Kunpeng Project
Produced by |Visitor travel.
Author |Liao Hongjie.
Edit |Feng Yu.
American Editor |Qianqian.
Audit |Ode.
Autonomous driving is coming faster than you think.
At the end of 2023, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued a document stating that it will issue a license for pilot road tests for autonomous driving models with mass production conditions, which means L3 level(Conditional autonomous driving).and L4 level(Highly automated driving).The countdown to the legal launch of autonomous driving has begun.
Immediately, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, BAIC, SAIC, Changan, Dongfeng, Cialis and other car companies or their brands have shown their L3 autonomous driving test licenses.
Almost at the same time, car brands that had rarely been promoted even for assisted driving in the past are now shouting that they have reached L2Level 9 level, all kinds of fancy small ** are also spread all over the Internet.
From high-precision maps to lidars, in just one year, the autonomous driving route scheme has undergone an almost subversive transformation.
On November 17, 2023, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Public Security, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, and the Ministry of Communications jointly issued a document "to decide to carry out the pilot work of intelligent networked vehicle access and road access." ”
The document points out that on the basis of the road test and demonstration application of intelligent networked vehicles, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and other four departments will select intelligent networked vehicle products equipped with autonomous driving functions to carry out access pilot work. For automotive products that have obtained access qualifications, L3 and L4 road traffic pilots can be carried out in limited areas.
Figure The official WeChat of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology***
This also means that Level 3 autonomous driving, which was once considered "far away", has entered the countdown stage.
However, the arrival of autonomous driving this time is not a one-size-fits-all "full liberalization", nor is it who has the ability to hit the road first, but it is a bit of "rain and dew" - car companies that did not have much publicity in the past on autonomous driving have now obtained the qualification for access, but on the contrary, car companies with autonomous driving technology strength that are unanimously optimistic about the market are unusually "silent".
On December 14, 2023, BMW took the lead in speaking out, saying that BMW's vehicles equipped with L3 functions officially obtained a high-speed autonomous driving test license in Shanghai.
On December 16, Mercedes-Benz and Beiqi Jihu became the first batch of car companies to obtain the Beijing L3 highway road test license in the "Beijing Intelligent Connected Vehicle Policy Pilot Zone Conditional Autonomous Driving Function Vehicle Road Test Management Rules (Trial)" document.
Subsequently, SAIC Motor announced on December 19 that its vehicles equipped with L3 functions have officially obtained a high-speed autonomous driving test license in Shanghai, and said that Zhiji is expected to become the first batch of models to enter the L3 access pilot.
Changan Automobile has successfully obtained 17 L3 road test licenses for high-speed roads on November 17, becoming the earliest and most high-speed L3 test license enterprises in a single batch. As of December 21, 17 of Changan Automobile's L3 vehicles have passed 34 days of road testing.
On December 29, Sailis emphasized that the AITO M9 built by Sailis and Huawei will obtain the L3 test license in November 2023, and claims to be the only car company that has obtained the L3 test license in Chongqing and Shenzhen at the same time.
From a marketing point of view, BAIC Jihu and SAIC Zhiji are emphasizing the "first batch of pilots", Changan said that "the earliest" and "the most single", and Cialis "the first and only to obtain the twin-city test" ......These car companies with L3 test licenses seem to be emphasizing that they have obtained "early, fast and enough" to show that they are not absent in the field of autonomous driving and the attention of the competent authorities.
For the new energy vehicle market of volume **, volume technology, volume materials, and volume ** chain, obtaining the L3 level test license is undoubtedly an excellent publicity point.
When these car companies showed the "best in the industry" of L3 license plates, BYD seemed to be a little overwhelmed, and hurriedly announced that it had obtained the L3 test license for the high-speed section in Shenzhen in July 2023, and emphasized that it was the first car company to get the L3 test license in the country.
At this point, the marketing behavior of car companies showing L3 test licenses has also come to an end.
If you take a closer look at these car companies or brands that have obtained L3 test licenses, you will find that it is not Huawei, Xpeng and other companies that are recognized as superior in autonomous driving technology that are the first to show their access qualifications.
On the contrary, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, SAIC, and Changan, which have always been considered to be relatively backward in intelligence, were "arranged" early. Xpeng and Jiyue (a joint Geely car brand) that have been leading their industry in autonomous driving technology do not seem to mention the issue of obtaining L3 access licenses.
Regarding the issuance of L3 autonomous driving licenses, a relevant person from Xpeng Motors told Tanke Travel that Xpeng G9 has obtained the first L4 autonomous driving test license in Guangzhou as early as October 31, 2022, and has become the first production car on sale in the industry to obtain the qualification of autonomous driving road test within China's roads without changing the hardware.
Subsequently, in April 2023, Xpeng G9 officially obtained the passenger operation test license of Guangzhou intelligent networked vehicles, and the test scope has also covered all general test roads in Guangzhou.
The above-mentioned relevant people said that in terms of technical capabilities, Xiaopeng Motors already has an L4 Robotaxi license, and the L3 license plate is not unusual. In terms of commercialization, L3 testing needs to be carried out in a limited area, and the key to L3 lies in the environmental definition of the supporting road section and the regulations and insurance, but the relevant definitions, regulations and insurance are not yet clear.
Figure Weibo).
A person related to Jiyue Automobile told Tanke Travel that "in the L3 test list, except for a few brands that are the head camp of autonomous driving technology like Jiyue, other brands are not the head." This also shows that it doesn't matter if you can be on the test list and whether the technology is ahead or not. To a greater extent, it is to do "pilots" and go towards the goal of establishing a system. Jiyue did not participate in this test work, which was considered by Jiyue from its own perspective and other aspects, and had nothing to do with technology. ”
He said, "Jiyue's high-end intelligent driving is empowered by Apollo autonomous driving technology. Apollo has the world's leading L4 technology, with 10 years of technology accumulation, more than 70 million kilometers of L4 operation test mileage, and more than 2 million commercial orders for robotaxis robots. ”
In addition, Tanke Travel also noted that in March 2023, the analysis report of global autonomous driving technology companies released by the research agency Guidehouse Insights showed that they are in the first echelon of the world with world-class leading autonomous driving technology companies such as Waymo and Mobileye. And it has been a leader in the autonomous driving industry for three consecutive years.
It is worth mentioning that the first model launched by Geely, Jiyue 01, is not only equipped with a visual perception + image algorithm（bev+transformer）The Apollo "pure vision" technology solution also canceled the lidar, becoming the second autonomous driving solution in the world after Tesla to mass-produce pure vision technology.
Figure Jiyue 01 press conference site).
From high-precision maps to lidars, in just 2023, the route scheme of autonomous driving has undergone an almost subversive transformation.
At the 1024 Science and Technology Day, Xpeng Motors launched a "pure vision" solution after the no-picture mode. In January 2024, the new Xpeng X9 launched the autonomous driving scheme of XNGP (all-scene intelligent driving) + Xpilot (high-level assisted driving) as promised. The arrival of Xpeng X9 has broken the distinction between Xpeng in the G6 and G9 models between intelligent driving and non-intelligent driving, and it also means that the era of intelligent driving has arrived when all Xpeng models are equipped with intelligent driving.
Figure: Xpeng Motors WeChat***
From the official landing of XNGP in April 2023 to the end of December, Xpeng's XNGP has covered 243 cities across the country, far exceeding the expected goal proposed at the Xpeng G6 launch conference at the end of June 2023: covering 50 cities in the second half of 2023 and 200 cities in 2024.
The early arrival of the legal landing of autonomous driving is obviously inseparable from the acceleration of technological innovation and product iteration. This is not only a great opportunity for the development of new energy vehicle brands, but also a possibility for Chinese cars to go global. The most worrying situation of technological progress is that it has finally fallen from "looking down" and "looking down on" to "not catching up" and "too late".
Wang Chuanfu, chairman of BYD, once bluntly said at the financial report exchange meeting at the beginning of 2023, "Unmanned driving is nonsense, making a false head, it's all a fool, it is an emperor's new clothes." There was an uproar as soon as the remarks came out, and this sentence also put BYD and Huawei, which focuses on intelligent and assisted driving, on the opposite side.
And Wang Chuanfu's concern about autonomous driving is that if there are millions of car accidents every year, if there is an accident on automatic driving, who will be responsible?In response to the various car accident scenes of millions of years every year, the simulation learning workload of the machine is also a problem.
Huawei's Yu Chengdong responded to Wang Chuanfu's "autonomous driving is" remarks at the M5 press conference in April, "There are two reasons why autonomous driving is, either because I don't understand the industry, or because I deliberately said so. As a result, BYD has also been labeled as "intelligent backward".
A year ago, there was indeed a lot of controversy about "autonomous driving is", one was the leader of new energy vehicles, and the other was an ICT giant of hard-core technology.
But looking back now, in the past 2023, BYD and Huawei have ushered in a highlight moment.
BYD added the assisted driving camp to the subsequent Yangwang and Denza brand models. What's more critical is that BYD has obtained the L3 license plate that these big car companies are proud of as early as half a year ago.
Of course, on the other side of the argument, Huawei's ADS 20 automatic driving did not disappoint, from the September M7 press conference shouted "the whole country can be opened", to the December M9 press conference, but also added a "the more open, the better it opens".
Huawei's autonomous driving introduces an AI model to hand over the "workload problem" that Wang Chuanfu is worried about, and continuously identifies, learns, simulates, and drills the vehicle to improve the efficiency of real-time road conditions and obstacle recognition outside the vehicle, thereby increasing the accuracy of the vehicle's commands.
At the Zhijie S7 press conference at the end of November, Huawei's Yu Chengdong said that it was connected to the ADS2 of the Pangu AI model0 has the ability to calculate and continue to evolve. As of November 2023, Huawei can provide ADS 20 provides learning and training computing power up to 28e flops, which can learn to drive 12 million+ kilometers per day, and the training model is updated every 5 days. With the implementation of Huawei's intelligent driving products, the scale of computing power will continue to increase.
For the learning and training advantages of this large model, the most direct way can be reflected in AEB(Emergency Braking).The active safety "brake" is on.
At Huawei's M9 press conference, Yu Chengdong showed a set of data showing that the M9's automatic emergency braking for stationary vehicles or pedestrians can achieve 90 km/h in September, and further increased to 120kmh in December. This means that the M9 can recognize obstacles at a maximum speed of 120 kilometers per hour and respond quickly to a stop, which can also effectively alleviate Wang Chuanfu's workload worries about the simulated car accident scene.
Figure: The scene of the M9 press conference).
Since the development of autonomous driving technology, senior players have long been more than domestic car companies.
A Tesla staff member told Explorer that the reason why Tesla's FSD (self-driving system) is difficult to land in China is that the complex road environment is not a real obstacle, and it is easy to solve it by running more. A problem that cannot be ignored is that Tesla FSD has a leading advantage in autonomous driving, and if Tesla FSD is allowed to land in China as soon as possible, the development space of domestic autonomous driving may be seriously squeezed out.
When domestic companies can gain a firm foothold in autonomous driving technology, Tesla's FSD will be put in the competition, perhaps in this way to promote the long-term and healthy development of the industry.
From fuel vehicles to new energy, from electrification to intelligence, it is an inevitable trend in the development of the industry. Autonomous driving is the best embodiment of intelligent technology.
With Huawei, Xpeng + Didi, Xiaomi, and car companies that have obtained L3 autonomous driving have completed the assembly of autonomous driving, 2024 will definitely usher in a year of competition among all parties.
Who can ride the dust, who will overturn and fall behind, who will overtake in corners, and who is still talking on paper, whether it is Li Kui or Li Ghost, will also be revealed one by one in 2024.
The title picture in the article comes from: Camera.com, based on the VRF protocol.