Although in the field of fuel vehicles, the sales of joint venture brands still account for half of the domestic automobile market; However, in the field of new energy vehicles, domestic forces, old and new, have joined forces to get rid of their rivals for several positions. In addition to building a strong product force in the industrial chain of battery, motor and electronic control core three-electric system, at present, domestic new energy vehicles also leave the joint venture brand behind in the intelligent level. This is a "smart+new energy" corner overtaking.
0 1 the strong rise of China brand in the era of "intelligent new energy"
The automobile industry shows the gradual substitution of new energy vehicles for traditional fuel vehicles, and more macroscopically, the world is experiencing a revolution from fossil fuels to clean energy. In fact, the energy revolution is often intertwined with the industrial revolution, which promotes each other and promotes the continuous evolution and transformation of the industry. The use of coal makes it possible for steam locomotives to write the history of the first industrial revolution; The application of petroleum gave birth to the engine, which can provide power for cars, ships, trains and planes, and the modern industrial system was established; Clean energy is the booster of new energy vehicles. Electric energy, hydrogen energy and wind energy are increasingly becoming important energy supplies, and a more low-carbon world has become everyone's yearning. In the past Tesla Investor Day, Elon Musk, a technology madman, painted a sustainable and clean energy world for everyone. The new energy in the automobile industry has also led to changes in the upstream, downstream and supply chain of automobiles. It is not only as simple as the introduction of new energy automobile products, but also the foundation of new energy talents, intelligent core technologies and parts industry chain (three power systems) built around products. This solid foundation will support the long-term development of new energy vehicles in China in the next at least 30 to 50 years. In fact, China has long supported the development of pure electric vehicles, hybrid vehicles and other new energy vehicles. What we are most familiar with is the subsidy policy for new energy vehicles, including various tax reduction policies, which makes the development of new energy vehicles like a spring breeze. After several years of chaotic development and "cheating" storm, China's new energy automobile industry is gradually on the right track and in a period of rapid development. Domestic new energy car companies have crushed each other and opened up a new world. No matter from product diversity, advanced technology or absolute market share, it has achieved a leading position in the world's largest automobile market. Standing at this time node in 2023, when our country's automobile industry has won a staged victory in the battle of "new energy", where will the battlefield be transferred next? The answer is "intelligence". Nowadays, new forms of power, such as electric power and hybrid power, are not the main factors that attract them to buy cars. More demand comes from the brand-new experience brought by "intelligence". As a means of transportation, cars can no longer meet the needs of TAs. What TAs need is a "smart terminal" that can support travel. Therefore, for domestic car companies, while adhering to the direction of "new energy", the next focus is "intelligence", which is also the field that Tesla, the most concerned car company in the world, is deeply cultivating.
New energy is the foundation and intelligence is the core.
Automobile intelligence includes intelligent driving, intelligent cockpit, intelligent chassis, intelligent electronic and electrical architecture, and even intelligent manufacturing. Why is "intelligence" so important that it can be called the core of the future development of new energy vehicles?
It can be seen from three aspects: First, a large number of enterprises are doing product technology development around automobile intelligence, which is a well-deserved "window". New forces of car-making and new brands of traditional car companies have entered the market one after another, with intelligence as the main competition point, intelligent driving and intelligent cockpit as the user experience differentiation, and launched a "bayonet battle". Represented by "Wei", their leaders all come from the background of Internet or high-tech companies. Inspired by Tesla, their big brother, they started the smart car business in China, and brought Internet gameplay to the automobile industry, focusing on user experience and product experience. Intelligence is the main reason why these enterprises are favored by many consumers at present. In terms of traditional car companies, SAIC Zhizhi, Dongfeng Blue Drive, Great Wall Salon, Chang 'an Aoweita, Geely Extreme Krypton, Beiqi Extreme Fox, etc. have also risen in succession, making efforts in the direction of new energy and intelligence. In fact, these car companies have already entered new energy sources, but why should they set up new brands? The fundamental reason is to build a next-generation car different from the previous generation. The core of the next generation car is "intelligence". At the same time, more and more technology companies, such as Apple, Huawei, Xiaomi, Baidu, DJI and so on. , have entered the automotive industry, hoping to subvert the traditional attributes of cars as a means of transportation. They invest a lot of money, resources and talents, not only to build a traditional car with pure electric or hybrid power, but also to turn the car into a "mobile intelligent terminal". In addition to building cars, many enterprises have been deeply involved in the automotive intelligent industrial chain and become emerging suppliers, helping the entire automotive industry in China to transform into intelligence. The "intelligence" of cars is the trend, irreversible, and the intelligent imagination is endless. The supply side is so prosperous, so what about the demand side? In fact, the future is also expected. This leads to the second reason why "intelligence" is so important: consumers in China have accepted smart cars far more than those in other countries, and with the smart cars going to sea in China, overseas consumers are more eager for intelligent experience. At present, many functions on smart cars make consumers "hard to take back once they are used", and a set of simple and easy-to-use auxiliary driving functions can greatly reduce driving fatigue and improve safety; Simple and easy-to-use intelligent cockpit system can make driving less boring; A set of simple and easy-to-use car control functions can make the car use worry-free and save trouble ... Intelligentization has brought real experience improvement to the car, and consumers are paying more and more attention to the intelligent configuration and software functions of the car when buying a car. A consumer survey on autonomous driving technology shows that 16% of consumers in the United States think autonomous driving is very important, 16% in Germany and as high as 49% in China. Regarding the extra fees that China consumers are willing to pay for self-driving cars, they are willing to pay an extra $4,600, German consumers are willing to pay an extra $2,900, and American consumers are willing to pay an extra $3,900. These simple figures can actually reflect the great demand of consumers for smart cars. If we analyze the attributes of consumers themselves, we can also prove this survey result: at present, young people in China have become the main consumers, and the growth environment of this group is an iterative period of rapid technological development, including Internet, big data, cloud computing, Internet of Things, 5G, artificial intelligence and so on. These "Internet aborigines" naturally have a high degree of acceptance of technology and automotive intelligence. When Xiaomi announced to build a car, many netizens said it was "the first smart car for young people", and the key words were "young people" and "intelligence". The car is intelligent and the consumption experience is good; If the intelligence is not done well, the user's perception will be very obvious.
In fact, "intelligence" has gradually become the dependence of users and an important reference index for users to choose a certain car. "Intelligentization" has also brought new life to the automobile, an ancient means of transportation. Many models are imaginable, and the software capabilities related to intelligent driving and intelligent cockpit have great imagination in the future. Things like ChatGPT that can subvert internet applications will definitely be born on the carrier of cars in the future. This is the new gameplay, new service, new experience and new business model born by the combination of artificial intelligence technology and automobile. Third, the China government has many policies to support the "intelligence" of automobiles. In addition to the subsidy policy for new energy vehicles, the state is still supporting the development and growth of the automotive intelligent industry, and has introduced a clear smart car development strategy. On the one hand, the state has taken the lead in building a lot of infrastructure, including intelligent transportation facilities, involving communication, high-precision maps and positioning, big data, cloud platforms and so on; On the other hand, the country is also opening more fields to facilitate the testing and operation of smart cars and reserve a core data gold mine for the iterative development of smart cars. Automobile intelligence can be said to have met with "the right time, the right place and the right people", so how to develop next depends on how these related enterprises show their magical powers. Although intelligence is the core of the future, the foundation of new energy is unshakable. Many people will say that intelligence on fuel vehicles is also a path. I think so, but it's not the best path. In the transitional period, it is also necessary to educate consumers based on the intelligence of the stock car market. However, after all, this is not a complete subversion, it just adds some intelligent small functions to the fuel vehicle, which requires more development time and energy. The most important thing is that it may not make a good product experience. Therefore, the best solution is to be "intelligent" on new energy vehicles. From a technical point of view, the intelligence of cars:
From this perspective, new energy vehicles are more suitable for intelligence and will be the biggest winner of intelligence. If new energy is the first half of traditional automobile reform, then intelligence is the second half of traditional automobile reform, and in the second half, new energy and intelligence must be closely combined and promoted at the same time. Based on this, what should automobile manufacturers do? Recently, Geely Automobile released its high-end new energy product series "Geely Galaxy", with the goal of focusing on hybrid and pure electric vehicles, and increasing investment in intelligence, including coming up with a brand-new intelligent driving scheme and intelligent cockpit operating system. Coincidentally, Great Wall Motor, as the representative of China's own brand car enterprises, is about to complete the advanced stage of "intelligent new energy" ecological enterprises. In a recent interview, Wei Jianjun, the helm of Great Wall Motor, said: "New energy is irreversible, and intelligence is irreversible, which also gives us a lot of imagination, because Great Wall has reserved technology and supply chain capabilities. Next, we will take Great Wall Motor as a blueprint to see how traditional cars can do a good job of "intelligent new energy".
Practitioners of "Intelligent New Energy": How did Great Wall Motor accumulate wealth?
(1) lay a new energy foundation
To be a "smart new energy" car company, we must first lay a solid foundation for new energy. When it comes to Great Wall Motor, most consumers' first impression is Haval SUV, because this brand and category really have few competitors in the past many years and are the king of sales. At the level of new energy vehicles, Great Wall Motor's Euler brand models and other brands' hybrid models are also listed late and have not been recognized by the public as Haval SUVs. In fact, as early as 2009, Great Wall Motor began to deploy new energy sources, but it did not take the lead in making efforts at the product level, but at the supply chain level, including incubating a number of supply chain enterprises related to power batteries, hydrogen energy, and three power technologies. The goal is to establish a self-researched, independent and controllable industrial chain moat. Today, this moat is constantly widening. Great Wall Motor is one of the few independent brand car companies with technical reserves of three new energy routes: pure electricity, hybrid and hydrogen energy. In 20 16, Great Wall Motor entered the hydrogen energy industry and established a potential energy company, with an investment of more than 2.5 billion yuan. It also formulated a plan to build a hydrogen energy society in 2050, and took the lead in launching the whole industrial chain layout of hydrogen energy "production, storage, transportation, processing and application". 20 18 Great Wall Motor spun off Honeycomb Energy and became a specialized power battery company. At present, it has a team of more than 2,600 people, and its development speed is amazing. In 20021year, the number of honeycomb energy patents reached 878, ranking first in the TOP20 list of national power battery patents. In 20021and the first half of 2022, the installed capacity of honeycomb energy power battery ranked tenth in the world. Also in 20 18, Great Wall Motor established Honeycomb Yichuang, focusing on the research and development of automotive power system, new energy transmission system and intelligent steering system. Now Great Wall Motor's latest lemon hybrid DHT transmission assembly is produced by Honeycomb Yichuang. Great Wall Motor also has a world-class transmission laboratory with an investment of 220 million yuan and an area of 2 100 square meter, which is the cradle of independent research and development of hybrid technology by Great Wall Motor. Basically, on the three paths of new energy, the technical foundation of Great Wall Motor has been built very firmly, and the next step is to produce more achievements and explode products.
According to the latest product planning of Great Wall Motor:
In this way, the new energy path of Great Wall Motor brands has been very clear. If the self-research capability of the new energy supply chain accumulated in the past years is an ammunition depot, then the new energy automobile products of various brands are weapons of opportunity. Compared with many new car-making forces, Great Wall Motor has its own first-Mover advantage in building the so-called full-stack self-research capability. The foundation of new energy is built, and the next step is to deal with the more core competition of automobile intelligence. Many people will say that Great Wall Motor, as a traditional car company, has no intelligent genes and no new power to build cars. In fact, in the past few years, Great Wall Motor has made up for the shortcomings of intelligence through various channels, and has now achieved industry leadership in some aspects. Similar to the previous play in the field of new energy, Great Wall Motor has also cultivated a number of intelligent eco-enterprises, covering intelligent related fields such as intelligent driving, intelligent cockpit, electronic and electrical buildings, and wire-controlled chassis.
(2) Fighting in no man's land with intelligent driving.
In the field of intelligent driving, Zhixing is currently the core weapon of Great Wall Motor. Wei Jianjun is also very concerned about the progress of intelligent driving, and often personally experiences the test version of intelligent driving system. At present, domestic car companies have set foot in the field of navigation-assisted driving and have finished the high-speed urban areas. Millie Star has officially announced that it has become the first batch of enterprises in China to land the city-level navigation-assisted driving function. The landing model is Mocha, a sub-brand of Great Wall Motor. In fact, Great Wall Motor began to set foot in the research and development of intelligent driving in 2009, but now it is an independent intelligent driving subsidiary Mimo Zhixing, focusing on this field, which can attract external financing and help it grow rapidly and land its technology. The main research and development systems of Mimo Zhixing include HWA high-speed assisted driving system and NOH navigation assisted driving system. At the same time, it is self-developed on the intelligent driving domain controller, and has the ability to reserve in the fields of algorithm system, data-driven system and artificial intelligence model. In the layout of self-developed intelligent driving technology, Great Wall Motor relies on Mimo Zhixing, covering the research and development of the underlying hardware, middleware and intelligent driving software, and then by designing a series of different configurations of sensing and computing hardware solutions, the intelligent driving system can match a number of vehicles with different brands and prices. In the past 2022, Great Wall Motor * * * launched six new models with intelligent driving function, with user-assisted driving mileage exceeding 25 million kilometers and sales of related models exceeding 200,000. In addition, as the first batch of mass-produced urban navigation-assisted driving systems in China, the city NOH will be the first to be installed on Wei brand DHT-. The further development of intelligent driving is not a matter of function, but the technical strength of function and the flexible response ability to various driving scenarios, which requires a more efficient and faster iterative closed loop, including big data, AI big model, computing center and other core components. This is also the technological "no man's land" that Great Wall Motor is conquering. Relying on the wisdom of the last minute, Great Wall Motor has already owned MANA OASIS, one of the best intelligent centers in the domestic autonomous driving industry. Through continuous training and iteration by feeding massive data, the intelligent driving algorithm system will be continuously improved, the experience will be continuously improved, and the application scenarios will be continuously expanded to prepare for the ultimate unmanned driving. Building intelligent computing centers is also something that auto companies such as Tesla, Geely and Tucki are doing. Recently, ChatGPT exploded, Mimi Zhixing officially upgraded its automatic driving cognitive model (self-monitoring cognitive model of human driving) to "DriveGPT", and used AI model to drive the continuous progress of intelligent driving algorithm. In addition to developing its own eco-enterprise, Great Wall Motor has also invested in the intelligent driving industry chain. For example, it has invested in the self-driving chip star enterprise horizon, and the subsequent horizon chip will be carried on the model of Great Wall Motor.
(3) Evolutionary intelligent cockpit
Great Wall Motor has a self-developed "Coffee Smart" intelligent cockpit system, as well as two ecological enterprises, Dou Xian Intelligent and Jiayu Intelligent, and has relevant technical reserves in intelligent car navigation, intelligent voice, intelligent perception, intelligent multi-terminal car-machine interconnection, and on-board OTA. On the hardware level, Great Wall Motor uses Qualcomm 8 155 chip to build its own intelligent cockpit platform. Compared with the previous generation of mainstream in-vehicle systems, the computing power of CPU is improved by more than 2.5 times, and the image processing power of GPU is improved by more than 3.5 times. With the exclusive AI accelerator with high computing power of machine vision and voice processing, it provides the underlying computing power support for multi-screen integration, multi-mode interaction, AI perception, personalized automatic configuration and other functions. The follow-up should also be on Qualcomm 8295 chip. On the software level, the cockpit operating system GC-OS technology developed by Great Wall Motor has many open capabilities and advantages. The first is the unified interface of APP +HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer), and it also supports UI/UE platformization+brand differentiation. Backward compatibility can also be used for various high-computing platforms, which can adapt to the major brands of Great Wall Motor, and has the characteristics of fast delivery, growth, pluggability, ecological interchange, and software and hardware compatibility. Based on high computing power chips and GC-OS, Great Wall Motor has opened some intelligent cockpit APIs, including automobile, driver, body and chassis related systems. In the second stage, we will iteratively design interfaces with voice, navigation, vision and other capabilities. Through two-stage iteration, the API pool of Great Wall Motor Intelligent Cockpit will cover 25+ function sets. The intelligent cockpit of Great Wall Motor will become an "intelligent and changeable space" for active service, which is also in line with the concept of "mobile intelligent terminal".
(4) Electronic and electrical buildings are born for intelligence.
In 20021year, Great Wall Motor released GEEP 4.0, a brand-new vehicle electronic and electrical architecture for intelligence, including central computing platform, autonomous driving field and intelligent cockpit field. The architecture adopts the concept of SOA (Service Oriented Architecture), opens the standard API interface, supports the integration of functional growth and Che Yun, and integrates functional experience innovation and software platform development to form a growth intelligent architecture that is convenient for development, maintenance, flexible expansion, experience upgrade and innovation benefits. At the same time, based on SOA, Great Wall Motor builds a unified and standardized vehicle software platform at the software level.
Under the support of this architecture, the development of intelligent driving, intelligent cockpit and the experience expansion and upgrade of related systems will be more convenient and efficient. In addition, based on the brand-new electronic and electrical architecture, Great Wall Motor is still developing intelligent drive-by-wire chassis. The chassis connected by wires is a car.
This article comes from the author's space travel guide, and the copyright belongs to the author. Please contact the author for any form of reprint. The content only represents the author's point of view and has nothing to do with the car reform.