From traditional fuel vehicles to autonomous driving, a new round of competition among multinational car companies in the Chinese market is gradually kicking off...
The "new battlefield" of multinational car companies
I don’t know if you have noticed that recently, many multinational car companies have suddenly appeared in Baidu’s self-driving “circle of friendsâ€, such as Daimler, PSA, Volvo, and Volkswagen. These multinational giants that once seemed unattainable are now They all hugged Baidu's "thighs". If you add BMW, Hyundai, Honda, Ford, Jaguar Land Rover that have cooperated before, according to incomplete statistics, the number of mainstream multinational car companies that Baidu Apollo has cooperated with has reached nearly ten. China's self-driving players have "long faces"!
However, the reason behind this phenomenon is also worth pondering: Why do these multinational car companies all "look" on Baidu?
In-depth analysis of the reasons is nothing more than two points: first, China's autonomous driving market has broad prospects, which is basically recognized. At present, in the traditional automobile market, China's overall production and sales have ranked first in the world for nine consecutive years, and it is a veritable automobile power. On an average level, if the number of cars per thousand people is calculated as 400 in the future, it is expected that the peak number of cars in my country will reach 600 million. Such a huge market size will undoubtedly provide a basic market size for the future self-driving car industry.
Moreover, at the policy level, China also strongly supports the development of autonomous vehicles. According to Gasgoo, in the past two years, my country has successively issued a number of guiding documents such as the Work Plan for the Innovation and Development of the Internet of Vehicles, the Roadmap for the Technology Development of Intelligent and Connected Vehicles, and the Strategy for Innovation and Development of Intelligent Vehicles. development escort. Especially this year, many cities in China have loosened policies for companies to conduct self-driving tests on public roads, allowing self-driving vehicles to be tested on the road, which not only shows China's firm determination to develop self-driving cars, but more importantly, greatly accelerates the development of self-driving cars. The process of commercialization of autonomous driving technology in China.
In addition, China is far ahead in terms of consumer acceptance of autonomous driving. According to a previous survey by the world-renowned management consulting firm McKinsey, 49% of Chinese consumers believe that fully automated driving is very important, compared with only 16% of consumers in Germany and the United States who believe that fully automated driving is "very important". Because of this, McKinsey believes that China is likely to become the world's largest autonomous driving market in the future. It is estimated that by 2030, the revenue of new car sales and travel services related to autonomous driving will exceed 500 billion US dollars.
Second, mass production of autonomous driving in China must be fully localized. As we all know, the traffic environment in China is more complicated than that in many foreign countries. Not only are there many people and vehicles, but also various public road users such as pedestrians, electric vehicles, bicycles, motorcycles, etc., and they do not obey traffic rules. There are many rules, and there are even magical existences such as Beijing Xizhimen Overpass, Chongqing Huangjuewan Overpass, and Shanghai Xinzhuang Overpass. If developers do not have an in-depth and accurate understanding of China's traffic environment, and the development of autonomous vehicles is not closely integrated with China's actual driving scenarios, even if they are successfully developed, they may be "unacceptable". Therefore, localization is necessary.
Gu Junli, vice president of autonomous driving research and development at Xiaopeng Motors, has also said before that in Western countries, most people drive by rules. In this case, there are corresponding rules to define "safety" for autonomous vehicles. However, in many Asian countries, the population density is high, and the vehicle interacts frequently with other public road users. In this case, if the algorithm and automatic driving model based on the traffic environment training of Western countries continue to be used, there is no accumulation of actual driving scene data in China. , many automatic driving functions will not be able to adapt to the actual driving conditions, traffic density and driving habits of Chinese users in China. Therefore, Gu Junli believes that the internationalization of autonomous driving is a false proposition, and localization is an inevitable trend. Although technology has no boundaries, China's autonomous driving can only be solved by the Chinese in the end.
Moreover, whether autonomous driving can be truly implemented in a country, in addition to the perfect cooperation between various technologies, the most important thing is the need for localization verification. In addition, the high-precision map, which is indispensable for autonomous driving, must also be formulated in depth with the actual road conditions in China because it needs to have functions such as scenario analysis, path planning, decision-making, and high-precision vehicle positioning. From this point of view, if multinational car companies want to seize the opportunity of autonomous driving in China and gain a firm foothold in the field of autonomous driving in China, they must first solve the problem of localization!
How to localize?
At present, there are two main paths for multinational auto companies to develop autonomous driving localization in China, one is independent research and development, and the other is to cooperate with local companies such as Baidu.
Taking Volkswagen as an example, on November 15, Heizmann, member of the management board of Volkswagen Group and President and CEO of Volkswagen Group (China), said at the media communication meeting on the eve of the opening of the 2018 Guangzhou Auto Show that in 2019, Volkswagen plans to cooperate with Partners have jointly invested more than 4 billion euros in China for electric vehicles, connectivity, mobility services, research and development, efficient production processes and new product development, further strengthening localization.
This is not the first time that the Volkswagen Group has announced that it has invested heavily in the domestic market. As early as April this year, Heizmann released a series of new strategic plans for Volkswagen, including direct investment of about 15 billion yuan in electric vehicles, autonomous driving, digitalization and new mobility services in China by 2022. EUR. At present, the 4 billion euros to be invested next year are likely to be part of the previously mentioned 15 billion euros.
As one of the key areas of Volkswagen's domestic layout, autonomous driving has indeed been the top priority of Volkswagen's work in the past two years. It is understood that Volkswagen is currently accelerating the development of autonomous driving technology in China. With Audi as the vanguard, it has successively obtained L4 autonomous vehicle test licenses in Wuxi and Beijing. The Volkswagen brand has also recently joined Baidu Apollo autonomous driving. platform, and announced the launch of the first cooperation project with Baidu around Valet Parking.
The first joint R&D project between Volkswagen and Baidu on autonomous parking will use the e-Golf model equipped with the Apollo system, and use L3 and L4 related autonomous driving technologies to jointly develop and test. The two parties plan to obtain preliminary test results in the next few months, and based on this, further develop a series of user-related functions.
The same is true for Ford, with independent R&D and collaborative R&D. Among them, in terms of independent research and development, Ford relies more on its self-driving car subsidiaries to carry out. In July this year, Ford announced the establishment of a Ford autonomous vehicle subsidiary to integrate the autonomous vehicle business. According to Ford’s announced plans, Ford will invest $4 billion in the new company by 2023, including 10% of the previous investment in Argo AI. billion to accelerate the production and sale of self-driving cars.
Currently, Ford and Argo AI are testing self-driving vehicles in four cities: Miami, Pittsburgh, Detroit and Washington, D.C. In Miami, Ford is working with local businesses to test vehicles that provide food, flowers and other delivery services. According to the plan, Ford will launch the commercialization of autonomous driving services in 2021. To achieve this goal, Ford plans to expand the test to other cities in 2019, which now seems to include China.
On October 31, Ford and Baidu announced that they will launch a two-year L4-level autonomous driving joint test project to develop and test L4-level autonomous vehicles as defined by the International Society of Automated Engineers (SAE). To this end, Ford Nanjing Engineering R&D Center has set up a special team of engineers to complete the modification of related vehicles so that they can be adapted to the Baidu Apollo automatic driving system. It is reported that all vehicles have completed the installation of the automatic driving system and related hardware. It is expected to officially begin testing on public roads by the end of this year.
Sherif Marakby, President and CEO of Ford's Autonomous Vehicles subsidiary, said that the partnership with Baidu enables Ford to seize the opportunity to provide Chinese consumers with innovative travel solutions that enhance the safety and convenience of travel and optimize the overall travel experience.
In fact, this is not just the original intention of Ford to overweight the field of autonomous driving in China, but the desire of all multinational auto companies that have joined hands with Baidu to develop autonomous driving products that meet the needs of Chinese users based on China. At present, China's autonomous driving is developing rapidly. Whether it is core technology, supporting facilities or standards and regulations, it is gradually "breaking the ice", and the market scale of 100 billion is about to explode. Under such circumstances, how should multinational car companies gain a foothold in the field of autonomous driving in China, compete with local companies with natural advantages, and continue the glory of the era of fuel vehicles? It must be localization, localized research and development, localized testing and verification, and even localized production... All in China can create more possibilities.
Of course, in this process, it is also indispensable to cooperate with localized enterprises. Facts have proved that it is almost impossible to develop self-driving cars by relying on a certain company for mass production. This project is too complicated. Mutual cooperation and complementary advantages are the kingly way! But at present, these multinational car companies are indeed doing this. In the face of the international giants who are ready to go, local companies have to cheer up!
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