High-end intelligent driving has once again ushered in the trend.
This week, Mercedes-Benz officially announced that the automatic assisted driving system (DRIVE PILOT) that meets the L3 requirements has been certified for official operation on public roads in California, USA. This is another milestone after the system is approved for operation on highways in Germany and in Nevada, USA in May 2022.
At the beginning of this year, Mercedes-Benz officially stated that it will start the test of L3-level conditional autonomous driving in China, and the expert team of China's local R&D department will deeply participate in the system optimization of DRIVE PILOT for China's road conditions.
In addition, this year, Mercedes-Benz, as one of the representatives of traditional luxury car brands, will take the lead in landing L2+ (NOA/pilot assisted driving) in the Chinese market (new E-class sedan). In addition, it will also deploy lane-level navigation and 3D engine rendering functions.
Last month, the relevant person in charge of the Shanghai Economic and Information Commission stated that it is further deepening its cooperation with Tesla to promote the layout of functional sectors including autonomous driving and robots in Shanghai. The latter is also the first wholly foreign-owned new energy vehicle manufacturing project in China, which landed in Shanghai.
At present, Tesla models sold in China mainly provide car owners with standard L2, paid (32,000 yuan) enhanced automatic assisted driving functions (similar to other brands of high-speed NOA), paid (64,000 yuan) fully automatic Driving ability (mainly provides NOA for urban streets).
Recently, it was reported that Tesla will start the release test of the FSD beta version in Europe and Australia for the first time outside the United States. In the Chinese market, models of many brands, including Xpeng, Ideal, Avita, Zhiji, and Huawei Wenjie, are planning to upgrade from high-speed NOA to urban NOA.
In addition, from this year onwards, Volkswagen Group's luxury models based on the PPE platform, including Audi and Porsche brands, as well as models remodeled on the MEB platform, will be equipped with the L2++ advanced driving assistance function developed by the CARIAD China team.
At the same time, in terms of reducing the cost of high-end intelligent driving, most car companies have begun to seek how to avoid relying on high-precision maps in NOA scenarios (for car companies or users, it is also a big expense), while BEV+Transformer The blessing can solve the problem to a certain extent.
According to the monitoring data of Gaogong Intelligent Automobile Industry Research Institute, from January to April 2023, 239,600 passenger cars with NOA optional configuration will be delivered in the Chinese market, a year-on-year increase of 87.63%. Among them, the proportion of models below 300,000 has exceeded 25%. .
For example, Horizon has cooperated with BYD, and based on the Journey 5 chip + BEV fusion perception solution, it will be mass-produced within this year. At the same time, this architecture is not only suitable for image perception algorithm acceleration, but also supports multi-sensor fusion such as lidar and millimeter wave radar.
This means that the large-scale NOA upgrade of BYD's models and the product strategy of high standard equipment ratio in the past will further drive the domestic NOA industry chain to continue to maintain a high prosperity development trend.
At present, BYD is adjusting the intelligent driving research and development department, and continues to recruit software engineers. According to public information, this set of NOA is named DNP, starting from the high-speed NOA, and it will be launched on BYD Han and Denza N7 in the third quarter of this year.
On the market side, the monitoring data of Gaogong Intelligent Vehicle Research Institute shows that compared with 2022, the number of newly delivered NOA configuration models from January to April this year has increased by about 20%, and the actual standard delivery volume has reached 112,300, a year-on-year increase. 85.31%.
According to the data, based on the statistical caliber from January to April this year, the average price of NOA standard delivery models was 353,300 yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 9.39%. The prices of models equipped with NOA, such as Xingtu Yaoguang, Xiaopeng P5, Nezha S, and Roewe RX5, have dropped to less than 200,000 yuan.
Gaogong Intelligent Automobile Research Institute predicts that with the launch and delivery of more NOA-equipped new vehicles in the second half of the year, especially the addition of first-line brand models, the number of standard NOA pre-installed vehicles will continue to maintain a high growth rate this year. And hardware pre-buried, there is an opportunity to release millions of sets of hardware demand.
This week, Xiaopeng's brand new model, Xiaopeng G6, announced the pre-sale price of 225,000 yuan. It will be officially launched on June 29 and will be delivered to users in July. This medium-sized intelligent pure electric SUV will be equipped with intelligent assisted driving capabilities, including high-speed NOA, as standard.
This will undoubtedly intensify the competition for high-end intelligent driving in the 200,000 yuan range.
In terms of computing platforms, in February this year, the OTA of Ideal L series models ushered in a full push. Ideal AD Pro is the world's first mass-produced intelligent driving system based on the Horizon Journey® 5 chip. This update realizes the standard high-speed NOA function.
In addition to launching vehicles in ideal mass production, Journey 5 has also designated BYD, GAC Aian, SAIC Motor, FAW Hongqi and other car companies for mass production cooperation projects. Partners have successively launched high-end smart driving solutions based on Journey 5.
At present, in terms of the actual landing plan, compared with Nvidia, the horizon gives more options. For example, Journey 5 is an open digital base for high-end smart driving. Ecological partners can create differentiated NOA mass production solutions and emphasize the ultimate NOA experience.
The various computing power schemes based on Journey 3 can fully meet the mass production and assembly requirements of different price and different power models, comprehensively accelerate the large-scale popularization of high-speed NOA, and provide the best efficiency and cost for the rapid implementation of high-speed NOA untie.
Just in March this year, the joint venture between Continental and Horizon, Continental Core Smart Drive, provided the Deep Blue SL03 with an 8-megapixel smart front-view camera all-in-one (equipped with the Horizon Journey®3 chip), and officially started delivery.
At present, the high-end intelligent driving assistance hardware system provided by Shenlan SL03 is priced at 20,000 yuan, and the high-end intelligent driving assistance service is priced at 5,000 yuan. The corresponding functions include NID3.0 pilot intelligent driving assistance, APA7.0 remote valet parking car. Among them, the 515 pure electric high-end intelligent driving version has a minimum price of 209,900 yuan.
In addition, Huawei also officially released the intelligent driving assistance solution system ADS 2.0 this year, which will be launched in the AITO M5 Huawei high-end intelligent driving version, followed by Avita 11 and Jihu Alpha S HI version will also be upgraded. The biggest difference from ADS 1.0 is that 2.0 can achieve high-speed and urban NOA without relying on high-precision maps.
At the same time, the penetration rate of new energy vehicles continues to rise, which also lays the foundation for the subsequent scale-up of NOA vehicles.
According to the monitoring data of Gaogong Intelligent Vehicle Research Institute, in the first quarter of 2023, 1.2296 million new energy passenger vehicles will be delivered in the Chinese market (excluding imports and exports), a year-on-year increase of 23.01%, accounting for 30.01% of the overall new car deliveries, an increase of about 9% year-on-year. percent.
Among them, in terms of intelligence, in the first quarter, 639,100 new energy passenger vehicles with standard L2 (including L2+) assisted driving were delivered, a year-on-year increase of 64.21%, which was significantly higher than the overall market growth rate (19.35%). The loading rate of front-mounted vehicles exceeded 50%, reaching 51.98%.
Gaogong Intelligent Automobile Research Institute predicts that with the launch and delivery of more new vehicles equipped with NOA in the second half of the year, especially the addition of first-line brand mass-market models, the standard equipment installed by NOA has the opportunity to sprint to the 500,000 mark this year. At the same time, Considering the scale of optional (including software OTA payment) models, it is estimated that the potential NOA carrying capacity for the whole year will exceed 1.5 million.