Top Ten Events of Intelligent Driving in 2023： Between Landing Down and Exploring Up
Wen | 42 Hao garage
For the development of intelligent driving, 2023 is a stormy year.
On the one hand, after the software and hardware technical framework of intelligent driving was gradually established, head players began to promote the test and landing of urban or high-speed navigation-assisted driving in their production models, and were exploring business models based on software subscription.
As a result, commercial landing has become a key word for smart driving in 2023.
On the other hand, the landing of urban navigation-assisted driving is not achieved overnight. In addition to the technical framework, we need to make great efforts in engineering and end-user experience. Therefore, players are also trying their best to integrate some more practical algorithm models into the project landing, and the integration of large models is also becoming a bright spot.
Of course, the current technological development of intelligent driving is far from mature. Therefore, pioneers of intelligent driving like Tesla are also verifying the realization effect of end-to-end algorithms, and even exploring the technological development direction of the next generation of intelligent driving.
Under the above background, the intelligent driving industry in 2023 can be said to be a competition among Qian Fan. Major players have made great efforts in several intersecting dimensions such as technical exploration, business landing and mental occupation, and staged a colorful annual drama of the smart driving industry.
Therefore, standing at the end of 2023, we also made an annual inventory of the top ten important events in the smart driving industry this year, hoping to outline the general outline of the development of the smart driving industry.
1. Huawei ADS 2.0, seeking a balance between technology and cost.
On April 16th, 2023, Huawei ADS 2.0 was officially released.
As a new generation intelligent driving solution of Huawei, Huawei ADS 2.0 also adopts the network architecture of BEV+Transformer in terms of software algorithm, and joins the two networks of GOD (General Obstacle Network) and RCR (Road Topology Reasoning Network), which are the first laser fusion in the industry.
It is worth mentioning that, in terms of hardware, Huawei ADS 2.0 adopted the MDC 610+single lidar scheme in the landing process of the cross-border model; Compared with the MDC 810+three lidar scheme adopted by ADS 1.0, Huawei ADS 2.0 no longer only emphasizes computing power and sensing hardware, but also considers the balance between landing cost and landing experience from the perspective of engineering.
From the perspective of the industry, the launch of Huawei ADS 2.0 not only established Huawei’s head position in the process of smart driving landing in 2023, but also conformed to the landing trend of smart driving industry in 2023: on the basis of hardware capabilities, it emphasized the balance between engineering capabilities, user experience and cost.
2, Tucki G6 Max version, lowering the threshold for urban smart driving.
On June 29th, 2023, Tucki G6 was officially released. Its starting price was 209,900 yuan, and the starting price of Max version was 229,900 yuan, with a price difference of 20,000 yuan. On the hardware level, Tucki G6 Max version is equipped with 31 high-performance intelligent driving sensors including laser radar and dual Orion-X chips with a total power of 508 TOPS.
This means that under the extremely fierce market conditions at that time, through the Tucki G6 580 Max version, users can buy an intelligent electric vehicle supporting the city navigation and driving assistance function at the lowest price of 229,900 yuan.
Tucki G6 Max version, with a starting price of 229,900 yuan, broke through the bottom line of the price of navigation-assisted driving models in the whole industry at that time, and also lowered the landing price of navigation-assisted driving in the whole city to a great extent. From the perspective of industry, Tucki G6 not only vigorously promoted urban navigation-assisted driving to ordinary users, but also set a new value benchmark for mass production in the field of intelligent driving at that time.
3. BYD released the advanced intelligent driving assistance system "Eye of God".
On July 3, 2023, at the Tengshi N7 listing conference, BYD’s advanced intelligent driving assistance system "Eye of God" was officially released.
At the same time, Tengshi N7 took the lead in BYD’s world-first "Eye of the Gods" advanced intelligent driving assistance system. Based on "Eye of the Gods", Tengshi Pilot provided two intelligent driving assistance platform schemes: the standard version of intelligent driving assistance system and the advanced version of intelligent driving assistance system.
As the initiator of BYD’s intelligent second half, the release of Tengshi N7 means that BYD has also taken a key step in the intelligent level, especially the intelligent driving level. Considering BYD’s position in the whole China automobile industry, BYD’s embrace of intelligent driving has also promoted the whole automobile industry to embrace intelligent driving in a certain sense.
4. Musk conducted an end-to-end live broadcast of FSD V12.
On August 26, 2023, Musk conducted a live broadcast on the social platform about the intelligent driving ability of FSD V12; Different from the software algorithm scheme adopted by Tesla FSD in the past, FSD V12 adopts an end-to-end scheme.
Judging from the content of the live broadcast, whether it is an unprotected left turn, pulling over, avoiding pedestrians, etc., the vehicles in the live broadcast have shown a high degree of completion, which is still remarkable in general.
In this live broadcast, Musk only took over once; At an intersection, according to the set route, the vehicle originally planned to go straight. However, when the street lamp in front showed that it could turn left, the live Model S suddenly started to move forward. Fortunately, Musk took over the vehicle in time.
For this takeover, Musk said that this is why this version has not been released. But for the smart driving industry, this live broadcast is the first time that Tesla has demonstrated the actual performance of the end-to-end algorithm architecture for the whole industry; Soon, Tesla began to further iterate the software algorithm.
5. Tucki added the big model to XNet 2.0 perception architecture.
On October 24th, 2023, on the 5th Xpeng Motors Science and Technology Day, Xpeng Motors released XBrain, the ultimate architecture for intelligent driving in all scenes, including XNet 2.0, a new generation of sensing technology architecture, and XPlanner based on neural network regulation.
In XNet 2.0 perception architecture, Tucki joined the dynamic BEV network and static BEV network, and joined the visual occupation network. At the same time, XNet 2.0 has also added the blessing of a large model, which can read text information, have the concept of time and space, and understand the traffic elements with different urban characteristics.
As a result, Tucki’s XNet 2.0 has become the first perceptive framework in the industry with the ability to perceive time and space by using a large model. This is Xpeng Motors’s latest exploration in improving the perception of intelligent driving, and it also has great enlightening and weathervane significance for the whole industry.
6. Extreme Leap 01 adopts the only "pure vision" advanced intelligent driving scheme in China.
On October 27th, 2023, Extreme Yue 01 was officially released. Different from many domestic vehicles with urban navigation-assisted driving functions, the Extreme Yue 01 is not equipped with laser radar, making it the only vehicle in China that adopts the "pure vision" scheme to realize urban navigation-assisted driving, and it can be used immediately after release.
Specifically, based on Baidu Apollo’s full set of advanced autonomous driving capabilities and the empowerment of the safety system, Ji Yue adopted the algorithm architecture of BEV+Transformer+OCC occupying the network—which means that under the industrial background that urban navigation-assisted driving has been mass-produced with the help of laser radar, Ji Yue decided to open up a "pure vision" technical path in this track.
From the perspective of the industry, the release of Extreme Yue 01 also means that in the process of China’s intelligent driving industry landing, Extreme Yue has become the only OEM in China that chooses the pure visual route for high-level intelligent driving.
7. L3 and L4 models are officially qualified for road testing.
On November 17, 2023, a number of competent departments jointly issued a notice on the pilot work of intelligent networked vehicle access and road traffic. This means that, from a policy perspective, intelligent networked cars equipped with L3 and L4 functions are finally qualified to go on the road.
From the policy itself, the requirement of L3 and L4 testing itself is to select intelligent networked automobile products with automatic driving function with mass production conditions and carry out pilot projects on the road in a limited area; At the same time, vehicles used for transportation operations must meet the operational qualification and operational management requirements of the transportation authorities. Therefore, for L3 and L4, the competent authorities take a very cautious attitude of support.
It is worth mentioning that within one month after the announcement of the above notice, relevant models under many automobile brands, including BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Extreme Fox, Zhiji, Deep Blue, Aouita, Celeste, Tengshi, etc., have obtained corresponding autonomous driving test licenses.
8. Based on the big model, Tesla announced that it will be the next generation of autonomous driving.
On December 2, 2023, Tesla’s official social media account Tesla AI announced that Tesla is building a new generation of autonomous driving based on intelligent driving of a single basic video network, which will be able to drive vehicles directly.
At the same time as the above news was released, Tesla AI also started the recruitment for engineers, and said that it would create "the best end-to-end model based on large-scale fleet data". According to the recruitment information, the AI engineers recruited by Tesla are mainly oriented to basic model and Generative Modeling.
Although Tesla has not announced the specific direction of the next generation of autonomous driving, from the above information, Tesla will build the next generation of autonomous driving through the thinking and methods of large models based on the large amount of data and large-scale computing infrastructure it has-but at present, this exploration direction is still in its early stage.
9. Weilai officially released the self-developed intelligent driving chip Shenji NX9031.
On December 23, 2023, at NIO Day 2023, Weilai officially released the executive flagship car ET9 with a pre-sale price of 800,000, and released the first self-developed intelligent driving chip Shenji NX9031.
Specifically, Shenji NX9031 is the industry’s first intelligent driving chip manufactured by 5 nm gauge technology, with more than 50 billion transistors. Through the self-developed reasoning acceleration unit NPU, it can flexibly and efficiently run various AI algorithms such as BEV and Transformer. Wei Lai said that the efficiency of Shenji NX9031 in typical algorithms is much higher than that of existing benchmark products.
It is worth mentioning that with the release of Shenji NX9031, Weilai became the first OEM in China automobile industry to publicly announce its own intelligent driving chip.
10. Major players have promoted the landing of NOA in the city at the end of the year.
In December, new car companies, including Wei Xiaoli, are rapidly promoting the landing of urban navigation-assisted driving function.
Among them, on December 10th, LI released OTA 5.0. In terms of intelligent driving, full-scene intelligent driving will cover all expressways and urban loops in China, as well as urban roads in 110 cities. The safety of full-scene intelligent driving in high-speed scenes has also been upgraded. In the face of dangerous construction scenes, special-shaped work vehicles or extreme traffic jams, it can be bypassed or avoided in time to ensure driving safety.
On December 28th, Xpeng Motors officially launched a brand-new system version Xmart OS 4.5.0 for users such as G9, G6 and P7i. Along with this push, Xpeng Motors has also completed the layout and application of navigation-assisted driving function in 52 cities nationwide. At the same time, this OTA has greatly improved the ability of high-speed NGP, LCC and SR perception, taking into account the speed and depth of intelligent driving evolution.
Also on December 28th, Ren Shaoqing, vice president of Weilai Intelligent Driving R&D, announced that Weilai Global Navigation Assistant NOP+ had opened a total of 319,821 kilometers of urban mileage, refreshing the previously announced goal of "completing the verification of 250,000 kilometers of urban navigation route by the end of the year". By December 28th, there were 74 new cities in Weilai where the roads were connected into a network, with a total of 208.
It is worth mentioning that, at the M9 press conference on December 26th, Yu Chengdong said that high-level intelligent driving that can be started all over the country will also be used by users in OTA one after another before the end of December.
Write it at the end
Looking at the development process of the entire intelligent driving industry in 2023, we will find that the development of the intelligent driving industry has actually reached a key node.
From the perspective of business, intelligent driving, as the core component of automobile intelligence, has landed on more and more mass-produced models, and the performance of intelligent driving has gradually improved in the user’s car purchase decision. At the same time, consumers’ perception and acceptance of intelligent driving is getting higher and higher; Even from the perspective of high-speed pilot-assisted driving, intelligent driving has shown a downward trend in high-speed scenes.
However, from a technical point of view, the development of the entire intelligent driving technology route is far from mature; Especially in the aspect of urban navigation-assisted driving, the development of technical framework has entered a certain platform period, and the ability of engineering landing has become the focus. With the development of AI technology and the emergence of large models, players like Tesla are also trying to explore new possibilities of autonomous driving in technical paradigm.
One is downward popularization, and the other is downward exploration-but there is no contradiction between them.
From a longer period of time, intelligent driving is still a long track, but there will be more and more players in this track and the competition will become fierce. But at the same time, it is in this fierce competition that intelligent driving has the opportunity to achieve step-by-step progress from various levels such as technology, engineering and commercial landing, and ultimately benefit more ordinary consumers.
Therefore, 2023 is coming to an end, but smart driving will continue to move forward, and it may be more magnificent and changeable in 2024-and we will keep looking forward to it.