On January 11, Baidu officially announced the build of the car.
Baidu said that it will formally form a smart car company to enter the automotive industry as a vehicle manufacturer. Geely Holding Group will become a strategic partner of the new company.
As soon as the news came out, it attracted the attention of the automobile circle, the technology circle, and the investment circle, and became a hot market.
01
"Building a car", a strategic "big adjustment" for Baidu's autonomous driving
From an industry perspective, there are three main implementation routes for the realization of autonomous driving. One is the route of traditional auto manufacturers, the second is the Tesla route, and the third is the high-tech route of Baidu and Google Waymo. The first route is led by traditional car manufacturers. Due to profit reasons, the promoters of this route have always been unable to complete their own "revolution" as much as possible. At most, they can achieve "but no fault"; the first is led by Tesla. The two routes emphasize "gradual" development. Although various sensors are installed in the car, and autonomous driving technology is also regarded as the core competitiveness, it does not excessively promote autonomous driving technology; mainly Baidu and Google Waymo In the third route, the “autonomous driving” technology is held high from the beginning, hoping to use technology to complete the “reform” of transportation.
After years of development and testing in the market, people have found that the "Tesla route" is currently the most recognized by the market. According to the 2020 full-year delivery data released by Tesla not long ago, it has delivered a total of 499,550 electric vehicles in 2020, an increase of 36% from 367,500 in 2019. In China, "Tesla" manufacturers such as Weilai and Xiaopeng have also developed rapidly.
Prior to announcing "car-making", Baidu and Baidu had been following the "technology development" route, focusing on making friends with the supply chain and automakers. According to the "Apollo Intelligent New Transportation White Paper" released by Baidu in 2020, as of the end of 2019, Baidu Apollo has 177 ecological partners, including almost all the world's mainstream automakers, chip companies, sensor companies, transportation integrators, and travel companies. Etc., covering the complete industrial chain from hardware to software.
Let's take a look at the core information disclosed by Baidu in this official announcement:
1. The newly formed Baidu Automobile Company will face the passenger car market, allowing users to purchase more extreme smart electric vehicles.
2. The new company is dominated by Baidu, but is independent of the parent company system and maintains independent operations.
3. Geely is a partner of Baidu Automobile Company, but it does not occupy a dominant position. It is similar to the "OEM" role, but the cooperation between the two parties is much deeper than the "OEM" model;
4. Baidu Motors' products will be equipped with core technology products such as Baidu Artificial Intelligence, Apollo Autonomous Driving, Xiaodu Vehicles, Baidu Maps, etc., and become Baidu AI's "best practices".
In other words, starting from January 11, Baidu officially entered the "complete vehicle manufacturing" and will sell products to C-end users. This decision means that Baidu will no longer adhere to the "science and technology" route that has been in operation for many years, and will instead move on to a new route. It also means that Baidu will compete head-on with automakers in the vehicle manufacturing and sales market. Baidu abandons "neutrality" and shifts to production and sales, which will be a new challenge for the industry.
"Building cars" is actually Baidu's second choice of autonomous driving routes, and it is also a major adjustment of Baidu's "car building" strategy. This adjustment will also change the relationship between Baidu and traditional automakers and the supply chain. Baidu, which enters vehicle manufacturing, will truly realize "Apollo and the car are integrated into one", and then achieve faster and better evolution.
02
Baidu "builds a car", a far-reaching decision
It is said that Baidu's decision to build a car is a far-reaching decision because it not only has a profound impact on Baidu itself, but also on the industry.
As we all know, Baidu is the first Internet company to enter the field of autonomous vehicles. As early as 2015, Baidu CEO Robin Li stated that Baidu has begun to study smart cars and is cooperating with automakers. In 2017, Baidu officially launched Apollo, a smart car platform.
More than five years of development has enabled Baidu to accumulate many advantages in driverless and intelligent transportation. According to the "Apollo Intelligent New Transportation White Paper" released by Baidu in 2020, Baidu has many advantages in driverless and intelligent transportation. : First, Baidu is the world's leading artificial intelligence platform, with many leading AI businesses such as Flying Paddle, Baidu Brain, Baidu Smart Cloud, and Xiaodu Assistant; second, Baidu is a leading autonomous driving technology company. According to data, as of the end of 2019, Baidu had more than 1,800 global patent applications for autonomous driving, ranking first in China. The test mileage in the United States is 103,300 miles and the MPI is 18,050, ranking first in the world. Obtained the only highest-level T4 license in China, and 120 manned test licenses, with a test mileage of more than 3 million kilometers; the test mileage in Beijing is 893,900 kilometers, in the test road, area, service scale, test license and test mileage Both rank first in the country; third, Apollo is the world's largest open platform for autonomous driving. Apollo has formed three open platforms for autonomous driving, vehicle-road collaboration, and intelligent vehicle linkage. As of the end of 2019, it has 177 ecological partners, including almost all major car manufacturers, chip companies, sensor companies, transportation integrators, and travel Enterprises, etc., cover the complete industrial chain from hardware to software, and have 36,000 global developers; fourth, Baidu is the only company in the world with closed-loop technology for vehicle and road transportation. In terms of autonomous driving, Apollo has overcome ten core technologies such as operating systems, computing platforms, and perception control, and has achieved autonomous driving on complex urban roads and highways. In terms of vehicle-road coordination, it can support the wide-area viewing angle, redundant perception and beyond-horizon perception requirements of L0-L5 autonomous vehicles. In terms of smart car connection, Xiaodu's car OS has four product forms: pre-production car loader, CarLife mobile phone screen, quasi-front car loader, and smart rearview mirror; unified maps, voice, vision, data, and ecology in the terminal , Account number, payment and other functions; fifth, Baidu is China’s largest comprehensive Internet service company with information and knowledge as its core. Data shows that the number of Baidu Maps intelligent voice assistant users has exceeded 250 million, covering 1.1 billion terminals such as mobile phones, car navigation, and rearview mirrors.
Obviously, Baidu + has a number of advantages in autonomous driving and intelligent transportation, with the world's leading pure electric architecture-Geely Haohan SEA intelligent evolution experience architecture. The cooperation between the two will inevitably break the current status of the autonomous driving market .
Baidu said that it should "allow users to buy more extreme smart electric vehicles." The more extreme here, that may be more extreme technology, it may also be more extreme price, or even the addition or multiplication of technology and price. Regardless of the type, once it can surpass the current products on the market in certain aspects, Baidu Motors' products will be extremely competitive. The autonomous driving market promoted by Baidu may usher in a new round of reshuffle.
The entry of Baidu Automobile Company will also stimulate industry competitors to accelerate technological iteration and strive for a leading edge. The intervention of new technologies + the stimulation of capital + the addition of competitive products will further promote the development of smart cars, which is conducive to the construction of smart car ecology.
It is foreseeable that after Baidu, more and more technology companies will join the ranks of "car-making", and they will further influence the development trend of unmanned driving.
03
Behind Baidu's entry into the "car building", a four-round intelligent revolution is taking place
On June 8, 2010, the iPhone 4 was born. Its appearance has changed people's perception of mobile phones. Mobile phones are no longer just communication tools. They have become productivity tools that integrate entertainment and leisure, communication, and Internet access.
The birth of iPhone 4 also officially brought people into the era of smart phones and mobile Internet.
The success of iPhone 4 is inseparable from Apple's exploration and accumulation of the original iPhone, iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, iPhone, and iPhone 3GS.
After mobile phones become smarter, more and more people are beginning to turn the goal of “intelligence” to larger car products with a larger market.
In the current smart car market, just like the eve of the birth of the iphone 4, Tesla, Weilai, Xiaopeng, etc. have already released many simple and intelligent products, but no truly revolutionary products have appeared.
Although Tesla, NIO and other manufacturers have released only simple and intelligent cars, the car innovations triggered by these products have opened up the sexy corner of the future driverless cars to people, and thus triggered people’s interest in future cars. Imagination.
On January 9th, Li Bin, the founder of Weilai, released its first electric car ET7 at the NIO Day2020 in Chengdu. Let’s take a look at this highly anticipated futures product. Through it, we may be able to discover why people are full of expectations for the intelligentization of cars.
According to public information from Weilai, the ET7 is equipped with a solid-state battery pack of 70,100,150 kWh, with a maximum battery life of more than 1,000km. In addition, ET7 is also equipped with the Aquila super-sensing system developed by Wei, which has 33 high-precision sensors, including 11 8-megapixel high-definition cameras and 1 Lidar. In terms of power, the ET7 still uses a high-performance dual-motor mode, with a maximum power of 480 kWh, and acceleration from zero to 100 kilometers in only 3.9 seconds.
Just looking at the data seems nothing special. Let's compare the battery life and computing power of ET7 with that of ordinary smartphones. These are two very important capabilities for mobile phones and smart cars. Taking computing power as an example, it is understood that the Aquila super-sensing system on the Weilai E7 produces 8GB of image data per second. And processing these data is the Weilai supercomputing platform ADAM, which uses 4 NVIDIA DRIVE Orin chips, with AI computing power up to 1016T. So, what is the computing power of a typical smartphone? It is understood that the AI computing power of a general mobile phone is about 10T.
In terms of battery life, a smart car's power is about 100 degrees, which is about 2000 times that of a mobile phone.
A simple comparison of computing power and battery life allows us to see some of the differences between mobile phones and cars, but this is only a little bit different. Back to smart phones and car products themselves, one is a "toy" in the hand and the other is a "tool" for movement. In the use of smart phones, people have explored quite a lot of applications and obtained numerous results. For example, smart phones have changed the way we live, work and play. But as far as smart cars are concerned, people's research on him has just begun. Smart cars and unmanned driving are still new things to people and have endless imagination.
People's expectations for smart cars and driverless driving are their expectations for a better life in the future. People want to use smart cars as their "mobile palace", and they have the ability to travel the world. It is not only a transportation tool for people, but also a "smart castle" for people to study, work, and live, and even a multifunctional physical device that can go to the sky and the sea...
Make the car intelligent, drive it to evolve, and make it an important tool to help us achieve more beautiful lives, just like today's smart phones.
I think this may be the expectation of most smart car users for this four-round revolution.
And this user’s expectation of technologically transforming cars will also create a much larger market than smart phones.
Baidu is now entering the game, it is just time.