Behind the car companies’ inbound lidar: only 30% of the participants believe that the time to “get on the car” is ripe
In the field of intelligent driving, the mass production of many new technologies came later than expected, with lidar being an exception.
Entering 2021, under the leadership of Weilai, Xiaopeng, Ideal, BAIC Jihu, GAC E’an, Great Wall and other brands, more and more car companies have begun to announce that they will be equipped with Lidar in new cars, and the number of bicycles Also more and more. For example, the first model of Avita 11, the new high-end intelligent electric vehicle brand of Changan Automobile, is equipped with 3 lidars. As many as four.
In terms of delivery time, many of these models were released this year and will be officially delivered on a large scale next year. According to incomplete statistics from Gasgoo, at least 15 new cars equipped with lidar will be launched next year. This means that 2022 is expected to truly become a big year for mass production of lidar.
So, considering the performance and cost of lidar and other factors, is it time for this technology to be mass-produced on the car? In this regard, Gasgoo Motors recently launched an industry survey, and the results show that in this survey involving hundreds of people, only 30% of the participants believe that the time for lidar to “get on the car” is ripe, and the vast majority believe that the time is not really ripe yet. , Especially the lidar performance, cost and market basis, etc., all need to be further optimized.
Image source: Gasgoo
Lidar boarding, only 30% of participants think the time is right
In the past few years, lidar has been considered the standard for L3+ autonomous driving. In the L1 and L2 stages, although the driver can be allowed to feet off and hands off appropriately, the driver’s eyes need to be kept on the road. In this case, even if the millimeter-wave radar and camera have certain limitations, they can still meet the demand.
But at the L3 stage, according to the current definition, the driver is allowed to keep eyes off in certain scenes. For example, Mercedes-Benz has just passed the L3 autonomous driving system approved by the German Federal Motor Vehicle Transport Administration (KBA) strict technical regulations. It allows the intelligent pilot system to take over the driving tasks on high-speed roads with suitable conditions and dense traffic, and the driver can perform Other operations, such as contacting colleagues through the in-vehicle mobile office system, surfing the Internet or watching movies, etc.
This means that in the L3 stage, the sensor configuration of the vehicle can completely replace the eyes of a human driver in some scenarios. This requires an exponential increase in the perception system compared to L2 or even L1. Therefore, lidars with higher sensing accuracy and longer detection distances have been considered. On the one hand, they are used to make up for the defects of millimeter wave radars and cameras, and on the other hand, to improve the redundancy of the sensing system.
Vice President of Joyson Electronics, Joysonsmart carGuo Jishun, dean of the Institute of Technology, previously stated in public that he is a firm supporter of lidar. “I think only a fully heterogeneous sensor network can form a robust system.”
However, this year, although L3+ autonomous driving has not been as expected, many car companies have announced plans for mass production of lidar. In this regard, 26% of participants believe that the rapid evolution of automatic driving functions on mass-produced vehicles requires the support of lidar.
By combing through the plans of major car companies for the production of Lidar models, it is not difficult to find that many of these models are designed for automatic driving functions directly to L3, or infinitely close to L3 in terms of experience. For example, Xiaopeng P5, based on the new XPILOT 3.5 automatic driving assistance system, can further realize urban NGP on the basis of the high-speed NGP that has been achieved so far. The newly-launched NIO ET5, through NAD’s latest self-driving technology, as well as NIO’s super-sensing system Aquila and super-computing platform Adam, will also gradually realize point-to-point access to scenes such as high-speed, urban areas, parking, and battery exchange. Autonomous driving experience.
These are the typical application scenarios of L3 autonomous driving planned by automakers at this stage. Although L3 autonomous driving still faces multiple challenges in terms of technology, responsibility division, and supervision, it has been confirmed that it is expected to take the lead in autonomous driving in special scenarios such as expressways, urban expressways, and traffic congestion. And many car companies have already achieved it technically, just wait for the real “ice-breaking” of the policy.
From this point of view, at this stage, many car companies announced the launch of LiDAR, which is also based on a strategy of hardware embedding. That is, regardless of the immature time for mass production of high-end autonomous driving, first stack up the number of lidars, cameras, etc., so that L3 and L3+ autonomous driving can be realized through OTA when the timing is appropriate or the policy is released. Wei Bofan, the director of BMW Group in charge of research and development, said before that, in the future, BMW iX will be able to obtain L3 level autopilot system through software update, because iX already meets L3 functions technically.
Great Wall’s Coffee Intelligence also supports the use of OTA to upgrade L3 to L4 or even higher levels of autonomous driving. It is not difficult to understand why the WEY Mocha boldly equipped with 3 solid-state lidars, in addition to up to 8 millimeter wave radars, 8 cameras and 12 ultrasonic radars. This car was rushing to L3 from the beginning. , Even higher-level autonomous driving.
In addition to the need for technological evolution, 20% of participants believe that the current time for lidar to get on the car is ripe because of the need for brand upgrades and product positioning of independent car companies.
Especially in the past two years, brand upward has become the main theme of the development of independent car companies, and among car companies with Lidar mass production plans, it is true that luxury brands such as Mercedes-Benz and BMW and new car manufacturers such as Wei Xiaoli have been eliminated. There are many high-end brands that are independent automakers, such as BAIC Jihu, GAC Aeon, Changan Avita, SAIC Feifan Automobile, Great Wall WEY, Great Wall Salon Automobile and so on. Although Geely’s high-end brand Jikrypton has not announced a Lidar mass production plan, it has recently reached a cooperation with Sagitar Juchuang, and it is not ruled out that the Sagitar Lidar will be equipped on related models in the future.
For these high-end brands, intelligent driving, especially high-level autonomous driving, is undoubtedly an important gene, especially when everyone starts to work hard on this track. To stand out, you must have a better performance in technology. At this time, as a symbol of advanced autonomous driving, lidar has naturally become everyone’s first choice.
And it is undeniable that with lidar, whether in the capital market or the mass-produced car market, automakers also have better storytelling materials, so why not do it.