Text/Wu Pengfei
At the end of last month, Volvo Car Group and Waymo announced that the two parties have reached a global strategic cooperation, and Waymo has become the strategic partner of Volvo Car Group and its strategic investment brands Polestar and Lynk & Co. The exclusive global partner for L4 level autonomous driving technology.
Waymo’s main mission is to empower Volvo Passenger Cars, Polestar and Lynk & Co to create mass-produced L4 level autonomous driving for the three high-end brands. The two parties will work together to build self-driving pure electric vehicles and provide travel services.
Although Geely's name did not appear in the announcement, Geely Holdings, as the major shareholder of the above three brands, is undoubtedly the biggest "manager" in this cooperation, as it is proficient in capital operations.
What can you get by taking a ride with Geely, Waymo?
Waymo, who comes from a distinguished family, is undoubtedly the leader of self-driving companies in the world today. Waymo's self-driving project was established in 2009. After 10 years of hard work, it has accumulated 10 million miles. After testing mileage, Waymo launched an autonomous taxi service in Phoenix, USA, with a total scale of 600 units. And these 600 cars are all modified Pacifica hybrid cars provided by Chrysler.
Waymo first announced an order for 62,000 Chrysler Pacificas from FCA, and then stated that it would purchase 220,000 I-Pace from Jaguar, for which Waymo has to pay. Extremely high car purchase price.
But Waymo, which does not have the ability to build cars, has no choice. Cooperation with OEMs is the only way to commercialize its own self-driving cars.
Similarly, today’s auspiciousness also means the same to Waymo. We can see that the contract between Volvo and Waymo is not a procurement cooperation, but a pure technical cooperation. It can even be said to be a joint effort to "build cars."
It is somewhat different from the previous cooperation between Waymo and Renault-Nissan. As a technology supplier, Waymo not only does not need to buy a car, but may even earn a lot of income.
For Waymo, this cooperation not only expands the circle of friends among OEMs, but also accelerates the commercialization of autonomous driving. It is worth noting that the cooperation between Geely and Renault-Nissan and Waymo is clearly in the field of mobile travel services. Waymo's driverless technology mainly serves the passenger and cargo part.
As for the commercial vehicle segment for the consumer end, the OEM may have its own plans.
As in-vehicle software technology represented by autonomous driving becomes more and more important, car manufacturers are not satisfied with taking over a "black box" from suppliers. They hope to firmly grasp the underlying code and data. In your own hands.
What are Geely’s tips for hooking up with Waymo?
Today’s cooperation between Waymo and Volvo is easy to recall the cooperation between Volvo and Uber in 2016. Both parties jointly invested US$300 million to build autonomous vehicles based on the SPA architecture. Driving model.
Unfortunately, in 2018, one of Uber's XC90 test vehicles accidentally hit and killed a pedestrian during a road test in Arizona, raising questions about the reliability of Uber's self-driving technology. .
Although the two parties did not explicitly state the termination of the cooperation, little information was released after that. The only "big news" was in 2019, when the two parties successfully cooperated to produce a self-driving car equipped with Uber. Technical? XC90.
The roles of Waymo and Uber for Volvo obviously overlap, but it is not incomprehensible for Volvo to be in two different boats. It is very likely that the two parties are "coupled with each other", so Volvo found Waymo. ?This spare tire.
First there was a legal dispute involving Uber’s alleged “infringement” of Waymo’s patents: Waymo’s resigned employees took away Uber’s patent documents and brought them to Uber, and then there was Uber’s “Fatal accidents” and road test data are not as good as Waymo’s.
It seems to be an indisputable fact that Uber’s technology is “inferior” to Waymo’s. It is reasonable for Volvo to abandon Uber. ?
A Volvo spokesperson said something meaningful: "The new cooperation will not affect the previous agreement between Volvo and Uber. We will still provide relevant vehicles to Uber." Read the highlights Half a sentence.
After some acquisitions and investments, Geely Group’s brand size is comparable to that of Volkswagen. Although Waymo’s cooperation is targeted at the Volvo and Polestar brands on paper, Geely’s ability to “integrate and understand” Waymo’s cooperation It is not difficult to benefit other brands with ?
Volvo, which was “hollowed out” today, is the best evidence.
Geely Group’s layout in the field of autonomous driving can be said to be blossoming everywhere and advancing in many directions.
For the Geely brand’s crawler system, Volvo has invested in self-driving software developer ZENUITY. In addition to cooperation with Uber and Waymo, Geely Group has always played the role of “dad” .
The Creeper system focuses on bicycle intelligence and 5G-V2X vehicle-road collaboration. However, due to limitations of the infrastructure environment, the Creeper system currently only enables Geely brand’s L2 level driving assistance, which is ADAS. ?system.
ZENUITY? was originally a joint venture established by Volvo and Werner AG, but was later split by the two companies. Volvo established its own part as an independent company, with the main task of developing autonomous driving. Platform and software are strengths.
Compared with Crawler and ZENUITY, Waymo is more like a company that has both soft and hard skills. Waymo, which emphasizes bicycle intelligence, can complement ZENUITY and Crawler. Waymo’s cutting-edge hardware Technology is exactly what the two younger brothers lack.
As mentioned above, car manufacturers are paying more and more attention to autonomous driving technology, and they are more eager to hold the core code in their own hands. Geely, which has now become a world-class automobile group, is no exception.
Most of the Silicon Valley companies that compete with Waymo have found their "financier fathers" in the automotive industry. Affiliate with OEMs has suddenly become a common solution for startups, so I believe that, The story of Geely and Waymo has just begun.
Waymo, who is "waiting for a girl", knows very well that its fate is likely to be taken away by a wealthy car manufacturer. All it has to do is to raise itself and wait for a price.
This article comes from the author of Autohome Chejiahao and does not represent the views and positions of Autohome.