The low-key autonomous driving industry is no longer quiet at the end of the year. Recently, many car brands, including BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Changan, have successively obtained the test license. The industry seems to have set off a dark war, judging from the successive announcements of "good news" by companies, it is likely that more car companies will announce that they have obtained the license in the future.
The prosperity and competition of the market means that the landing of L3 autonomous driving is getting closer and closer.
While some car companies are the first to get the "admission ticket", there are also individual brands that have taken the lead in using L4 technology. For example, L4 autonomous driving technology such as Apollo is a typical example.
Autonomous driving is getting closer and closer, and L4 algorithms are the first to land.
Not long ago, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and other four departments and commissions jointly issued the "Notice on Carrying out the Pilot Work of Intelligent Networked Vehicle Access and Road Access", proposing to carry out access pilots for L3 and L4 intelligent networked vehicle products with mass production conditions and equipped with automatic driving functions, and for the first time to clarify the determination of accident liability.
The L3 autonomous driving test is being launched shortly after the release of the document, and its purpose is to support the revision of laws and regulations, standards, and the construction of road traffic safety management systems, which is equivalent to an exploration. The issuance of the L3 autonomous driving test license also means that the pilot work is progressing steadily, and autonomous driving is getting closer and closer to our daily life.
However, a careful look at the list shows that in fact, not all of them have obtained licenses in the first echelon of autonomous driving. Perhaps this is also due to the consideration of building a standard system related to autonomous driving, which needs to include more diverse players of various levels and levels.
In the current autonomous driving track, only Huawei, Xpeng, and Jiyue are generally recognized as leading players, and there are not many of them. Huawei and Xpeng may be easy to understand. In recent years, Huawei has focused on its role as a leading provider of intelligent driving solutions, and has empowered automotive brands such as AVATR and Wenjie. Xpeng has always taken intelligence as its core label, and its investment in autonomous driving is also well-known.
As a newcomer in the intelligent automotive industry, why can Jiyue also be among the heads?
Compared with other new car-making forces, Jiyue's background is slightly special, not only in terms of manufacturing, but also in terms of intelligence, it has been fully empowered by AI capabilities, so it has a deep accumulation of autonomous driving from the beginning.
According to the latest analysis report of global autonomous driving technology companies released by Guidehouse Insights, an internationally renowned research organization, it has been on the list for three consecutive years, and is in the first echelon of the world with leading autonomous driving technology companies such as Waymo and Mobileye.
The layout of patents can also reflect the status of the industry. At the end of 2022, China Intellectual Property Magazine** published a ranking of global invention patent enterprises in the field of autonomous driving, with 3,477 applications, followed by Toyota, Bosch, Honda, Hyundai and other companies.
In terms of autonomous driving, the latest data from the world's largest driverless commercial operating company shows that the autonomous driving travel service platform Radish Express has provided more than 4 million services.
The underlying algorithm of Jiyue 01's intelligent driving is backed by Apollo's L4 level technology, of course, it is not directly "copy and paste", but it is said that there is a technical accumulation of L4 algorithms, which is naturally more advanced than L2 level assisted driving or L3 level automatic driving.
With the official launch and delivery of the Jiyue 01 in October this year, the accumulation of autonomous driving has also gradually emerged on the Jiyue 01.
10 years of L4 technology empowerment, Jiyue 01 came from behind.
In the current smart car market, even the leading car companies have implemented functions in autonomous driving between L2 and L3, and the industry is still in a stage of rapid development.
What consumers need is the ability of car companies to get their hands on and test the real ability to improve the user's experience in the process of daily driving, which is also the core value of the enterprise and the competitiveness to win sales.
This is especially true when considering the huge leap from L2 to L3 – L3 is often seen as a watershed moment between assisted driving and autonomous driving due to the shift of driving dominance from the driver to the autonomous driving system. Nowadays, with the clear division of accident responsibility, the development of the industry is naturally accelerated. However, getting the test license is only the beginning of the exploration of car companies to L3 autonomous driving, and for the industry, now is the time to really test the technology.
In terms of technical routes, the autonomous driving industry is mainly divided into two parts. One path is to directly carry out the research and development of advanced autonomous driving technology at Level 4 or above, and the other way, which is widely adopted by almost all OEMs, is to gradually transition from Level 2 assisted driving to Level 4. Comparatively speaking, the former is much more difficult and much more expensive, and is an option for a very small number of extreme players.
Jiyue's first model, Jiyue 01, has just entered the market, and its outstanding highlight is the L4 autonomous driving technology behind APOLLO, which is directly related to the high-level intelligent driving ability of Jiyue 01. Apollo chose to directly develop L4 and has accumulated technology for ten years so far.
After years of watering, it is now blossoming and bearing fruit. Standing on the shoulders of Apollo, Jiyue does not need to take the gradual development route of L2, L3 and then L4. With the blessing, these technologies have a considerable degree of maturity and can be directly mass-produced.
The high-end intelligent driving of Jiyue 01 adopts the "pure vision" technology solution of BEV+Transformer, and only 2 brands in the world have achieved the mass production of pure vision technology, except for Jiyue and Tesla. In the near future, Jiyue 01 will also update the OCC occupancy network technology through OTA upgrades to further improve the upper limit of pure visual intelligent driving.
At present, Jiyue 01 is the only smart car in the world that relies on a "pure vision" perception algorithm to run through China's complex urban roads with "0 takeover". And the brands that can land high-end intelligent driving on complex urban roads are also rare in the world.
As a new player in the intelligent automotive industry, Jiyue 01 has achieved the catch-up. With the continuous upgrading of the competition in the autonomous driving industry in the future, with the empowerment of Apollo, Jiyue's leading position will be more significant. It is conceivable that these capabilities will gradually be seen by everyone in the new models and new functions of Jiyue.