Huawei and Baidu confront each other head-on ＂urban smart driving＂
Shangzhan automobile
A few days ago, Dongfeng Motor’s new energy brand launched a pure electric SUV called "New Lantu FREE", which can add 25,000 yuan to the optional Baidu NOA intelligent driving system. The news instantly triggered the industry’s attention to Baidu’s shift from L4 unmanned driving to L2+ high-level intelligent driving competition.
2023 is called "the first year of NOA smart driving in cities", and many institutions are optimistic about the outbreak and popularization of high-level smart driving in the second half of the year. For a long time in the past, the NOA market in the city, which was pushed by only a few car companies such as Tucki, seemed calm. Nowadays, Huawei, Baidu and other powerful Internet giants have sprung up everywhere, and they have successfully bound a number of car companies to realize the mass production of NOA, making the market competition more and more fierce.
Text/Table Guangzhou Daily All-Media Reporter Deng Li
Entering the "L2+" market, Baidu’s "dimensionality reduction" is against Huawei.
The reporter noticed that the "New Lantu FREE", which was launched in mid-August, is the first new car in the mass production of NOA in Baidu City. It is officially called "Baidu Apollo Highway Driving Pro integrated product". Before this, the pace of Huawei’s intelligent driving will be faster. After the release of HUAWEI ADS 2.0 (Huawei’s advanced intelligent driving system), BAIC’s Extreme Fox Alpha S HI version, Changan’s Aouita 11 and Wenjie M5 have landed, and there will be more than ten new cars such as high-end cars cooperating with Chery in the future. According to the information released by Baidu at present, in addition to the blue map of Dongfeng, the planned Jidu car and the extreme cooperation with Geely are still on the road.
In the field of intelligent driving symbolized by "urban NOA", Baidu and Huawei finally have a battle.
On April 16th, Baidu and Huawei held their own smart car business conferences, revealing each other’s progress in NOA and other smart driving technologies. Yifu Chen, an expert on smart driving, pointed out that the smart driving car with Huawei technology is like a catfish, which has inspired the changes and progress of other smart driving systems or solution providers. At the same time, many enterprises are accelerating the shift from L4, which is difficult to make profits, to L2+, which is easier to land, and to the mass production of NOA.
The reporter noticed that in the past two years, not only Baidu and Huawei, but also technology companies such as Tencent and Xiaoma Zhixing have re-recognized the future commercial profit model of intelligent driving. After Baidu’s smart car business was adjusted from L4 route to L2 this year, the new car was released in August, which means that Baidu officially opened a confrontation with Huawei at L2+ smart car track.
The industry believes that behind Baidu’s active "dimensionality reduction" is an important decision to realize the realization of autonomous driving technology. According to CIC’s forecast, the scale of China’s autonomous driving market will increase from 2.3 billion yuan to nearly 400 billion yuan from 2019 to 2025, with a compound annual growth rate of 136%. "By 2026, the market penetration rate of L2+ advanced intelligent driving system vehicles equipped with memory parking, high-speed navigation and urban navigation will exceed 15%, and the industry will usher in an intelligent crossing period. By then, the outbreak of the high-end intelligent driving market will trigger a new round of reshuffle in the automobile industry, and the next three years will become a key window period. " Chu Ruisong, vice president of Baidu Group and general manager of the smart car business unit, said earlier.
Who can grab more "smart driving" cakes?
In terms of development mode and technical route, Baidu and Huawei have a lot in common. Who has a better chance to grab more cooperation orders?
Song Yachen, a technical engineer of a joint venture car company, said that the fierce competition in NOA is forced by the general situation, and Baidu is the right choice to weaken L4 R&D and concentrate on L2+. However, he pointed out, "Huawei’s autonomous driving team is reported to have reached the scale of three or four thousand people, and the manufacturers that cooperate with it are more obedient, which makes Huawei’s dominance high, and the progress of promoting the profitability of NOA mass production in cities will be faster. Relatively speaking, Baidu’s autonomous driving business team started late in L2+, and it is difficult to catch up with Huawei in the short term. "
In addition, the big cake of L2+ high-level intelligent driving is welcoming many players, which makes it difficult for Baidu to snatch more car enterprise partners from Huawei.
The reporter noticed that in addition to Baidu and Huawei, a number of intelligent driving suppliers have accelerated the implementation of the "integration of transportation and parking" scheme for urban NOA functions, and mainstream manufacturers have also planned to implement NOA functions in related cities this year. For example, Tucki plans to open the city NGP to about 50 cities in the second half of 2023 and land in 200 cities in 2024; Huawei plans to cover the city NCA to 45 cities in the fourth quarter of 2023, and both Ideal and Weilai are pushing the city NOA internal test. In addition, Internet giants such as Tencent and Ali also have relevant technical reserves, and are involved in the research and development of car companies’ smart driving through different cooperation modes.
Yifu Chen pointed out that in the future, Huawei and Baidu will compete for market share in smart driving, and the focus is whether they can win a bigger "sinking market". According to the data of the Passenger Car Association, at present, about 100,000-200,000 RMB models account for more than 50% of the passenger car market in China. Insiders pointed out that in order to enter the mid-range vehicle market at this price, enterprises need to cross the three mountains of "cost", "mass production" and "full stack self-research" Judging from the current cooperation lineup, both Huawei and Baidu have chosen the style of "from high-end to mid-range models". According to incomplete statistics, there are 26 intelligent driving suppliers in China who have launched the product scheme of "integrated parking and transportation".
L2+ High-level Wisdom Driving Policy Dongfeng
The reporter noticed that L2+ high-level intelligent assistant system, which has more landing conditions than L4-level automatic driving, is welcoming the policy of landing. Since the beginning of the year, policies related to autonomous driving and consultation documents have been continuously released. On July 26th, the "Guide to the Construction of National Vehicle Networking Industry Standard System (Intelligent Networked Vehicle) (2023 Edition)" was officially released, which clarified that from the first stage to 2025, the system will form an intelligent networked vehicle standard system that can support the general functions of combined driving assistance and automatic driving. Earlier, Xin Guobin, Vice Minister of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said at the the State Council policy briefing held on June 21 that the pilot of intelligent networked vehicle access and road traffic would be launched, and the demonstration application of "vehicle-Lu Yun integration" at the city level would be organized to support the commercial application of conditional autopilot (L3 level) and higher-level autopilot functions.
He also revealed that in 2022, the new car penetration rate of L2-class passenger cars with combined assisted driving function reached 34.5%.
Zhang Kai, Chairman of Millimeter Zhixing, judged that from 2023, intelligent driving products will enter a period of rapid growth, and there will be three trends: "First, urban navigation-assisted driving products will focus on mass production and delivery in 2023. Second, the front-loading market with integrated parking and transportation ushered in the peak of mass production. Third, the commercialization of automatic distribution of terminal logistics forms a closed loop. "
Institutional prediction: L2+ advanced intelligence drives to accelerate industrial reshuffle
Relevant institutions continue to be optimistic about L2+ autopilot landing. Huaxi Securities released a research report saying that 2023 is the first year of NOA, and it is expected that NOA will be released on a large scale in the second half of this year, catalyzing the smart driving market. The analysis also pointed out that the scene of L2+ high-order intelligent driving with "parking and parking" is gradually switching from high-speed to cities, and the autonomous driving industry will gradually transition from configuration competition to demand-led.
It is reported that NOA, a city that many car companies are striving to build, is known as the last piece of the puzzle of "integrating parking and parking (integrating intelligent auxiliary systems such as memory parking, high-speed navigation and urban navigation)".
The report of CITIC Securities also pointed out that the continuous introduction of industrial support policies and the batch landing of NOA functions in cities will enhance the usable range and user experience of intelligent driving functions, promote consumers to choose advanced NOA configurations, and promote the high-computing intelligent driving domain controller supporting NOA functions in cities, and improve the market space of lidar. It is recommended to pay attention to the core suppliers of the smart driving industry.