Chedongxi
Text | Bear
2019 is a year of industrial sinking. When the demographic dividend and land dividend of first-tier cities have been fully exploited, Many industries have embarked on the path of sinking to third- and fourth-tier cities. The e-commerce industry is sinking, social media is sinking, and even the autonomous driving industry is on the road to sinking.
In fact, the trend of the autonomous driving industry’s downward trend has long been reflected. After a domestic autonomous driving startup moved its headquarters away from first-tier cities, it bluntly said: “Beyond first-tier cities, the autonomous driving industry has a wide range of potential. There is room for development, including more suitable road test conditions and more favorable license policies..."
These remarks exposed the excessively high land prices and strict implementation rules in first-tier cities, which are constraining autonomous driving vitality of industrial development.
In order to break this situation, in April 2018, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Public Security, and the Ministry of Transport jointly issued the "Intelligent Connected Vehicle Road Test Management Specifications (Trial)" to encourage provinces and cities across the country to build Intelligent network/autonomous vehicle demonstration area.
Two years later, nearly 30 intelligent connected car demonstration zones have begun to be implemented in various cities across the country, excluding first-tier cities and new first-tier cities, such as Cangzhou, Baoding, Wuxi, Xiangyang, etc. in the public perception. Small cities (this article specifically refers to cities outside the first-tier and quasi-first-tier cities) are also beginning to catch up with the trend of autonomous driving.
▲The layout of autonomous driving in 13 small cities in China
According to incomplete statistics from Chedongxi, there are already 13 small towns that have deployed the autonomous driving industry like this. These cities have provided the autonomous driving industry with more favorable policies, cheaper autonomous driving road test licenses and more efficient application processes. These advantages have attracted many players in the autonomous driving industry.
Currently, five types of players, including ICT companies, Internet companies, self-driving startups, vehicle manufacturers, and logistics companies, have poured into the small town’s self-driving test area.
Autonomous driving in small cities has started to spread across the prairie fire. The support of urban policies and the rising enthusiasm of enterprises will promote the spread of the autonomous driving industry from first-tier cities with concentrated industrial advantages to edge cities, creating a "rural development path". "Surrounding the City" roads.
1. Is the autonomous driving industry sinking? 13 small cities have opened intelligent connected car demonstration zones
In April 2018, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Public Security, and the Ministry of Transport jointly issued the "Intelligent Connected Vehicle Demonstration Zone" "Connected Vehicle Road Test Management Specifications (Trial)" policy, the policy states that relevant competent departments of provincial and municipal governments can specifically organize and carry out road testing of intelligent connected vehicles based on local actual conditions and the implementation details of the specification.
Prior to this, only a few first-tier (quasi-first-tier) cities in China, such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen, have launched intelligent network/autonomous vehicle demonstration zones and conducted small-scale road tests in the demonstration zones. .
The issuance of the above-mentioned documents has provided guiding opinions for more cities to develop the autonomous driving industry, and has also given the autonomous driving industry the opportunity to migrate from first-tier cities to enjoy second-tier cities and even It is a more favorable landing condition in third-tier cities.
Not long after the document was released, some cities took the lead in embracing this wave of autonomous driving because of their excellent industrial foundation.
The most typical ones are Baoding, Pingtan, Xiangyang, Cangzhou and other cities that have both developed automobile manufacturing industries and a certain artificial intelligence industry foundation.
It is understood that Baoding is not only the headquarters of Great Wall Motors, but also an important flank of Xiongan New Area. Hundreds of artificial intelligence-related companies have already settled in Baoding.
▲Baoding signed a contract with Baidu
At the same time, in February 2019, Baoding also signed a contract with Baidu. Both parties plan to jointly promote the construction of intelligent transportation in Baoding City. Baidu is still Baoding has launched an artificial intelligence cloud computing center.
On one side is Great Wall Motors, which has an urgent need for autonomous driving testing, and on the other side is Baidu, which hopes to bring its own autonomous driving solutions to Baoding. The two parties hit it off immediately, and at the end of November 2018, Baoding Autonomous Driving Road Test Service Center Mancheng Work Station was officially inaugurated in Hebei Mancheng Economic Development Zone.
Huaxia Zhixing Technology Service Company undertook the construction project of the test area. At the same time, the Mancheng Development Zone Management Committee also provided service venues and was responsible for the construction of communication base stations.
In Cangzhou, Beijing Hyundai and BAIC Group (North China) automobile industry bases are located here. Cangzhou Yuntu Technology is also an important partner of Baidu Apollo, which is enough to show that Cangzhou also has automobile manufacturing and artificial intelligence. The industrial base of the industry.
At the end of September 2019, the Cangzhou Municipal Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Transport, and the Ministry of Public Security jointly issued the "Cangzhou City Intelligent Connected Vehicle Road Test Management Measures (Trial)", and Cangzhou City has officially become a Cities with intelligent connected car demonstration zones have been identified.
It is reported that Cangzhou has opened a 114-kilometer autonomous driving test road network in the Cangzhou Economic Development Zone and issued the first batch of 30 autonomous driving test licenses to Baidu. At the end of October 2019, Baidu was released Self-driving test vehicle for testing.
▲Baidu’s L4 unmanned taxi
However, not all cities building intelligent connected car demonstration zones have dual industrial foundations of automobile manufacturing and artificial intelligence industries. The Liuzhou Intelligent Network Demonstration Zone, which is relatively well-known in southwest my country, was built by the automobile manufacturer SAIC-GM-Wuling in cooperation with the local government.
In July 2019, SAIC-GM-Wuling's application was officially approved by the Liuzhou government. The Liuzhou Intelligent Connected Vehicle Road Test Management Joint Working Group Office held a meeting, established a road test committee, and passed the "Liuzhou Intelligent Connected Vehicle Road Test Management Joint Working Group Office" "Charter of the Municipal Intelligent Connected Vehicle Road Test Expert Committee (Trial)" document.
So far, Liuzhou has built an intelligent connected vehicle demonstration zone that integrates 5G communication technology, V2X, autonomous driving, and remote driving technologies. SAIC-GM-Wuling won the first place in the demonstration zone. A test license plate.
▲Liuzhou Intelligent Connected Vehicle Test Road
It is worth mentioning that some cities even regard autonomous driving as an important urban planning layout. For example, Deqing has opened up the entire county There are more than 900 kilometers of urban and rural roads in the region, and autonomous driving road test licenses have been issued to many automakers and autonomous driving startups such as Geely, NIO, Leapmotor, CRRC Times, and Pony.ai.
Deqing County plans to use autonomous driving as the underlying capability of urban smart transportation and build a city-level autonomous driving smart travel demonstration area in 2020, which means that autonomous vehicles will be able to hit the road throughout Deqing County.
In addition to Baoding, Cangzhou, Liuzhou, and Deqing, nine cities including Xiangyang, Zhaoqing, Changzhou, and Wuxi have also built autonomous driving test areas relying on their local industrial base to facilitate the implementation of the autonomous driving industry in small cities. Conditions are provided.
Judging from the enthusiasm for building intelligent connected car demonstration zones in various "small cities", the fire of autonomous driving has finally started in cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, and gradually spread across the country. The widespread implementation of the autonomous driving industry will not only be conducive to the commercialization of the industry itself, but will also promote the city's smart transportation and smart city strategies.
2. Mainly focus on autonomous driving test areas? Two major advantages of small towns have initially emerged
According to Chexixi’s observation of the current autonomous driving layout of 13 small cities, these cities lack autonomous driving supporting facilities. Industrial clusters usually do not have strong local autonomous driving companies and academic teams specializing in autonomous driving technology. They generally lack R&D capabilities for autonomous driving technology.
However, these cities have very accurately grasped the differences between themselves and first-tier cities, put policies first, and quickly followed up with test areas, maximizing the advantages of road testing and technology integration, focusing on automatic Driving test area.
Take Deqing, where the autonomous driving industry is currently booming, as an example. In June 2019, the county released a "global city-level autonomous driving and smart travel" demonstration application implementation plan, and submitted it to the cooperating companies Geely, Companies such as NIO, Pony.ai, and Kuwa Robot have issued open road test licenses.
In October 2019, the autonomous driving test area in the area was delineated and officially opened for use. The roads open for testing include 152 main urban roads, about 152.37 kilometers long; 77 other urban roads, The total length is 65.4 kilometers; there are 380 rural roads with a total mileage of 731.51 kilometers.
▲Electronic map of the Deqing autonomous driving open test road
It is no exaggeration to say that the autonomous driving public road test area in Deqing County is currently the largest test area in the country .
Even in Beijing, where the domestic autonomous driving industry is developing rapidly, there are currently 151 open autonomous driving test roads with a total mileage of 503.68 kilometers. The total mileage of test roads alone is not as good as Deqing.
Of course, Deqing is currently just a special case. The mileage of autonomous driving test roads in most small cities ranges from dozens to hundreds of kilometers. But if the "Deqing Model" can be successful, then there will be many "Deqing" models all over the country to follow suit. By then, the mileage of self-driving road tests in small cities is likely to exceed that in large cities.
For autonomous vehicles, public test roads with longer total mileage provide richer autonomous driving test scenarios and more diverse autonomous driving road test data.
In such an environment, autonomous driving algorithms will be able to obtain richer data sets, discover "extreme environments" that do not usually occur and optimize them, thereby becoming more mature.
Not only that, there are also obvious differences between the autonomous driving test areas in small cities and those in big cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen in terms of the level of technological integration on autonomous driving test roads.
Since the autonomous driving test areas in big cities such as Beijing are constructed in batches, the maturity of the technology is different at different times, and the content that can be tested in each test area is obviously different.
For example, the Yizhuang Base and Haidian Base, which are part of the National Smart Car and Smart Transportation (Beijing-Hebei) Demonstration Zone, focus on V2X and smart transportation on one side, and a closed test area for autonomous driving on the other.
The Fangshan 5G Autonomous Driving Demonstration Zone, which cooperates with communication companies, pays more attention to the application of 5G communication technology in intelligent driving.
As a result, if a company wants to test the performance of autonomous vehicles in V2X, 5G communications and autonomous driving algorithms, it will need to move between different test areas.
When constructing autonomous driving test areas in small cities such as Changzhou, Xiangyang, and Liuzhou, they are more inclined to integrate 5G communications, V2X technology and autonomous driving algorithm testing, so that an autonomous driving test area can meet the needs of Various smart car testing needs.
It is understood that Liuzhou has reached a cooperation with SAIC Group to complete the full coverage of 5G communication and vehicle-road collaboration functions on Liuzhou’s intelligent connected (unmanned driving) vehicle test roads, and will cover more in 2020. Large range.
▲Liuzhou Autonomous Driving Test Road
Within these roads, vehicle-road collaboration with 5G communication support can help vehicles achieve driverless pedestrian detection and obstacle avoidance, and abnormal vehicle alerts , rapid approaching vehicles from behind, road incident reminders, over-the-horizon warnings, traffic light information push, intersection vehicle collision warnings, lane change warnings, speed limit sign information, accident-prone road section reminders, emergency braking of vehicles ahead, motorcycles, etc. Realistic scenarios help vehicles realize a variety of "extreme scene" autonomous driving functions.
These "rising stars" obviously pay more attention to the level of technological integration in the test area, and this level of integration can provide great convenience for autonomous driving companies.
Just imagine, one side is a first-tier city where it takes 2-3 hours each time to reach the test area, and you need to constantly move around the test area; the other side is where you can test by "going downstairs", and basically A small town with relatively complete facilities and support. From the perspective of autonomous driving testing alone, the latter is indeed more attractive to autonomous driving companies.
This is a unique advantage for small towns to develop autonomous driving.
The influx of Category 3 and 5 companies? 20 companies have taken root in small towns to develop autonomous vehicles
Policy first, the test area is open, and companies in the autonomous driving industry chain are also entering one after another.
According to incomplete statistics from Chexixi, there are currently at least 20 autonomous driving industry chain companies in five major categories, and they have launched autonomous driving road tests in "small cities" outside first-tier cities.
▲20 autonomous driving industry chain companies have landed in small towns
From the above table, these five major categories of companies belong to ICT, Internet, autonomous driving startups, vehicle manufacturers and logistics The five major areas of the enterprise actually correspond to different autonomous driving layout strategies.
It is understood that Huawei is currently the only ICT company that has set up autonomous driving business in small cities. Of course, judging from the current progress of Huawei’s automotive business, it cannot deploy autonomous driving test vehicles. .
Huawei actually has a hand in the infrastructure construction of the autonomous driving test area. At present, Huawei has reached cooperation with Dongfeng Motor Company and the Xiangyang Municipal Government, using its cloud computing, big data, and physical Technical advantages in networking, 5G, AI and other aspects empower the Xiangyang autonomous driving test section.
▲Dongfeng Motors, Huawei signed a contract with Xiangyang
To understand it from another perspective, autonomous driving is only a part of its layout. Huawei is targeting smart city projects including autonomous driving. .
Baidu, a giant from the Internet industry, has a different approach. Baidu, which owns the Apollo project, is focusing more on autonomous driving while laying out smart cities. It not only drove its own self-driving test vehicle into the test area of ????the small city, but also provided technical solutions for other partners to enable them to test together.
This approach is not difficult to understand. After all, Baidu’s own self-driving cars have a limited number. If it can have vehicles from OEMs to help it test its own solutions, its self-driving solutions can also be more efficient. Perfect soon.
In addition, Baidu is likely to supply its own self-driving solutions through cooperation or sale in the future, and provide self-driving solutions to current partners, which will undoubtedly enable it to accumulate business experience in advance.
Among the self-driving startups, there are actually very few companies that have actually settled in small cities. Currently, there are only two companies, AutoX and Heduo Technology.
▲Heduo Technology is testing in the closed test area of ??Wuxi Expressway
In fact, this phenomenon is very easy to understand. Self-driving startups are still in a state of lacking self-hematopoietic ability and need to strengthen Powerful capital continues to inject blood into it. These capitals are often investment banks or local funds that attach great importance to the autonomous driving industry. These capitals are concentrated in first- and second-tier cities. The investment model determines that these capitals are extremely difficult to sink.
Therefore, there are very few self-driving startups taking root in small cities. Even AutoX and Heduo Technology mentioned in the table have their headquarters and business focus not in Zhaoqing or Wuxi.
Automobile manufacturers are quite different. As mentioned in the first part of the article, some of these small towns have the foundation of automobile manufacturing.
The demand for the development of autonomous driving in small towns is largely driven by local car companies. For example, Baoding is the demand for the autonomous driving industry spurred by the Great Wall, while Liuzhou is driven by the initiative of SAIC-GM-Wuling. Please take a tassel.
Car companies have chosen to embrace autonomous driving under the wave of automobile intelligence. However, their traditional manufacturing model makes it difficult for their autonomous driving business to separate from the OEMs and develop in first-tier cities.
Therefore, when car companies develop autonomous driving, they all choose to conduct road tests of autonomous vehicles locally or nearby, which not only saves costs, but also relies on their own experience in vehicle manufacturing to conduct timely testing. The vehicle is adjusted.
Logistics companies Deppon Logistics and ZTO Express have both chosen to cooperate with autonomous driving startups. Among them, Deppon Express has cooperated with Feibu Technology, and Zhongtong Express has reached a cooperation with AutoX. Mainline logistics and unmanned delivery services of up to one kilometer.
The complex road conditions in small towns will help logistics companies conduct scenario tests of urban trunk lines, branch logistics and "last mile" unmanned delivery that are closest to actual conditions, laying the foundation for future unmanned delivery services. A solid foundation.
Although the five major categories of companies have different strategies, in the final analysis, they all have needs for autonomous driving testing in small cities.
ICT company Huawei hopes to verify the feasibility of its ICT solution in the transportation field through pilot projects in small cities for subsequent promotion.
Internet company Baidu hopes to further expand the scale of its autonomous driving business and achieve closer cooperation with partners outside first-tier cities.
Original vehicle manufacturers adopt the principle of developing nearby to save costs and improve efficiency.
Autonomous driving startups and logistics companies hope to obtain more diverse road test data through testing in small cities and improve the operating capabilities of autonomous driving solutions in extreme environments.
4. There are nearly 300 domestic self-driving test licenses? Small towns are in the starting stage
First- and second-tier cities are leading the way, driving the development of the self-driving industry. "Small towns" keep up with the trend and let autonomous driving Driving is gradually becoming more popular in the country.
At this stage, the domestic autonomous driving industry is in full swing, and nearly 30 cities across the country have issued about 300 autonomous driving road test licenses.
However, most of these 300 self-driving road test licenses still belong to developed first-tier cities. According to data from the Beijing Municipal Transportation Commission, Beijing alone has issued 77 self-driving road test licenses. , accounting for about 1/4 of the number of autonomous driving road test licenses nationwide.
▲Beijing Municipal Transportation Commission Information
Shanghai and Guangzhou have also divided about 30 self-driving road test licenses. Among the rising stars in the self-driving industry in quasi-first-tier cities, Chongqing, Wuhan, Hangzhou, and Suzhou have each issued more than ten self-driving road test licenses...
It can be seen that among the more than 300 license plates, only the self-driving license plates actually issued by small cities There are dozens of them.
Among them, the Cangzhou Autonomous Driving Test Zone, as a flank of Xiongan New Area, took the lead in issuing 30 autonomous driving test licenses to Baidu. The models participating in the road test are mainly L4 unmanned rental vehicles jointly developed by Baidu and Hongqi. car.
Deqing, which is making a lot of noise, has currently issued 7 autonomous driving road test licenses and 2 intelligent connected vehicle test licenses. The 7 licenses were issued to Geely, Weilai, Leapmoo, and CRRC Times , Pony.ai, Hekun Intelligence and Kuwa Robot, mainly road testing of L4 autonomous driving passenger cars.
Two intelligent connected vehicle test licenses were issued to Debon Logistics and ZTO Express. These two companies cooperated with Feibu Technology and AutoX respectively to develop L3/L4 autonomous logistics vehicles.
The Pingtan test zone issued a total of 6 self-driving road test licenses to Baidu and King Long Bus. Baidu’s three vehicles participating in the test were self-driving passenger cars, and King Long’s Driverless buses. It is worth mentioning that King Long Bus also uses Baidu’s autonomous driving solution.
The autonomous driving tests in Changzhou and Xiangyang mainly focus on autonomous driving projects for commercial vehicles. Dongfeng Commercial Vehicles and Yutong Bus have landed in the Xiangyang autonomous driving test area, while King Long station wagons and Zhijia Technology’s autonomous driving projects The human-driven truck landed in the autonomous driving test area in Changzhou.
The autonomous driving test areas in Wuxi and Liuzhou mainly serve OEMs. Wuxi has issued autonomous driving road test licenses to SAIC and Audi, while Liuzhou has issued autonomous driving road test licenses to SAIC-GM-Wuling. license plates, but the exact number was not disclosed.
To break it down, 13 small towns with autonomous driving industries have issued less than 100 autonomous driving road test licenses. They have not yet formed a large-scale implementation situation. The autonomous driving industry in small towns is still limited. In the starting stage.
5. Autonomous driving "surrounding cities from rural areas"? The four meanings behind the layout of small towns
When the trend of autonomous driving first spread from first-tier cities to small towns, some people once questioned However, are cities that lack relevant talents and capital to promote autonomous driving suitable for development?
The current situation has obviously answered this question. Many small cities have begun to participate in the development wave of the autonomous driving industry in their own way.
Since there is a lack of talent and funds, we should start from the lowest level of the autonomous driving test area, supplemented by policies, to provide the most suitable conditions for autonomous driving companies to attract talents and funds.
The effect of this approach is remarkable. 13 small cities have established autonomous driving test areas. Big players in the autonomous driving industry such as Baidu and Huawei have cooperated with autonomous driving companies such as AutoX and Heduo Technology. The innovative power in the field began to arrive in small towns.
Although the current autonomous driving industry in small cities is still in the starting stage, it is already a race for thousands of boats. Therefore, there is reason to believe that the autonomous driving industry in Xiaocheng will have a bright future.
Lengthening the timeline, the autonomous driving industry emerging from small towns will play an important role at the four levels of enterprises, industries, cities, and countries.
From an enterprise level, the road conditions and road information in small cities are more complex and diverse, which is conducive to enterprises to continuously adjust their autonomous driving solutions for extreme conditions during testing.
From an industrial perspective, it is better to develop in multiple locations than to develop slowly outward from first-tier cities. If the autonomous driving industry in small cities can also achieve good development, then small cities can form a linkage effect with first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, helping autonomous driving become more popular.
From an urban perspective, autonomous driving is undoubtedly a key part of future smart cities. Prioritizing public road testing will be conducive to the subsequent implementation of autonomous driving on urban roads, and will also be conducive to the intelligentization of urban streets. These are all processes that accelerate the transformation of smart cities.
From a national level, the development of autonomous driving in small cities will help stimulate the flow of talents and capital, and reduce the gap between small cities and first-tier cities. At the same time, the transformation of road networks suitable for autonomous driving is also a strategic direction for national development.
Conclusion: The layout of autonomous driving in small towns has ignited a "spark"
13 small towns have built intelligent connected vehicle test areas, and introduced Baidu, Huawei, AutoX and other companies to conduct autonomous driving Road testing, behind this series of actions, the layout of autonomous driving in small cities has ignited a "spark" and is gradually evolving towards a "prairie fire" trend.
This phenomenon shows that first-tier cities will no longer be able to enjoy the technological dividends brought about by autonomous driving, and small cities will also be able to take a share of the pie. Although the trends in their respective layouts are different, it can be said that they are all involved in the changes brought about by autonomous driving.
The development of autonomous driving in small cities has brought new opportunities to the industry. Not only are policies more favorable and testing more convenient, small cities will soon establish new industrial clusters around autonomous driving. New Era Securities Research Institute predicts that the size of the autonomous driving market will reach 20 billion yuan between 2020 and 2021, and will climb to 100 billion yuan in 2025. Such a 100 billion market will give birth to new industrial giants.
But behind the dividends, the industry needs to remain calm. Currently, in domestic cities developing autonomous driving, the advancement and deployment of policies and infrastructure still cannot keep up with industry expectations. In the specific management of government departments, the division of powers and responsibilities is not clear enough, and the maturity of road infrastructure also needs to be verified. Only when these conditions are mature, will self-driving cars have the conditions to be put on the road on a large scale, and a city's self-driving industry can truly mature.
This article comes from the author of Autohome Chejiahao and does not represent the views and positions of Autohome.