Under the cover of pneumonia, the national automobile market is gloomy, but there is an exception, and this exception is autonomous driving.
In January this year, a large-scale COVID-19 epidemic broke out suddenly in China. In order to help fight the epidemic, unmanned vehicles developed by domestic enterprises such as JD.COM, Baidu and Meituan were quickly put into major hospitals and isolation points to transport medicines and daily necessities, which not only gave autonomous driving a great sense of existence, but also made this technology well verified in practical application.
At the end of February, while many domestic auto companies and parts companies were mired in the performance losses caused by the pneumonia epidemic, China autonomous driving technology company Pony.ai and Yushi Technology gained investment from Toyota and Bosch respectively by virtue of their leading technical strength in the field of autonomous driving.
At about the same time, the California Vehicle Authority (DMV) released the Autopilot Takeover Report in 219, which was displayed on MPI(Miles? Per? Intervention, the average mileage traveled between two manual interventions) value ranking, five companies in the top ten have China background, namely Baidu, AutoX, Pony.ai, Didi, PlusAI, among which Baidu Apollo? The ranking is the first time to surpass Waymo and win the first place, which shows that China Technology Company is unstoppable on the autopilot track.
For a long time, the detachment of self-driving test vehicles has been regarded as an important indicator to measure the actual performance of self-driving vehicles. Generally speaking, the fewer times the test vehicle leaves and the fewer times the human intervention takes over, it shows that the more stable the autopilot system of the vehicle is, the higher the level of autopilot research and development of its company is.
Therefore, to some extent, the top ten China technology companies in the DMV list account for half of the country, which also reflects the remarkable improvement of China's overall strength in autonomous driving research and development and the continuous expansion of its international influence.
China's self-driving enterprises have made a strong overseas campaign
According to this DMV report, Baidu still put in only four test vehicles in California last year, but the total test mileage has greatly increased compared with 218, reaching 18,3 miles, and * * * has been separated for six times, taking over every 18,5 miles on average, which is an obvious improvement compared with the average of taking over every 26 miles in 218.
Image source: Baidu Apollo
Compared with Google, the average mileage traveled by Baidu between two human interventions in 219 was 4,831 kilometers longer than that of Waymo, so Baidu successfully overtook Waymo and won the first prize. In the 218 DMV list, Baidu only ranked seventh, and was far behind by Waymo.
but it is undeniable that Waymo is still far ahead of other enterprises in the test mileage. Last year, Waymo launched 148 test vehicles in California, and completed 1.45 million miles of tests, accounting for about half of the total test mileage of all vehicles. In 219, various autonomous driving companies in California completed? 288? The 1,-mile autopilot test is 1.7 times that of Cruise and 13 times that of Baidu. By January of this year, the total mileage of Waymo self-driving cars had exceeded 2 million miles.
with only eight test vehicles, AutoX completed the 32,-mile test in California * * * last year, leaving for three times and taking over every 1,684 miles on average, ranking fourth, and the improvement is also very significant. In 218, AutoX launched seven test vehicles in California, only testing 22,71 miles, and on average, it had to take over less than 2 miles.
image source: AutoX
at present, AutoX is ready to deploy the next stage of testing in California-completely unmanned testing. In December 219, AutoX was exposed that it had applied for an unmanned test license in California. Once approved, AutoX will be able to deploy unmanned test vehicles without security officers in California in the future. Previously, Waymo was the only company in California that had obtained the qualification for completely driverless car testing.
Pony.ai, with 22 test vehicles, tested 174,8 miles in California last year, leaving 27 times and taking over every 6,475 miles on average, ranking fifth in MPI value. In 218, Pony.ai tested 16,356 miles in California with only six test vehicles, with a total of * * * leaving 16 times and taking over every 1,22 miles on average, which can be described as rapid progress.
Image source: Pony.ai
It is out of affirmation of its technical strength that as early as June 219, Pony.ai was granted an autonomous driving operation license issued by California, and was allowed to provide autonomous driving travel service for public passengers, namely RoboTaxi service, and Pony.ai became the first China autonomous driving technology company to obtain the license in California.
In November p>219, Pony.ai officially launched the first Robotaxi normalization service for the general public in California through cooperation with Hyundai Motor. Users who need it can use their mobile phones to call the self-driving modern Kona electric SUV with BotRide's eponymous version of the App, and reach the nearest boarding point according to the guidance of the App. Recently, Pony.ai has further expanded the scope of robot taxi service in California by cooperating with fremont City. In the future, fremont citizens can call Pony.ai's self-driving cars when they need to travel. These cars will travel on the route between the busy Amtrak/ACE train station in fremont and the city hall and the city development service center.
in 219, Didi launched 12 test vehicles in * * *, California, running 19,279 miles, leaving for 8 times, with an average of 1,534 miles to take over. It is worth mentioning that this is the first time that Didi has submitted the California road test report since it was qualified for the California autopilot test in May 218, and it has advanced into the top ten in one fell swoop and won the eighth place. The strength is evident.
In fact, as early as March 217, when Didi set up its first overseas AI laboratory in Mountain View, California, it said that Didi Chuxing was full of interest in self-driving cars. In early 218, Didi was exposed that it had carried out self-driving related tests in China and the United States. It can be seen that although there is little news in the field of autonomous driving, it has been quietly laid out.
PlusAI? Last year, with two test vehicles, it tested 1,88 miles in California, separated twice, and took over every 94 miles on average, ranking ninth. In 218, PlusAI tested 1,816 miles in California with only two cars, and * * * took over 199 times, with an average of 54 miles, and the progress was also very obvious.
Image source: PlusAI
Last December, Zhijia Technology's L4-class self-driving truck crossed 2,8 miles (45km) across the east and west coasts of the United States in less than three days, becoming a world-renowned dairy giant Landuo Lake? （LandO? Lakes? ) provided the first self-driving freight service. It is reported that this is the first commercial trial operation of L4-class self-driving trucks towing refrigerated carriages loaded with fresh goods across the United States. This success can be described as a powerful verification of PlusAI's autonomous driving ability to safely handle various weather and road conditions.
not only that, PlusAI? The safety test of unmanned heavy trucks was also carried out in 17 States including Arizona, California and Colorado. In some of these States, PlusAI was the first unmanned heavy truck technology company to conduct the test, and successively won the first national automatic driving test license for operating trucks and the first inter-provincial regional test license for unmanned heavy trucks in China.
based on existing achievements, CES in 22? Shanghai PlusAI said that its unmanned test scale will cover all the permitted continental states in the United States before the end of this year. In the test project, it will try to use brand-new test equipment and routes for trial operation, and continuously improve the ability of its autopilot system to handle complex driving scenarios.
Autopilot or let China "pull back the game"
For a long time in the past, China's automobile industry has been in a state of following internationally, and even now, it has not taken off the label of "big but not strong". The emergence of autonomous driving gives domestic enterprises an opportunity to compete with multinational companies on the same stage. In the past few years, although a large number of excellent self-driving players such as Waymo, Cruise, Nuro, General Motors, Toyota and Nissan have appeared abroad, Baidu, Didi, Pony.ai, AutoX, Yushi Technology, Huawei, JD.COM and Changan Automobile are also actively developing related research and development in China, and have made remarkable progress.
Perhaps compared with Waymo, China driverless companies started half a beat later, but the efforts of China enterprises in recent years are gradually narrowing the gap. For example, Baidu did well in California last year, and its development in China is also booming. Especially in the second half of 219, Baidu not only won the first batch of T4-level road test licenses and self-driving manned test licenses in Beijing, but also successively reached a strategic cooperation agreement with Changsha, Zhangzhou, Yangquan and Yinchuan on demonstration applications such as self-driving and vehicle-road coordination.
Image source: Baidu
Among them, in September 219, Robotaxi, Baidu's self-driving taxi team, was officially put into trial operation for the public in Changsha, taking the first step of marketization. In early November, Baidu launched the second domestic driverless taxi trial operation project in Cangzhou, which further narrowed the distance between ordinary citizens and self-driving cars, making this technology really enter the market from internal research and development. In December, Baidu Apollo conducted simultaneous tests in 23 cities including Beijing, Wuhan, Cangzhou and Changchun, and accumulated more than 3 million kilometers of test mileage in just one month, which accumulated rich experience for Baidu's research and development of autonomous driving related technologies. In 219, Baidu Apollo completed the test of 754, kilometers in Beijing alone with 52 test vehicles, so Baidu became the enterprise with the largest number of test vehicles and the longest test mileage among all test enterprises in Beijing in 219.
It is based on these previous explorations that in the pneumonia outbreak at the beginning of this year, Baidu was able to join many partners such as Neolithic, Golden Dragon Bus, Zhixing, Qingdao Wuniu, Zhongke Huiyan, etc., and quickly join in the front line of anti-epidemic and use unmanned vehicles to carry out the distribution of living materials, medicines, etc., so that this technology can be truly applied to practice and benefit mankind.
Image source: Baidu Apollo
In addition to testing in California, AutoX also plans to carry out self-driving manned testing in China this year. In 22? At CES, AutoX and FCA reached a cooperation. This year, the two sides will build an unmanned vehicle PacificaX (Long Xing) based on Pacifica Grand Jetron, a subsidiary of FCA, and launch it in Shenzhen and Shanghai on a large scale. In Shanghai, AutoX plans to launch 1 unmanned taxis for trial operation. In the longer term, AutoX will also join hands with FCA to deploy self-driving cars in the entire Asian market.
it is also known that AutoX will deploy the first batch of RoboTaxi in Europe on a large scale at the end of this year. In July 219, AutoX reached an exclusive strategic partnership with Swedish electric vehicle manufacturer NEVS. The two parties will integrate AutoX's self-driving car technology into the next-generation car architecture of NEVS, so that the self-driving new energy vehicles jointly developed by the two parties will be put on the public roads in Europe in 22.
In 219, Didi has a clearer plan for autonomous driving. In August 219, Didi announced that it had officially upgraded its autonomous driving department to an independent company. It is used for autonomous driving research and development, product application and related business development. Just one month later, Didi obtained the first batch of manned demonstration application licenses issued by Shanghai, and the other two licensed companies were SAIC and BMW.
according to the plan, Didi will land in Shanghai at the beginning of this year, and put 3 L4+ self-driving vehicles on specific public roads. At that time, an "automatic driving" option will be added to Didi's ride interface, which will be juxtaposed with the existing ride options such as "express train", "special car" and "taxi". If the starting and ending points selected by passengers are within a specific area, Didi will send self-driving vehicles to take orders. However, perhaps due to the COVID-19 epidemic, Didi's self-driving travel service has not yet been launched.
It can be said that whether unmanned vehicles fight the epidemic, China Autopilot Technology Co., Ltd. is blessed by the auto giants, or the outstanding achievements in the DMV Autopilot Report, all indicate that the technical strength and global influence of domestic enterprises in the field of autonomous driving are currently in a stage of rapid improvement. Perhaps at present, China still faces multiple problems such as immature supply chain and imperfect policies and regulations in the large-scale commercialization of autonomous driving, but from the perspective of market segments, the landing of advanced autonomous driving technology in closed scenes is just around the corner.
Image source: Yushi Technology
Yushi Technology, which has just received investment from parts giant Bosch, proves this point. After more than two years of R&D, testing and trial operation, an unmanned logistics vehicle was launched in Hong Kong International Airport on December 3, 219 to provide luggage transportation services for passengers. This is the first unmanned normal operation project in the world under the actual operating environment of the airport, and it is also the first unmanned freight commercial service. In the future, as more similar projects gradually land, domestic driverless driving is expected to usher in a real spring!
This article comes from the author of Chejia, car home, and does not represent car home's standpoint.