Self-driving cars, also known as driverless cars, cover a variety of cutting-edge technologies, including millimeter-wave radar, laser, GPS, odometer, computer vision, etc. Advanced control systems determine the appropriate navigation path by identifying visual information. Identify obstacles and sign information. Automated driving can reduce traffic risk, improve driving safety, improve road traffic efficiency, and avoid road blockage. Continue to extend, potential benefits due to driving safety and efficiency improvements include: Reduced fuel consumption , the reduction of insurance maintenance costs, the reduction of environmental pollution emissions, the reduction of parking space demand, etc.
Autopilot technology is divided into six levels according to current international standards. At present, there are several companies that can achieve L3 level autopilot, such as Google, Tesla, Audi, URBER, Baidu, etc. Most autopilot systems still stay in assisted driving.
Figure 1: Autopilot classification
Autopilot related policies in recent years: Accelerated landing of relevant auto-driving policies and standards
In 2017, following the domestic new energy vehicles, the self-driving car technology was pushed to the forefront. Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and other places have introduced relevant policies for automatic driving tests. April 11, 2018, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, Ministry of Public Security The Ministry of Transport issued the Notice on the "Intelligent Network Linked Vehicle Road Test Management Regulations (Trial)", and the trial and error regulations proposed that the relevant departments of the municipal government can formulate implementation rules according to the local conditions and organize the development of intelligent network road test. Work, expressed the central government's support for this matter. There are currently 5 cities that have issued auto-driving road test licenses, namely Shanghai, Beijing, Fujian, Chongqing, Shenzhen.
Chart 2: Summary of 2017-2018 Autopilot Main Related Policies
Autopilot investment market in 2018: Corporate cooperation is strengthened, investment is still hot
Since the first half of 2018, cooperation between technology companies and traditional car manufacturers and cooperation with auto parts manufacturers has become closer. On July 10, 2018, German automaker Daimler and electronics company Bosch announced that it has selected Nvidia's DrivePegasus as its artificial intelligence (AI) computing platform and will begin testing autonomous vehicles in California in the second half of 2019. On July 10, 2018, Audi and Huawei were Berlin, Germany signed a strategic cooperation agreement, the two sides will carry out in-depth cooperation in the field of intelligent networked vehicles, jointly promote the development of automotive automatic driving, and carry out LTE-V vehicle networking communication standard pilot project in Wuxi. July 11, 2018 Singularity car In cooperation with Inspur Group, we will bring into play the technical and business advantages of both sides in the fields of artificial intelligence, automatic driving R&D cooperation, system platform technical service cooperation, smart city construction, etc., and jointly promote the process of automatic driving and smart city industrialization. July 15, 2018 Great Wall Huaguan recently signed a strategic cooperation framework agreement with Beijing NavInfo in Beijing. Explore and refine cooperation solutions on autonomous driving technology, vehicle networking big data application technology, vehicle intelligent parts business and global business direction.
In addition to the cooperation between traditional car manufacturers, parts manufacturers and Internet technology companies, the investment in the field of autopilots remains undiminished. Since January 2018, Xiaoma Zhixing has received two rounds of financing of hundreds of millions of dollars, totaling 214 million. US dollar, the largest financing for domestic autopilot companies. In May 2018, GM's autopilot company Cruise received a $2.2 billion investment from Softbank Vision Fund and GM's additional $1.15 billion investment to develop automated driving technology and business. The current valuation of Cruise has reached 11.5 billion, close to one-fifth of the GM valuation, GM is considering allowing Cruise to go public.
Due to the complex and diversified technology in the field of autonomous driving, involving a large number of fields, the amount of relevant investment is huge, the R&D test time is long, the cost is huge, few companies can bear it alone, and the future joint investment, cooperative development is still the main trend.
Figure 3: 2018 Autopilot Financing Case Count
Mainly involved in the degree of technological development of autonomous driving companies: Google Waymo continues to maintain its leading position
According to a test report provided by the California Highway Administration DMV, Google Waymo continued to lead in the autopilot field in 2017, taking a small lead over 352,545 miles of test distance and 0.18 times of human intervention, up from 0.2 times per year. The number of human interventions has increased in a thousand miles. Cruise ranks second with 0.84 per thousand miles of human intervention. In 2017, Baidu made great progress in the field of automatic driving, with 22.06 human interventions per thousand miles. Bosch and Mercedes Countdown. Tesla collected a lot of data from a large group of vehicle users and handed in a blank in 2017. According to data submitted by Tesla in 2016, Tesla needs 330 human interventions per thousand miles. Secondly, there is still a big gap from the full automatic driving target. Starting in October 2017, Tesla is equipped with the L3 automatic driving system in the new production model. The Audi A8 is the world's first L3 automatic driving production model. It is enough to illustrate Audi's extraordinary achievements in the field of automatic driving.
Figure 4: 2017 Autopilot Enterprise Test Report
