As an important participant in the ecological construction of intelligent networked vehicles in China and a practitioner of industrial ecological innovation, Wanji Technology participated in the meeting with products such as lidar, V2X terminals and intelligent base stations at both ends of the vehicle road, demonstrating the company's independent innovation capability from core hardware to digital intermediate platform, and injecting kinetic energy into the development of intelligent networked vehicles.
2020 is called the "first year" of laser radar mass production, and 202 1 year, laser radar becomes the standard of new intelligent electric vehicles.
Zhai Juan, chairman of Wanji Technology, was interviewed by Auto Sankei.com. He said that the vehicle-mounted lidar technology uses the horizon as a metaphor. At present, technology is offline, and continuous technology accumulation is needed to improve product capabilities to meet the requirements of future car companies. It is estimated that mass production will be realized within five years.
Talking about the future competitiveness of the company, Zhai Jun believes that Wanji lidar has a long history, starting from 20 1 1; ? Secondly, as a listed company, Wanji is more secure in the investment of R&D funds; Finally, Wanji Lidar is profitable, and it is in a state of fighting with war, and its hematopoietic capacity is stronger.
The following is an interview record:
Media: Please briefly introduce your company first.
Zhai Jun: Wanji was founded in 1994, and it has been 27 years since its establishment. Wanji has been deeply involved in the field of intelligent transportation since its inception. On 20 16, Wanji landed on the Growth Enterprise Market of Shenzhen Stock Exchange. After listing, Wanji laid out its strategic plan for the next decade, and it is Wanji's overall goal to become the world's leading integrated intelligent transportation service provider.
Wanji has been engaged in intelligent transportation for 27 years, from the development of weighing, to the layout of laser radar in 20 12, and then to the strategic decision of developing automotive electronics and intelligent network connection business in 20 16, all of which involve the future perception, car networking, internet of everything and the current industrial layout of autonomous driving. Generally speaking, Wanji attached great importance to R&D from the beginning. At present, 50% of the R&D personnel in the team are involved, and Wanji is a research-oriented professional enterprise.
Media: When you first entered this industry, there were relatively few peers, and more and more people entered this industry. How do you judge the industry in this process?
Zhai Jun: The transportation industry is an ancient industry. We are an enterprise that develops with the development of traffic in China. We have different competitors in different periods, such as the popular ETC industry some time ago. Wanji started technical research in this field in 2007. ETC belongs to the market segment of intelligent transportation field. The competition between Wanji's different competitors and ETC friends has also promoted the development of ETC in the intelligent transportation industry.
Wanji Lidar 20 12 was put into research and development, and it also met many competitors who contributed to the industry. Different competitors have promoted the development of lidar in the whole intelligent transportation industry. It has been extended to the intelligent network connection, vehicle-road coordination and automotive electronics industry that we are doing now. Intelligent transportation industry is a huge system industry, so Wanji often joins the construction of intelligent transportation industry together with different competitors in various industries.
Media: Which of these sub-sectors do you think is the most challenging? What are the most promising future prospects?
Zhai Jun: As a comprehensive system, Intelligent Transportation has made different contributions to the development of the whole transportation industry. Wanji started with dynamic weighing, and this technology has been updated and iterated for 27 years. From the traditional weighing station at the beginning to the off-site law enforcement and technical overtaking, Wanji has been improving the management ability of the entire intelligent transportation industry with new technologies by integrating big data applications. So is ETC. ETC technology originated in Europe, America and Japan. China's ETC technology began to develop gradually in 2005, and the expressway traffic efficiency has been greatly improved. At present, technological breakthroughs still face many challenges.
Similarly, as the core component of the Internet of Everything, lidar has also made breakthroughs in key technologies. Whether it is an enterprise with more than ten years' experience or an innovative enterprise, it is faced with enormous challenges, and it is necessary to overcome one technical difficulty after another in order to reach the application state of the lidar industry. At present, the industry standard of car networking is also taking shape, and the industry is still conducting technical discussions, establishing technical demonstrations, and looking for new business models and business application scenarios. Enterprises invest huge human and material resources in industrialization research to ensure people's travel safety, improve travel efficiency and improve travel experience and feelings.
Media: Wanji is the earliest generation of vehicle-road collaborative technology company. Is this correct?
Zhai Jun: That's understandable.
Media: What's the difference between the early generation of vehicle-road collaborative technology companies and the new entrants in this field?
Zhai Jun: There should be no difference in the characteristics of enterprises. The success of every enterprise has its own characteristics. Internet of Vehicles (IoT) is a new industry with a lot of accumulation. In this digital age where autonomous driving is booming and everything is connected, all enterprises need to keep innovating and continue to invest in research and development in the face of new technological intelligence. Wanji has been adhering to the pragmatic principle for more than 20 years, and the company has established a complete system integrating research and development, production, marketing, marketing and service. The company attaches importance to R&D investment, and its core competitive advantages are industrialization and scale.
Media: I know what you mean. As long as the older generation of science and technology enterprises with coordinated vehicles and roads have pragmatic spirit and kinetic energy of continuous innovation, they will always be in an invincible position.
Zhai Jun: That's understandable.
Media: Let you criticize some new intelligent networked enterprises. Do you feel that they are more about creating concepts and lack your pragmatic spirit? Do you feel this way?
Zhai Jun: Every enterprise pursues different goals. I think this has nothing to do with the old and the new. It depends on the internal and core strategic goals and pursuits of the enterprise. There are excellent enterprises and eliminated enterprises in every era, which cannot be divided by the old and the new. New enterprises are pragmatic, and old enterprises also create concepts.
Media: What do you think is the most important link from the automatic driving of bicycles to the full realization of intelligent transportation? How can we quickly push away this whole game of chess?
Zhai Jun: This is a big topic.
Media: In this era, I think we can first create a concept, then imagine the scene, and then practice. This is a kind of collision and blending. In this process, we must have our advantages, our country or our whole industry. What do you think is your advantage?
Zhai Juan: Let me put it backwards. What is the image of future traffic? The Internet of Vehicles is actually a part of the Internet of Everything, so the future traffic is digital traffic, and all traffic behaviors are in two parallel worlds, one is the digital world where vehicles and computers run, and the other is the real world.
In the ultimate goal of vehicle-road coordination, all vehicles can drive at will, without any control, have full freedom like people, react faster, make decisions faster and be smarter than people. Vehicles are driving in a world without traffic signals, which is a life mode of vehicle-road coordination in the era of automatic driving or in the future. It is impossible for vehicles to collide wherever they go, because vehicles can quickly receive or send all the information around them and make decisions in time, which is extremely efficient.
At present, vehicle-road coordination is in its infancy, and the technology is developing in depth. The external perception and decision-making ability of self-driving vehicles needs to be improved.
In addition, vehicle-road coordination needs to integrate human information into vehicles. The development of related technologies determines the development of self-driving cars, and self-driving cars also determine the supporting role of all traffic information and road test information. Now everyone is trying to integrate, but there is no integration yet. It is still a state of "two skins" for people and cars. Why? At present, the ability of perception technology, especially the computing power of computer, communication delay and 5G delay can't reach the effect I just mentioned, and it needs 6G, 7G or even higher level. 5G only plays a role in the prelude stage of autonomous driving.
Bus terminal network: I know what you mean. The development of the whole industry depends on the cooperation and integration of industries, not just one of them.
Zhai Jun: Yes.
Media: Now autonomous driving is a controversial topic. Recently, there have been some accidents about self-driving cars and new energy vehicles in Tesla and Weilai, which are very controversial. What do you think of the future development direction of autonomous driving?
Zhai Jun: This question is easy to answer, but not easy to answer.
This involves traffic safety. In fact, there are certain accidents every year, but some are reported and some are not. In fact, this kind of thing is bound to happen with the development of all technologies, and the reality is very cold. We must try to make mistakes. Technical iteration is completed in application, and it is impossible to achieve perfection in experiment and design.
Media: What kind of trial and error do you think should be done in the process, such as driving safely at ordinary times? Do you think there is a price?
Zhai Jun: Sometimes it can be avoided, because the simulation technology is more advanced now, and most of the time experiments can be done in the laboratory. Now automatic driving is called L2.5, not L3, and L2.5 is assisted driving. Some drivers turned 2.5 into 3 dependence after buying a car. At present, the technical development has not reached an immediate level. The two core points between people and cars are space and time. Space is the distance between two cars, and time is the reaction time.
At present, the front-end sensing technology has not reached the level that all objects can sense. Tesla has a problem, that is, visual perception is disturbed by sunlight, while lidar is not disturbed by sunlight. At present, the perfect integration of lidar and vision has not been realized, and further technical input is needed to solve it. Therefore, accidents will definitely exist sporadically. If you are completely independent at this time, there will be problems in special circumstances.
In addition, there is computing power, even if the vehicle senses someone passing by in a very fast time, but does not decide to brake or avoid in time, there will be accidents.
Media: First, there is no perception, and autonomous driving has evaluation criteria. Every car company is different. Now all the cars on the market are L2, or L2+, which is equivalent to assisted driving and semi-automatic. The most important thing is to rely on people to drive. Everyone has a great misunderstanding about this, which is also the cause of security risks.
Zhai Jun: Why do countries cooperate to push carts and roads now? The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology is also making evaluation criteria, and so is the Ministry of Communications. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology is making cars and the Ministry of Communications is making roads. Everyone is setting standards. After the standards were formulated, everyone had a clear research direction, and everyone followed this direction, thus forming a unified normative behavior, including the unification of technical standards, so in this piece, I think it is still a process.
Now the industry basically agrees that automatic driving to L5 level must be an integrated management system, that is, not only bicycles, but also roadsides. It's just that the coordination between vehicles and roads has not yet reached a state of complete integration.
Media: Now new energy vehicles may put more emphasis on smart interconnection. What do you think the future development direction of smart internet will give new energy vehicles?
Zhai Juan: I have a forum on the 27th. That's what I'm talking about. Let me give you a brief introduction.
The future autopilot must be intelligent interconnection, that is, intelligent communication in the future. In fact, the self-driving car networking or the Internet of Everything is a systematic project, which requires a series of new technologies such as perception, communication, fusion algorithms and computing power, as well as big data. This is an integrated system.
Vehicles driving on the road in the future should be car-to-car communication, car-to-road communication and car-to-person communication, that is, communication interconnection. 5G is the main channel, like the human central nervous system. The front-end perception is actually the peripheral nerve, which is the information distribution process under the main channel. The future world is just like the human body. All vehicles are a part of cells, which have external perception, thinking, receiving information and sending information, forming a real state of interconnection and automatic driving.
Communication is the throat of automatic driving, the process of transmitting information, the perception part is human eyes and ears, and the algorithm part is brain. So real artificial intelligence is not big data analysis, but actually a real person. The whole society is a big organism, controlled by the brain and capable of communication. For example, without mobile phones, people can only communicate face to face or through fixed lines, which is very inefficient; Now we use the mobile internet to communicate efficiently because the most basic thing of the mobile internet has been formed after the mobile phone. The communication you just mentioned is also the most basic thing for autonomous driving in the future. After that technical framework matures, the future autonomous driving will mature.
Media: According to you, is it people-oriented? Man is the subject. It is not that robots will replace people.
Zhai Jun: Lifestyles are people-oriented, and people are creators, including the creation of mobile phones. This is the mode of life. We should enjoy what we create. The same is true for autonomous driving. We should enjoy the progress that artificial intelligence has brought to the whole society. So it is not a question of who is the subject, but a question of new technologies and different lifestyles in the digital age. Have you seen White Deer Plain? Their way of life, the industrial age is a way of life, and so is our information age. The development of science and technology has brought about the improvement of the quality of human life. ?
Media: Hello, Mr. Zhai Jun. Many investors will compare our company with Haosai Technology. What do you think is our advantage?
Zhai Juan: People always ask this question. We must have an advantage. We should have confidence in this.
First, Wanji lidar has a long history. 20 1 1 began to make lidar, and 20 12 began to use lidar in the transportation industry. Our industrial technology ability is very strong.
Second, as a listed company, Wanji is guaranteed to invest in R&D funds.
Third, the application of lidar autopilot needs continuous capital investment, and Wanji lidar is profitable. Last year, we made more than one billion yuan in traffic intelligent manufacturing, and our hematopoietic capacity is very strong.
Fourth, I don't like this comparison very much, because we have our own advantages, and it also has its own advantages, because it is an innovative company that focuses on autonomous driving and has strong vitality. We have laid out the whole laser industry and have been doing it for ten years now. In fact, this industry is not a new industry, because the application of laser is very extensive, but everyone is a new concept in autonomous driving. There are many new technologies in autonomous driving, which require higher stability, cost and technical ability of laser radar and pose greater challenges.
Media: There are still some companies doing this business in the market, such as Huawei. Do you think it is necessary to properly concentrate this industry? How many years will it take to concentrate?
Zhai Juan: This is a big racecourse. Now I think it can attract more enterprises. The more enterprises, the faster the technology investment and iteration speed, and the faster the industry development. The whole development depends on the overall integration ability and your organizational ability, including R&D, technology, enterprise management and a series of industrialization abilities.
Personally, I think industry should be developed first. After your industry is developed, with sufficient capital investment, it will inevitably lead to the rapid development of the whole industrialization technology, expand the whole market and support the ability to serve users. Because the laser, the core component of the Internet of Everything, is not only self-driving, but also our mobile phone Apple is detected by laser. As long as it is perceived, it will be used. I think this industry has not yet emerged, and many innovative enterprises and traditional enterprises need further investment.
Media: What is our position in the international technology echelon?
Zhai Jun: It's too early to talk about echelon. I just want to say one thing. The biggest challenge now is the abbreviation OPA. We started doing this on 20 16. This is the biggest challenge. After this product came out, the cost dropped sharply. In addition, they are all chip-level. Now it is mechanical or semi-mechanical, and the power consumption will inevitably decrease, because the power consumption of car companies will decrease. In this piece, it basically meets the requirements of car companies for cost, power consumption and detection ability. At present, a big head is on it, and its third part is mechanical rotation, so it is difficult to meet the requirements of vehicle regulations, including its safety and reliability.
We made it on 20 16 and have been doing it for 6 years now. Our plan is to invest for 8 years. 20 18, our project was funded by the national natural fund. Think about it. As an enterprise, the National Natural Fund supports colleges and universities to support an enterprise, which shows that our technical research has reached the international leading level. We plan to have two years of industrialization, and release short-range products first next year, which is now in progress. Once this product is mature, it should be a subversive product in the laser industry.
Media: next year?
Zhai Jun: It will be released next year, and the 30-meter distance measurement will be released.
Media: The previous rumor was 10 months.
Zhai Jun: Is the June 128 line 10, or is it mechanical? Car companies require150m, and achieve the key technical breakthrough required by150m.
Media: Zhai is always good. What is the market performance and ranking in this industry now?
Zhai Jun: Intelligent networking is still in the stage of technical discussion and practice. We are confident that Wanji's technology is at the forefront of this industry, and the solution proposed by Wanji can actually solve some application problems of owners including the government.
For example, the country is building demonstration pilot areas of intelligent networking, such as Yizhuang in Beijing and Liangjiang New District in Chongqing. In the exploration period of this industry, we will promote the development of the industry through the construction of demonstration pilots.
First of all, we are actively participating in the construction of various demonstration pilot areas in China, such as the 5G car networking projects in Chongqing Liangjiang New District, xiong'an new area and Suzhou High-speed Railway New City. Secondly, when autonomous driving and the Internet of Everything have not yet been industrialized, we use more advanced car networking technology to solve the current pain points, including the existing traffic problems of smart high-speed and smart cities. Expressway is concerned with safety and traffic efficiency, as well as the ability to serve the owners. We have been involved in expressway construction for a long time and have a deeper understanding of the demands of expressway owners. In the past two years, Wanji has digitally reconstructed Guangzhou Guangming Qifu Tunnel and the West Han Expressway Qinling Tunnel respectively. We also brought the overall solution for this exhibition.
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