SAIC, Great Wall and Geely bet on smart driving tomorrow

In the field of smart driving, new car companies are speeding up horse racing enclosures with bolder and more aggressive strategies, while technology giants such as Baidu and Huawei also rely on rich data resources to make a strong cross-border debut. Under the attack of internal and external attacks, traditional car companies can only catch up head-on in the field of smart driving. In particular, domestic independent car companies have recently launched intelligent driving roadmaps to accelerate the landing of new intelligent models, making a good start for 2021.

Self-research and cooperation two-wheel drive

Through self-research and cooperation to walk on two legs, SAIC is opening a new future in the field of intelligent driving, and the lever to pry the new future is the new technology brand "R-TECH High Energy Intelligence" just released by SAIC R Automobile.

It is understood that the R-TECH high-energy intelligence body is built by R Automobile relying on SAIC's strength and in cooperation with leading enterprises in related fields around the world. The brand took five years, with a total investment of more than 20 billion yuan. At present, the intelligent body has launched a full-stack self-developed smart driving program, PP-CEM drivers, to build a "six-fold integrated perception system". Specifically, through Luminar lidar, PREMIUM 4D imaging radar, vision camera, ultrasonic radar, high-precision map, Huawei 5G V2X six kinds of high-precision perception hardware, R-brand cars can achieve all-weather, all-scene, multi-dimensional, over-the-horizon perception. Behind the fruitful results is the unremitting efforts of its independent R & D team of nearly a thousand people.

At the same time, SAIC has also established close cooperative relations with many head suppliers. In addition to Luminar and Huawei mentioned above, Nvidia, Zaifu, Zebra Zhixing, Microsoft and Tencent Wisdom Travel have also been included in SAIC's moments.

In addition, SAIC has successively invested in smart driving start-ups such as RoboSense, Horizon and Momenta to work together to create a "China solution" for smart driving.

What the partner takes a fancy to is actually the foreseeable scale effect of R car. As Luminar founder and CEO Austin Russell said, SAIC has grown into the largest automaker in China, the world's largest auto market, and continues to develop in the field of smart driving and electrification.

In order to further clarify the development strategy of smart driving, Great Wall Motor is also speeding up its layout in this field. By partnering with Huawei, Qualcomm and investing in companies such as Horizon, Great Wall is building up its technology reserve in smart driving, almost entirely on its own, doing everything except OS and chips.

In December last year, Great Wall officially launched the "331 strategy" of coffee smart driving, which takes three years to achieve the first three firsts in user scale industry, user experience and scene coverage. It is understood that Coffee Smart driver has designed six redundant systems, including perceptual redundancy, controller redundancy, brake redundancy, architecture redundancy, power redundancy and steering redundancy, to ensure safety.

Not only that, in February this year, the intelligent driving company, which was incubated by the intelligent driving department of Great Wall, also completed a 300 million yuan Pre-A round financing, led by Shougang Fund, and participated by Meituan and Hillhouse Capital. According to the plan, Mo Zhixing will be profitable in 2022 and listed on Science and Technology Innovation Board in 2023. In addition, Mo Zhixing also harvested a strong general, the former Baidu intelligent car head Gu Weihao joined Momo Zhihang to serve as CEO.

Also accelerating smart driving is Geely. On March 18, Geely and South Korea SK Holdings announced that they would each invest 30 million yuan to set up a future mobile travel investment fund to identify and help companies with promising prospects in areas such as smart driving and networking. The plan attracts global investors, including European banks and Asian pension funds, which are expected to reach $300m.

Establishing a good cooperative relationship is only the first step. In fact, SK Holdings values Geely's technology accumulation on smart driving chips. As early as 2019, Geely began to lay out the "China Core" strategy. At present, Yijiatong, a supplier of Geely's automotive systems, has formed a chip matrix of four sequences and a number of core products, including: high-performance automotive specification-level digital cockpit chip E-series, full-stack AI voice chip V-series, advanced driving assist chip AD series, micro-control processor M series. According to the plan, the first 7nm specification-level chip designed by core technology, a Geely chip designer, will be released this year. It is understood that the chip called SE1000, is a master control chip for intelligent cockpit.

In this regard, Li Shufu, chairman of Geely Holdings Group, further revealed in an interview that the independently developed central control chip will be assembled in 2023.

Driven by the wave of intelligence, Changan Automobile has not been idle. On the upward road, Changan Automobile uses technology to drive its products, based on the "Ark architecture", and at the same time achieve higher-level evolution in intelligent driving, smart Internet, design concept, driving texture, safety performance and other aspects, in order to achieve leapfrogging. At present, Chang'an has realized the mass production test of L3 self-driving cars. It is expected that Changan Automobile will form a development team of 5000 people in 2025 to build an intelligent open platform for L4 intelligent driving and achieve 100% voice control.

Zhu Huarong, chairman of Changan Automobile, also demonstrated to the outside world a series of automatic parking actions such as vertical, parallel and oblique UNI-K controlled by 18km ultra-long-distance control in the Changan automobile studio on March 1. And said that in the future, Changan Automobile will also in-depth development of APA7.0 and APA8.0, to achieve HZP (home area memory parking) and AVP (remote valet parking).

In addition, Dongfeng also joined forces with intelligent driving enterprises such as Yuanrong Qixing, Wenyuan Zhixing, AutoX, momentum Technology, Guoqi Zhilian, as well as many spare parts enterprises and universities to form an "industry-university-research" ecological alliance for intelligent driving, and took the lead in launching the intelligent driving pilot project, with a total investment of 600 million yuan.

At the end of February, the Dongfeng pilot RoboTaxi project was opened to the public on the streets of Wuhan, and a total of 42 RoboTaxi vehicles were launched this time. It is reported that the RoboTaxi is based on the Dongfeng Fengshen E70 electric vehicle, equipped with three lidar, eight embedded cameras, millimeter wave radar, high-precision positioning and high-performance computing platform and other self-driving kits, with advanced perception and AI decision-making system, can deal with complex traffic roads. In addition, the vehicle is also equipped with advanced "5G + Beidou" positioning, dynamic planning and decision-making, and "human-vehicle network cloud" collaborative technology, which can realize vehicle cloud monitoring, remote order issuing, human-vehicle interaction and other functions, and is expected to put in no less than 200 vehicles in two years.

The dispute over the route to the ground, chasing the initial public offering.

As a doer who rises abruptly based on accumulated strength, today, when the technology reserve is getting better and better, the traditional car companies are actually realizing the landing of the route.

Only a month after the launch of the world's first 5G intelligent pure electric SUV-MARVEL R, the SAIC R car family welcomed a new member ES33 on March 18. It is understood that the model is forged from the R-TECH high-energy intelligence body, with 33 high-precision sensing hardware in one, and an extraordinarily luxurious sensor lineup, together with Nvidia's latest mass production application Orin chip, which can improve user driving safety. It is reported that the model will be mass-produced at the global high-end digital plant in Lingang, Shanghai, and will be launched globally in the second half of next year.

It was also learned that Zhiji's medium and large sedan models are also close to mass production. The sensor scheme of the vehicle is composed of 15 cameras, 5 millimeter wave radars, 12 ultrasonic radars, high-precision IMU and high-precision maps. At present, the model uses Nvidia Xavier chip, the future will also include Orin chip, Synchronize compatible lidar overall design. According to the plan, the model will start pre-sale during the Shanghai auto show in April and will be officially launched this year. In addition, the new concept model of Zhiji Automobile * Heatherwick Studio will also be launched globally at the Shanghai Auto Show and is expected to become a mass production product of Zhiji Automobile in the future.

In addition to Zhiji Automobile, the Great Wall WEY Mocha, which is the first to be equipped with the "coffee smart driving" system, will also be seen at the Shanghai auto show. According to the plan, WEY Mocha will achieve further HWP highway pilot this year. Under HWP, Mocha can easily complete intelligent driving in complex road scenarios such as high-speed obstacle avoidance and lane change, multi-vehicle lane change and intelligent dodging, as well as automatic identification of ramps, ramps in and out of ramps, toll stations and other difficult scenarios.

With regard to the landing rhythm of high-level intelligent driving technology, Great Wall proposes to achieve China's first full-vehicle redundancy in 2021, equipped with lidar, L3-level intelligent driving with NOH (high-speed autopilot-assisted driving) capability, and L4-level intelligent driving with the largest number of scenes in China in 2023.

Geely also has two smart models to be unveiled at the Shanghai auto show. One of them is Geely's upcoming mass production car Xingyue L, which is equipped with Texas Instruments' first global super domain controller and a super-sensing system consisting of 24 sensors covering the whole car. Xingyue L can achieve up to 1 km of long-distance unmanned parking. Geely officials also announced that the model will become the world's first L4-class AVP mass-produced fuel vehicle. According to previous revelations, the new Geely Xingyue L is expected to be officially launched in June this year. The first polar krypton model will also be ordered at the Shanghai Auto Show and will be delivered in the fourth quarter of this year. Geely also said that polar krypton will introduce at least one new product to the market in each of the next five years.

Among the independent car companies, there is another car that can't wait for the Shanghai auto show to go on sale, that is, the Changan UNI-K. As the second flagship work of the gravity series, coupled with the APA6.0 remote parking function, it is worth looking forward to whether it can continue the monthly sales of more than 10,000 UNI-T.

In addition to passenger cars, Dongfeng also frequently reports good news in the field of commercial vehicles.

According to reports, the Dongfeng L4 class 5G remote control unmanned mass production minibus has been upgraded to Sharing-VAN 2.0 and is currently carrying out commercial landing operation. The main technical highlight of the product is that the hub motor technology is installed on the four wheels, not only direct power output, but also in-situ steering and differential steering. After installing the hub motor chassis, the chassis can be separated and different cabins can be installed on it, which can be "changed" into intelligent driving minibuses, intelligent driving express vehicles, intelligent driving sales vehicles, intelligent driving killing vehicles and other forms according to customer needs. In addition, Dongfeng will deliver mass production L3 heavy trucks at the end of the year, which can be upgraded to L4 through OTA in the future.

Compared with the "bold words" of some new forces, the development plans of traditional car companies are obviously more low-key and pragmatic. In addition, in terms of industrial chain coordination, quality management, cost control, intelligent driving data and so on, traditional car companies obviously have incomparable advantages over new players, all of which help to accelerate the commercial landing of technology. and this is the ultimate goal of all intelligent driving players.

I believe that in the future, with the gradual release of technology dividends, independent car companies will usher in a "harvest period." In this dream-making era, we wait and see whose dream will finally come true.