as Tesla and Wei Xiaoli.

for example, on may 8th this year, a Tesla Model S was involved in a traffic accident in snohomish county, northeast of Seattle, Washington, USA, and crashed into a police car handling the accident with the Autopilot automatic assisted driving mode turned on. fortunately, there were no casualties. However, just three days before this incident, a Tesla Model 3 owner had a car accident on a highway about 51 miles east of Los Angeles, and installed a overturned semi-trailer with the automatic driving assistance function turned on. In the end, the driver in the car died on the spot, which shows that there are still defects and risks in the automatic driving assistance function.

The new car-making forces have already passed the most difficult years, especially in 2121. With the increase in sales, they have gradually begun to have greater brand and capital discourse rights, but in the intelligent driving of automobiles, the technology is not as advanced as people think.

in June this year, the auto evaluation center No.38 from the media tested the reliability of the automatic driving assistance system (upgraded to the latest version at that time) including Tesla NOA, Tucki NGP and Weilai NOP, and finally concluded that its functional usability did not meet the expectations by testing the self-driving-on-off-ramp capabilities advertised by the three cars.

Take Weilai as an example, its NOP failed to enter the ramp automatically, and then it continued to try to merge the lines without turning on the turn signal. Only after the target neutral was confirmed, NOP would turn on the turn signal and automatically merge the lines. Not only that, but also there are cases where the navigation route is wrong and the navigation route is automatically reset.

In fact, what happened in the evaluation is not a special case. Xiao Bai (a pseudonym), the owner of Weilai, told the Business Data School that any automatic driving assistance system is not as safe as the driver's own attention when the car speed is too fast: "Now, cars on the earth can only identify ice cream cones, people and cars, and how many defensive actions can be made depends on the working conditions. When the speed exceeds 121km, no car can respond." In his view, Lin Wenqin's top speed during driving is 114.6 km/h, so it is risky to continue using NOP under such working conditions.

axb, another owner of Weilai, thinks: "Many car critics like to test the extreme scenes of assisted driving, such as stopping at 61 miles on a 271-degree curve to see if they can cross, and the boundary is blurred. As a result, many users also take pleasure in exploring the boundary of assisted driving, and even have the wonderful operation of driving without sitting on people at high speed." In his view, at present, the new car-making forces have done a good job of following cars and keeping lanes in the conventional environment, but users should also realize the limitations of the automatic driving assistance function, and some scene blacklists are not suitable for using such functions, such as:

1 non-closed roads do not open

2 scenes with frequent traffic jams do not open

3 moderate rain, The fog scene does not open

4. The ramp does not open

5. Unconventional situations such as road construction and accidents are found in front, and it is undoubtedly very rational for users like this to guide others to make decisions. But the question is, since the system has various defects and deficiencies, why can't car companies put it on the market after it is more stable?

For car companies, these systems not only exist as their selling points, but also become more useful after attracting users to be constantly verified as "mice". But for users, this is actually unfair. As car critics concluded, "This is not a driving assistance function for users, but a research and development assistance function for manufacturers."

for this reason, on August 2, the Ministry of industry and information technology published the opinions on strengthening the management of intelligent networked automobile production enterprises and product access, in which the intelligent networked automobile was further standardized and explained, which provided further requirements for automobile enterprises in all aspects related to user life and information privacy protection.

For example, regarding information security, the Opinions mentioned: "Enterprises should establish and improve the automobile data security management system, fulfill their data security protection obligations in accordance with the law, implement classified data management, and strengthen the protection of personal information and important data; Construction of technical measures for data security protection, to ensure that data continues to be in a state of effective protection and legal utilization, and to implement data security risk assessment, data security incident reporting and other requirements according to laws and regulations; Personal information and important data collected and generated in the domestic operations of the People's Republic of China shall be stored in China in accordance with relevant laws and regulations. If data needs to be provided overseas, it shall pass the data exit security assessment. "

As for the automatic driving assistance system related to users' life safety, the Opinions further clarify the responsibilities of car companies: "Enterprises that produce automobile products with combined driving assistance functions should also take technical measures such as hands-off detection to ensure that drivers are always performing corresponding dynamic driving tasks. Enterprises that produce auto-driving automobile products shall ensure that the automobile products at least meet the requirements of system failure identification and safety response, human-computer interaction, data recording, process support and simulation. We should ensure that automobile products have safe and reliable spatio-temporal information services, and encourage and support the acceptance of Beidou satellite navigation system signals. "

Of course, the Opinions alone are not enough. Due to the accelerated development of new energy vehicles, the domestic regulations and rules on intelligent networked vehicles, especially on automatic driving assistance systems, are not perfect enough, and further standards formulation and access management principles are still needed. However, it can also be seen that with the further development of automobile intelligent functions by automobile enterprises, the situation that users only want to be "mice" without corresponding responsibilities may be further changed.