Looking back on the whole of 2023, what are the hottest concepts in the new energy vehicle market?
There may be many answers, but smart driving is undoubtedly one of them.
Huawei ADS 20 real-level intelligent driving assistance system measurements** continue to appear on the Internet, and the importance of intelligent driving has been increased again.
At the same time, consumers' doubts about intelligent driving have never stopped, and even Tesla, which has always regarded intelligent driving as a selling point, has been investigated by the U.S. Department of Justice.
Faced with this situation, how should consumers respond?
1. Manufacturers squeeze their heads, consumers don't believe it?
Compared with traditional fuel vehicles, new energy vehicles are a new thing, and new things naturally bring new experiences.
Manufacturers say that new energy vehicles have low cost, strong entertainment functions, strong power output, unlimited licenses, unlimited numbers, etc., and consumers do not doubt it. But when it comes to intelligent driving, consumers are skeptical.
On October 23, 2023, Weibo CEO Wang Gaofei (between coming and going) said that he drove the ideal L9 on the highway and had the problem of lane keeping not centered, and the reason for this error was that he touched the camera during the previous maintenance.
In the case of turning on the high-speed NOA, the intelligent driving system actually controls the vehicle, but it thinks that the "middle line of the lane" is different from the actual situation, which is easy to cause friction with other lane vehicles.
This happens when you touch the camera during repairs, which also sounds scary.
The intelligent driving system, which claims to be able to recognize different special-shaped objects, was actually broken by this simple physical error.
In fact, there are not many such cases, Tesla has identified pedestrians standing on the side of the road as "immovable objects" and caused accidents in the United States, and a certain owner of Xpeng has also been judged by the system to be "asleep" because of "small eyes".
How complex is people's daily car environment, behind these laughable cases, the sensing system is immature, and the algorithm cannot meet the needs.
In this case, the coping strategy of manufacturers is often to optimize, the OTA of the OTA, and the upgrade of the hardware.
But that still doesn't reassure users.
The reason is very simple, as long as it is a system, there is a possibility of deviation, which you cannot fully optimize, and the manufacturer cannot guarantee that its intelligent system will never go down.
What manufacturers do is just to reduce the chance of identification errors as much as possible, but what consumers want is that they can't have mistakes once, because life is not a mobile phone system that can be refreshed infinitely, and it doesn't have a second time.
In fact, not only consumers, but also regulators in various countries do not believe the claims of manufacturers.
Recently, the U.S. Department of Justice issued another subpoena to Tesla, requiring Tesla to provide documents related to autonomous driving and FSD functions.
2. Why do you have to engage in intelligent driving?
Objectively speaking, intelligent assisted driving is not a patent for new energy vehicles, and functions such as adaptive cruise, active braking, and lane departure warning have been widely available before the popularization of new energy vehicles.
There are many reasons why new energy vehicle manufacturers are keen to engage in intelligent driving.
First of all, in the early stages of development, they need to use some seemingly advanced features to create gimmicks to attract consumers, Tesla is a typical example, and the new domestic car-making forces have also followed suit, starting with intelligent driving as the main selling point.
Before the death of Lin Wenqin, the owner of NIO and the founder of Meiyihao, in a car accident in August 2022, new car-making forces such as NIO directly called their intelligent driving assistance systems "autonomous driving".
Secondly, intelligent driving can indeed bring users some new experiences, making human drivers easier and more comfortable, which is the overall trend of human development.
Before the advent of high-end intelligent driving assistance, situations such as "ghost probe" and "door opening kill" were difficult for human drivers to avoid, but intelligent driving systems can.
In addition, many intelligent driving systems can actively and safely change lanes and actively and accurately select ramps on highways, which can also bring some real convenience. It is still more useful for those users who often travel by high speeds.
Third, the so-called intelligent driving is a relatively virtual concept, virtual, which means that it is difficult to quantify, which leaves some ambiguous space, as mentioned by manufacturer A. L299, the same as the l2 that vendor B said99, on the surface, it looks the same, but the actual use of wisdom is very different, which is also an important reason why manufacturers are rushing in the field of intelligent driving.
After the propaganda of manufacturers, intelligent driving has been labeled as "advanced" to a certain extent, without which it does not seem to be worthy of being called a mainstream car, whether it is active choice or passive follow, manufacturers must keep up.
3. What stage has intelligent driving developed?
It should be said that manufacturers have been making progress in the field of intelligent driving, the technology is more mature, and the system bugs are becoming fewer and fewer.
Judging from the actual measurement of different brands of intelligent driving systems currently circulating on the Internet**, Huawei ADS 20 high-end intelligent driving assistance system is the one with a relatively high level, which can basically realize intelligent driving under the unmanned control of rural roads.
Of course, other manufacturers are also trying to follow suit!
Although consumers are skeptical, many brands of intelligent driving assistance systems have successfully avoided ghost probes, door opening and other "famous scenes" have also continued to appear, and on the whole, consumers' acceptance of intelligent driving is improving.
Authoritative data shows that the current penetration rate of L2 and above intelligent driving has exceeded 40%.
At present, new energy vehicle manufacturers are competing for the coverage of urban navigation assistance, Huawei claims to cover all cities in the country by the end of the year, and the number of cities opened by manufacturers such as Ideal, Xpeng, and NIO is also increasing.
4. How will intelligent driving develop in the future?
As far as the current situation is concerned, intelligent driving, like the new energy in the automotive industry, is an unlikely reversal trend.
Consumers' doubts about intelligent driving will increase rapidly in a certain period of time, and then with the progress of manufacturers in radar, cameras, intelligent driving chips, computing platforms, etc., the doubts will slowly decrease, and eventually the intelligent driving system will become a part of new energy vehicles, which is widely accepted by consumers, just like the adaptive cruise and reversing images in the past.
*The M7 has received more than 60,000 orders for more than a month after its launch, proving that the easy-to-use intelligent driving system is still relatively appealing.
In this process, those manufacturers with weak technical strength will be eliminated, and the leading power of the industry will be concentrated in large manufacturers, which is also in line with the general law of industry development.
Of course, it is unlikely that the system will be completely avoided, just as the combustion engine cannot completely solve those mechanical failures, it will gradually disappear from the public eye, or it will be slowly accepted by consumers.
5. How should consumers choose?
It's inevitable that consumers will be influenced by industry trends!
The gradual popularization of intelligent driving systems is also inevitable.
So I think what we should do as consumers is to look at this trend rationally according to our own needs.
At present, consumers are mainly concerned about the intelligent driving system in two ways: one is whether it is safe or not, and the other is whether it is expensive?
Expensive, certainly expensive at the moment!
For example, the recently popular question M7, which is equipped with Huawei ADS 2The intelligent driving version of the 0 system is more than 20,000 yuan more expensive than the regular version.
As for safety and unsafety, in fact, many manufacturers' intelligent driving functions are optional and adjustable, such as some commonly used L2 level assistance functions can be used with confidence, they can improve safety performance to a certain extent, reduce the probability of accidents.
And if you want to use some advanced assistance functions, you need to be ready to take over the vehicle at any time when you are driving with intelligent driving.
But it is very, very noteworthy that at this stage, we cannot rely too much on the intelligent driving system, and no matter how high-level assistance is, it is also assistance.
Closing Remarks:
Intelligent driving is only one of the many functions of the car, it has many problems, and it will be gradually improved, and consumers can choose according to their own needs. Think about it, when the cruise control function first appeared, wasn't it also a controversy? But you see, are there still more people who resist cruise control now?
Intelligent driver assistance systems