Author| Zhang Xiangwei
Edit| Dexin
The introduction of the L3 standard speeds up, and the fight in the smart driving world will be even more tragic.
Recently, a number of people close to Huawei told HiEV that Yu Chengdong is pushing for the introduction of the L3 standard for autonomous driving as soon as possible, and many technical experts from Huawei have been deeply involved in the formulation of the L3 standard.
Earlier this month, Yu Chengdong exposed when he participated in the Avita event in Chongqing, "The national regulations and standards of L3 may be released soon, and it is said that it will be around June."
Later, Xin Guobin, vice minister of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said, "Support for conditional automatic driving, which refers to the commercial application of L3 and higher-level automatic driving functions."
According to people familiar with the matter, there are three reasons why Huawei actively participates in the formulation and introduction of L3 standards:
- Addressing lack of regulations;
- Promote the establishment of national-level evaluation standards for smart driving;
- Huawei ADS will enter the market according to the product combination of L2+ and L3.
With the entry of Huawei, which has been investing heavily in the field of intelligent driving, other participants in the track will be driven to move forward rapidly, and will also face greater pressure. A battle of advanced intelligent driving has begun.
1. The L3 standard is approaching, and Huawei is the first to enter
Behind the formulation of an industry standard, there are often high-level and large-scale enterprises leading the way. The field of intelligent driving is no exception. This time it is Huawei.
A person close to Huawei told HiEV that in the formulation of the L3 standard, Huawei is the representative of the enterprise, and other departments include the China Automotive Technology and Research Center and the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers.
"Huawei has been deeply involved in the formulation of standards, such as how to define L3, what is the product form, what entry barriers should it have, how to test and verify, how to exempt human-computer interaction, from technology implementation to mass production, and then to Potential policy subsidies, etc., have been deeply involved.” The person said.
There are several considerations for Huawei's participation in promoting the introduction of the L3 standard.
1. Solve problems at the level of policies and regulations.
A person familiar with Huawei told HiEV that L3 and L2.9 are essentially a lack of regulations. "Huawei will promote the establishment of L3 standards as soon as possible. At present, there are several obstacles to the popularization of intelligent driving, including technology, policies and regulations. The introduction of L3 standards will solve the problem of policies and regulations."
2. Establish technical evaluation standards for the industry.
In recent years, the pace of the intelligent driving industry has been accelerating. From high-speed NOA to the city NOA that everyone is now competing with, from high-power chips, laser radar, and 4D millimeter-wave radar, the industry's topics continue. This is another important reason why Yu Chengdong wants to promote the introduction of the L3 standard as soon as possible.
"Now it's a pot of porridge. Everyone says they are good, but consumers don't have a quantitative or objective national evaluation standard. After having a standard, it is equivalent to drawing a line, which will reflect the difference in technology. The company said You can do urban NOA by yourself, but can you satisfy L3?” said the above-mentioned person familiar with Huawei.
In his view, from the perspective of consumers, there is not much difference in function between L2.9 and L3, and the functions are the same. Some specific indicators, such as the success rate of changing lanes, are 95% and 96%, and it is difficult for consumers to perceive the gap.
From a technical point of view, the difference between L2.9 and L3 is reflected in the safety redundancy design level of the system solution.
In addition to certain requirements for system safety redundancy, L3 also has some special requirements for functional experience in emergency situations. For example, if the system breaks down on the road, can it automatically pull over and stop? This actually has certain requirements for technology. of.
3. Launch Huawei ADS L3 products.
When Huawei ADS 2.0 was released, it was defined as L2.999... After the release of the new L3 standard, the solution portfolio will be updated.
HiEV learned that Huawei's ADS products will adopt a combination of L2+ and L3 solutions. In addition to Huawei, other companies involved in standard formulation will also launch similar products.
There are many signs that a battle in the field of intelligent driving belonging to L3 is starting. And this battle had been rehearsed before, but it just didn't go well.
2. The implementation of L3 regulations is difficult in the definition of responsibilities
From about 2018, passenger car companies began to lay out L3.
That year, Xiaopeng Motors, a new domestic car maker, proposed to build L3 products, and signed a tripartite strategic cooperation agreement with Desay SV and Nvidia, planning to build a L3 autonomous driving domain controller, which was later based on Nvidia Xavier The IPU03.
Later, the L3 domain control products cooperated by the three parties were indeed mass-produced and put on the car, but the mass-produced automatic driving system was not at the L3 level.
Almost at the same time as the development of passenger cars, in the commercial vehicle market, some technology companies incubated by heavy-duty truck companies have emerged, setting the goal of building L3 self-driving heavy-duty trucks, and finally rolled off the pre-installed products in small batches.
Car companies that are marching towards L3 will probably start from 2021. Due to policies and regulations, coupled with the fact that the technical capabilities themselves have not met expectations, they will seldom mention L3.
On the contrary, more concepts such as L2+ and L2.9 began to appear.
A former L4 company technical director with years of experience in autonomous driving mass production told HiEV that some companies have good technical strength, but they can only be called L2.9 because there is no basis for them. Fishing in troubled waters, rubbing the concept.
Even, in the eyes of some executives doing L4 autonomous driving, there is no L3, only L2 and L5.
Until 2022, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the "Automotive Driving Automation Classification", which divides driving automation into levels 0 to 5.
Among them, the definition of level 3 as conditional autonomous driving is that "the driving automation system continues to perform all dynamic driving tasks within its design operating conditions, and the dynamic driving task takeover user can perform dynamic driving task takeover in an appropriate manner."
A clear definition is simple, but L3 regulations still face difficulties in implementing them. The difficulty lies in the definition of responsibilities and the formulation of detailed implementation rules.
Guo Jishun, vice president of Joyson Electronics, believes that the core of L3 lies in whether policies and regulations can be adopted to clarify the rights and responsibilities of man-machine co-driving.
In his opinion, L3 according to the SAE definition is not very cost-effective. On the one hand, the user interaction experience is not very good. It is necessary to further optimize the human-computer interaction logic and the safety of human-vehicle co-driving. In the last corner case, the algorithm needs continuous iteration and data accumulation.
On the other hand, in order to do a good job in system design, more redundancy needs to be done. For example, in order to get rid of eyes, hands, and feet, it is necessary to make steering redundancy, brake redundancy, power supply redundancy, and ECU redundancy. communication redundancy, etc. "L3 seems to be an advancement in technology and functionality, but it is not easy for manufacturers to implement due to increased costs."
Of course, the reason why L3 cannot land is that its interactive mode of man-machine co-driving is not allowed by the current regulations.
Because, for the sake of generality and universality, the definitions of legal provisions are often vague. Under the vague terms, it is very complicated to divide the rights and responsibilities of each accident or each function.
Shenzhen's legislation in the field of autonomous driving shows the complexity of this work.
In 2022, Shenzhen promulgated the "Shenzhen Special Economic Zone Intelligent Connected Vehicle Management Regulations", which will be implemented on August 1.
From the actual effect, this regulation supports L4 more.
Hao Jingshan, deputy director of the Shenzhen Autonomous Driving Intelligent Research Center, revealed to HiEV, "Shenzhen's legislation has been officially implemented in name, but the implementation details will not be made until the end of this year. Shenzhen has spent a lot of legislative resources. The main point is that Determination of traffic responsibility. The current practice in Shenzhen is to let Pingshan District go first, and Pingshan issued the license plate to Baidu Apollo and AutoX for unmanned commercial passenger transportation, but it is not L3.”
Because many accidents on the road are often not the responsibility of one party.
At the L2 stage, the responsibility is clear, and the responsibility for an accident is borne by the driver. The L3 stage involves the driver's accountability to the car company.
Hao Jingshan gave an example, if a pedestrian runs a red light, the L3 vehicle handles the pedestrian and seriously injures him. In such a case, even if the pedestrian violated the road traffic safety regulations first, he will not be fully responsible. At this time, the pedestrian may be sentenced to 70% of the responsibility, and the driver did not take the responsibility to protect the pedestrian at the intersection, so the driver is sentenced to 30% of the responsibility. The problem is, how can the driver hold the car company accountable for 30% of the responsibility in the L3 state? How to make up for the psychological harm caused to the driver? These are difficult to sort out.
Next, after the promulgation of L3 regulations at the national level, it is likely to be an equally cumbersome task in terms of formulating implementation rules.
3. The green light of the L3 standard will make the fight in the world of smart driving more tragic
The introduction of the L3 standard draws a line more and starts the starting gun for high-end intelligent driving.
Many industry insiders told HiEV that the smart driving industry will definitely benefit from the introduction of policies and regulations, but the industry may not be fully prepared. From the perspective of the industry, the technology is still unable to reach the level of large-scale use of autonomous driving, and now it is basically based on L2+.
Hao Jingshan said that the current level of L2 intelligence is not enough. Intelligence refers to knowing how to deal with any problems encountered. The emergence of intelligence that needs to be brought by a large model can be realized on the car.
He said, "It is possible that after a year, some domestic companies will forcibly launch L3. Because if the electronic fence is used, the location can be carefully selected. But there are very few scenarios available for L3."
Yu Kai, the founder and CEO of Horizon, even proposed, "Ten years later, even L3 autonomous driving will not be truly realized."
However, for the field of intelligent driving, the introduction of L3 is a good signal after all.
The technical director of the above-mentioned L4 company revealed to HiEV, “Just half a month ago, some local governments organized a symposium on the L3 standard. Tao is a positive push.”
Usually, after the promulgation of a regulation, it is necessary to solicit a draft for comments, and then issue a supporting implementation plan. Ministries and commissions such as industry and information technology, public security and other departments will formulate implementation rules. At the provincial level, there are still detailed rules and regulations. The entire process may take six months to a year.
Now, with the support of Huawei and others, the implementation of L3 standard regulations may be accelerated.
In the future, you will not only see urban NOA blooming in various cities, but you may also see the emergence of L3 self-driving cars certified by national standards in the near future. A more detailed standard will classify the capabilities of each company into a more precise level, and it is a signal that the fight against intelligent driving will be more tragic.
For Huawei, this is a conspiracy to implement high-end intelligent driving. The results achieved by Huawei's large investment in autonomous driving are expected to be officially recognized early, and other companies will also have to act quickly to meet the L3 standard.
The introduction of the L3 standard is equivalent to refining the points of 95 points for academic gods and 90 points for excellent students among equally excellent students. The gods of learning compete for the first L3 mass-produced car in China in the true sense, which may become the next highlight of the smart driving track.