There is a * * * knowledge in the automobile circle-"the transformation of the automobile industry, electrification is the first half, and intelligence is the second half." Nowadays, the development of vehicle electrification has become a common practice. Although there are still new players entering the market, the market structure of the whole new energy vehicle has basically taken shape, and the competition has entered a white-hot stage. Therefore, many players have begun to focus on intelligence and are ready to enter the second half.
Why intelligence must be in the "second half"
The popularity of smart phones has been a long time, and its development has reached an unprecedented height. With the advent of the 5G era, smart phones have gradually entered a new era of intelligence. However, car intelligence has only begun to be concerned in the past two years. This is not only curious: Why did cars that have been developed for hundreds of years not keep up with the development of mobile phones, but began to talk about intelligence after the formation of new energy vehicles?
In fact, from the perspective of technology maturity, the first pure electric vehicle was born as early as 1834. With the increasing impact of environmental pollution and energy crisis, governments and car companies around the world have paid more attention to new energy vehicles and accumulated a lot of technologies. By 20 1 1 new energy vehicles have gradually become the protagonists in major international auto shows. At that time, the development of both smart phones and "artificial intelligence" was still immature.
In addition, from the industrial point of view, the development of smart cars involves not only the automobile industry, but also the electronic information industry, hardware and software fields, as well as car networking, communication enterprises, internet enterprises, and even car-road coordination, road test unit transformation, and traffic construction enterprises. It is necessary to wait until all links reach a certain level before the automobile intelligence has a corresponding foundation.
Moreover, from the product itself, it is difficult for the mechanical structure of traditional fuel vehicles to respond to instructions in time and accurately, while the new energy vehicles represented by electric vehicles take the three-electric system as the core, and the extensive use of electrical signals can adjust the vehicle state more finely, which provides a new foundation for the development of automobile intelligence.
Moreover, the structure of the electric vehicle is simpler, and the electronic and electrical architecture presents the characteristics of centralized distribution, which can realize the decoupling of software and hardware, and the main engine factory can realize the dominant position in architecture design and software development, which is convenient for the "OTA" upgrade of the whole vehicle in the future. In the environment of accelerating the speed of automobile upgrading, it is very necessary to bring common and new experiences to the owners through OTA upgrade. This can also explain why among the new cars sold in the first half of 2022, about 40.6 new energy vehicles are equipped with L2-level autonomous driving technology, while the proportion of oil vehicles is only 29.6%.
To sum up, "electrification" actually laid the foundation for the development of "intelligence", which also made it difficult to precede electrification.
Intelligent competition has already started, and the runner has established an advantage.
Although "intelligence" is generally regarded as the second half of the automobile revolution, there are also some "runners" who take the lead in preparing for the development of intelligence. Automobile intelligence can be roughly divided into two aspects: automatic driving and intelligent cockpit. Among them, intelligent cockpit has developed rapidly, and now it has become one of the necessary publicity points for many automobile enterprises, while the development of automatic driving is relatively backward, and it has become the main direction of all "entrants". According to the "TOP 15" list released by Yiou think tank, Tesla ranks first; Independent brand Xpeng Motors followed closely, ranking second.
Tesla's outstanding intelligent performance mainly started early. It was founded in 2003. In 2008, it launched the first automobile product-Roadster, a two-door sports car. Subsequently, a series of products, Model S/X/Y/3, were released one after another. As early as 20 16, when Tesla put forward the second chapter of the grand plan, it mentioned that it was necessary to develop autonomous driving, which was far away in terms of vehicle-machine interaction experience and assisted driving experience.
However, many new domestic brands are still in the stage of "crawling". Because autonomous driving needs a lot of algorithms and mainland data as support, Tesla, which started earlier, has accumulated great advantages in this respect.
Because of its positioning, Xpeng Motors wanted to be "the leading intelligent electric vehicle company in China" at the beginning of its establishment, and many of its team members came from well-known Internet technology companies such as Alibaba, Tencent, Xiaomi, Samsung and Huawei, and had a good foundation in artificial intelligence.
According to a report released by Toubao Research Institute last year, thanks to earlier research and long-term investment in intelligence, Xpeng Motors has gradually formed its own intelligent technical barriers. In the current new power camp, Xpeng Motors has been in the leading position in the research of assisted driving function.
Auto-driving: A new outlet has arrived.
In addition to Tesla and Xpeng Motors, which have established intelligent advantages, there are many brands that are constantly preparing to enter the "smart electric vehicle" track, such as Xiaomi, Apple, Google, Baidu and so on. Before, many people questioned that Xiaomi Automobile and Apple Automobile have not produced cars so far. Now they have missed the new energy outlet. Will it be too late? In fact, behind many companies preparing to enter the game, what is hidden is a new outlet-automatic driving.
According to the standards formulated by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the driving automation is divided into 0-5 levels. Among them, L3 level means that under the operating conditions specified by the automatic driving system, the vehicle itself can complete the tasks of steering, acceleration and deceleration, and road condition detection and response, which is a leap forward in automobile automation road. In recent years, the market scale of China's autonomous driving industry has also increased rapidly. According to the data, the market size of the autonomous driving industry is 9.37 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of15.3%; In 20021year, the number of unmanned related enterprises in China reached 1564, with a year-on-year increase of 35.5%. (Data from China Research Network)
In the past two years, the sales volume of new energy vehicles in China has risen sharply, and it has become the largest new energy vehicle market, and there is a highly bound relationship between new energy vehicles and intelligence. Among them, the advanced intelligent driving assistance function is considered to be an important embodiment and key component of automobile intelligence. Therefore, some organizations predict that "China has the potential to become the largest autonomous driving market in the world" and the corresponding market scale will be further expanded.
Since 20 15, China has continuously introduced relevant policies to guide the development of autonomous driving, and launched pilot projects in several cities, aiming at promoting the development of intelligent transportation. According to Toubao's forecast, by 2030, the market scale of intelligent transportation in China will reach11732.7 million yuan, with a compound growth rate of 12.6% from 2022 to 2030. Under the huge market scale, a large number of self-driving enterprises will enter the market, covering both the C-end market and the B-end market.
Advantages and potential concerns of autonomous driving
Autopilot technology is what all players are pursuing at present. New forces such as Tesla and Wei Xiaoli are mainly aimed at individual users. It is hoped that users can get a simpler travel experience and enhance their competitiveness through autopilot technology. Baidu, on the other hand, faces the B-end travel market. Last year, Baidu's "Radish Run" announced the start of demonstration operation in Chengdu, involving 10 square kilometers, and * * * set up 20 boarding and alighting points, which are similar to taxis and buses.
Mature autonomous driving technology is widely used, which can effectively improve traffic safety and traffic operation efficiency. According to the statistics of China National Traffic Safety Committee, there were 1 1495 traffic accidents nationwide in 20021year, resulting in 5799 deaths and 80 18 injuries. And automatic driving can put an end to human drivers' inattention, fatigue/drunkenness and other factors, provide multiple redundancy guarantees, and significantly improve safety.
At the same time, based on the landing operation of self-driving vehicles, citizens can choose a variety of efficient and convenient modes of travel, such as Robobus and Robotaxi, to alleviate road congestion.
However, the arrival of autonomous driving technology has also worried many people-will a large number of drivers lose their jobs? In fact, the change of industry means that some people need to make sacrifices. If autonomous driving is really mature, it is very likely, just like the former "coachman" will be eliminated by cars.
However, from the current point of view, this time is still far away. Taking Rapunzel Run as an example, high-level autonomous driving needs to reach a higher level of bicycle intelligence, but bicycle intelligence still needs to be improved by stacking materials at this stage, and it is impossible to completely solve it, so it is still in the pilot stage, and the boarding and alighting points are fixed, which can not achieve the same experience as taxis. Moreover, it needs to be equipped with a security officer, which leads to no essential difference between it and taxis and online cars, but the sense of experience is quite different. Therefore, the profession of "driver" will not be unemployed in a short time.
Write at the end:
Auto-driving technology is still facing many doubts. Last year, Tucki and Tesla had many car accidents due to the assisted driving system, so most consumers were reluctant to hand over the steering wheel that decided their own destiny to AI. In addition, the cost of the whole vehicle was rising due to stacking and hardware pre-embedding, and consumers showed resistance, which is why although the new outlet has arrived, it did not arouse much response.
In short, although this "cake" is very attractive, it is by no means easy to win it. After all, product accessories can be bought, but technology can't be bought, and the improvement of the threshold may also lead to competition in the second half, which may not be as fierce as in the first half.
This article comes from Zhidian Automobile, the author of Easy Car No.,and the copyright belongs to the author. Please contact the author for any form of reprinting. The content only represents the author's point of view and has nothing to do with car change.