On October 27, 2022, at the new car launch conference of "Monthly Exploration·More Worth Exploring" of Baidu's auto brand - Jidu, the first automotive robot ROBO-01 lunar exploration limited edition was officially released, priced at 399,800 yuan.
According to the plan, Jidu will be equipped with PPA (Point to Point Autopilot), and it will have high-level intelligent driving capabilities of high-speed, urban, and parking "three-domain integration" when it is mass-produced and delivered. The supplier of this system is Baidu Apollo, a subsidiary of Baidu.
During this year's Shanghai Auto Show, Baidu Apollo officially released a new and upgraded cockpit map product matrix and "Baidu Intelligent Driving Open White Paper" . Focus.
Among them, Apollo Highway Driving Pro, an integrated product of Apollo driving and parking, and Apollo Parking, an autonomous parking product, have been upgraded. The solution is upgraded to a single TDA4-VH platform. Compared with TDA4-VM, it can achieve single chip and high cost performance.
The Apollo City Driving Max is equipped with two Nvidia Orin X chips (the mainstream solution in the market), which is a purely visual perception solution in urban scenes (lidar backup).
In fact, Baidu Apollo's first NOA + travel and parking integrated mass production solution was launched in Weimar W6. Baidu, one of the shareholders of WM Motor, originally hoped to use WM Motor to accelerate the mass production of L3 and L4 autonomous driving solutions.
However, with Weimar Motors in trouble (the actual market delivery from January to May this year was only 1,006 vehicles), the mass production of Baidu Apollo's smart driving business has been unable to be realized by this car company.
Aian is another car company customer of Baidu's Apollo smart driving business. In 2021, GAC Aion V Plus will implement the Baidu AVP autonomous parking function (currently only releases over-the-horizon memory parking), and plans to mass-produce it in a variety of models.
However, as GAC Capital has invested in Heduo Technology for several consecutive rounds in the past few years, the latter has also successively obtained multiple fixed-points, involving GAC’s passenger car brand Trumpchi and new energy brand Aion, with functions covering expressways, urban roads and parking lots. car etc.
Interestingly, Ni Kai, the founder and CEO of Heduo Technology, once worked at Baidu Deep Learning Research Institute, responsible for the research and development of unmanned vehicles and some high-precision maps. At present, the above-mentioned solutions have been installed on GAC Trumpchi E9, Aian Hyper GT, Trumpchi Yingku and other models.
Another potential big customer is BYD. Previously, it was reported that Baidu Apollo's integrated driving and parking solution has become the supplier of BYD's assisted driving system.
However, thereafter regenerated variables.
At the end of 2021, BYD and Momenta officially announced the establishment of a joint venture company-Shenzhen Dipai Zhixing Technology Co., Ltd., to jointly develop intelligent driving technology research and development. In the past few years, Momenta has successively implemented algorithm solutions such as intelligent driving and high-end parking.
In addition, BYD has also reached a strategic cooperation with Horizon, and the latter's self-developed BEV fusion perception solution with the Journey 5 chip will also be mass-produced in BYD. At the same time, BYD is also developing high-end parking solutions internally, and some teams come from Valeo.
At the same time, Baidu is also facing some new changes in its cooperation with Great Wall. Previously, many models under Great Wall were equipped with the high-end parking function of Baidu Apollo.
Just at the beginning of this year, as the core intelligent driving system supplier of the Great Wall series, Momo Zhixing officially announced a strategic cooperation with Yingchi Technology. In the future, the two parties will rely on their advantages in their respective fields to jointly create a cost-effective and highly competitive single-journey 3-chip integrated travel and parking solution.
Interestingly, Gu Weihao, the CEO of Momo Zhixing, was the former general manager of Baidu's smart car business unit. He worked for Baidu for 16 years and was responsible for many businesses such as L3 autonomous driving, Internet of Vehicles, and maps. In 2019, Baidu's autonomous driving business underwent organizational restructuring, and Gu Weihao chose to leave.
At present, Baidu Apollo's car intelligent solution has been mass-produced on 134 models of 31 car brands, with a total of more than 7 million vehicles installed. Among them, most of them are still traditional smart cabin services such as voice and map navigation.
In terms of smart driving business, in addition to the above-mentioned cooperative brands with variables, the new Lantu FREE will be launched in the second half of this year, equipped with Baidu Apollo intelligent assisted driving system.
Chu Ruisong, vice president of Baidu Group and general manager of the smart car business unit, previously said that the smart car race has already started, and the next three years will be a critical window.
In the second half of 2021, Baidu Apollo officially established a smart car business unit to help car companies achieve large-scale mass production and serve consumers, and is committed to becoming a new, professional and local Tier1 required for the intelligent transformation of China's auto industry.
However, just last month, Guo Yang, chief product architect of Baidu IDG (Intelligent Driving Business Group), was revealed to have resigned. Previously, he was mainly responsible for the autonomous parking (AVP) and integrated parking (ANP 2.0) of the Baidu Apollo platform. Report to Chu Ruisong on the launch of smart driving products.
During his tenure, the cooperation cases led by Guo Yang included Weimar, Great Wall, GAC and many other car companies; with the adjustment of the personnel structure, there is also great uncertainty in the sustainability of the follow-up business.
At present, the high-end intelligent driving track in the domestic market has entered a critical cycle. Judging from the data from January to May this year, 4.1443 million passenger cars with standard auxiliary driving (L0-L2+) were delivered, and the loading rate has exceeded 50%, reaching 56.22%. Among them, the proportion of L2/L2+ has exceeded 60%. %.
From the perspective of the price range distribution of standard models, the proportion of NOA deliveries above 350,000 yuan accounted for more than 70%, and the proportion of NOA deliveries above 300,000 yuan exceeded 90%. This means that models below 300,000 yuan, which account for 80% of the overall market sales, are the key to the scale of NOA.
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. The data shows that from January to April, the configuration rate of new energy vehicle NOA (including optional equipment, including hardware standard configuration + software paid subscription) has exceeded 20%, reaching 20.16%.
At present, the top 15 brands in terms of delivery volume have all entered the NOA boarding cycle. In the second half of the year, more new vehicles equipped with NOA will be launched and delivered. It is estimated that the potential (including optional configuration) NOA equipped vehicles will exceed 1.5 million vehicles throughout the year.
This means that whoever can get the fixed-point of the first-line brand's hot new model will get the ticket to continue to compete on the smart driving track in the next two to three years.