Huawei enters L4 autonomous driving, how far is it from overtaking others?

Looking at the current global automotive industry, new energy and intelligent driving are the two main areas of focus for almost all manufacturers. However, for China's traditional automotive industry, which is still in the catching-up stage, it sees hope of surpassing traditional car companies in these two areas.

At the Huawei Connect Conference, Huawei showcased a series of automotive-related technology solutions to the outside world. The content mainly involves many fields such as intelligent driving, intelligent networking, intelligent cockpit, intelligent car cloud and intelligent electric. Among them, the most eye-catching is the L4 full-stack intelligent driving solution (ADS).

According to Huawei, Huawei ADS fully integrates the capabilities of chips, algorithms, data and other aspects. Moreover, the main core technologies such as chips and algorithms are independently developed by Huawei, and are optimized for China's complex road conditions, and can handle and complete complex path conditions.

Huawei ADS can meet the smooth evolution requirements from L2+ ADAS advanced driver assistance systems to L4 autonomous driving. The solution is also designed to support the scale and mass production of autonomous driving systems, which can help automakers quickly implement autonomous driving and can be continuously upgraded through OTA air download technology.

In addition, Huawei has also established a test fleet through cooperation with car companies to hone data capabilities, accumulate road test data and continuously improve the drive system. As early as 2018, Huawei and Audi signed a memorandum of understanding on strategic cooperation in Berlin, Germany. The two parties will carry out in-depth cooperation in the field of intelligent connected vehicles to promote the development of autonomous driving and digital services. In the second half of this year, the Audi fleet equipped with Huawei ADS has gradually scaled up road testing, and the fleet size has reached dozens of vehicles. In addition, Huawei has also reached cooperation with car companies such as FAW Hongqi, Dongfeng Motor, Changan Automobile, Suzhou Golden Dragon, Yutong Bus and other autonomous driving companies.

In the rapid development of the domestic intelligent driving field, Huawei has made rapid progress at the corporate level, and at the policy level, it has received strong support from local governments such as Wuhan.

Following the issuance of intelligent connected vehicle road test licenses in Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, Guangzhou and other places, the National Intelligent Connected Vehicle (Wuhan) Test Demonstration Zone was also officially unveiled recently. Different from the previous ones, this time the Wuhan Municipal Transportation Bureau issued the world's first intelligent connected vehicle manned trial operation license, which was won by Baidu, Hailiang Technology and Shenlan Technology.

This means that the three companies can not only conduct relevant tests of intelligent networked vehicles in the test demonstration area, but also conduct commercial trial operations of autonomous driving technology. On the day the test demonstration area was unveiled, a total of 7 intelligent networked vehicles were put into operation. The 7 test vehicles can respond to other road users and emergencies in real time, and realize functions such as pedestrian and vehicle detection, deceleration and avoidance, emergency parking, lane change, and automatic stop under autonomous driving. At the same time, they can freely switch between manual and intelligent driving modes according to actual conditions and needs.

We can see that the field of intelligent driving has received full support and development both in terms of technology and policy, but does this mean that we are not far from autonomous driving? No, the real popularization of intelligent driving technology is far from that simple. Previously, the research and development of intelligent driving technology mainly relied on laboratory simulations or artificially built closed scenes for testing, and the results had considerable limitations.

Our daily road traffic is completely open and has no limitations, so any situation may occur on the road. It is naturally unrealistic to use the existing technical conditions of the intelligent driving system to complete accurate operations in all situations. Coupled with the constraints of laws and regulations and people's moral concepts, the development of autonomous driving can only be a gradual process.

But we are glad that more and more car companies have put related technologies and equipment of intelligent driving into mass-produced models, which not only makes daily driving more worry-free and convenient, but also greatly reduces or avoids the occurrence of traffic accidents during driving, so that the safety of vehicles and passengers is further guaranteed. This is also one of the main purposes of developing intelligent driving.