【Autobots】Intelligence will be the primary productive force

In the era of the Internet of Everything, smart cars are expected to replace smart phones and become the core of the industrial chain; the continuous iteration of intelligence will drive the progress of business, and business will in turn catalyze the progress of intelligence.

When talking about the future today, if we still talk about developing new energy and planning pure electric platforms, the moment we speak is already a thing of the past.

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To accomplish great things, it is important to recognize the situation and act accordingly to achieve twice the result with half the effort.

Without intelligence, there is no point in talking about digital economy, let alone economic transformation. Putting "intelligence" and "new energy" side by side, the latter is just a last-place player. All the arrangements made by the Chinese government before are laying the foundation for intelligence.

As early as March 2020, the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee proposed to "accelerate the construction of new infrastructure such as 5G networks and data centers." Two months later, the National People's Congress and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference proposed to focus on supporting "new infrastructure construction." The so-called "new infrastructure construction" includes 5G base station construction, ultra-high voltage, intercity high-speed railways and urban rail transit, new energy vehicle charging piles, big data centers, artificial intelligence and industrial Internet. Among them, the layout for intelligence occupies four items, and new energy is only one point in the transportation planning.

In the past year, the strategic layout for "intelligence" has been accelerating. The "Intelligent Vehicle Innovation and Development Strategy" confirms that my country will achieve large-scale production of conditional autonomous driving intelligent vehicles in 2025, and build an industrial chain including a technology innovation system, an industrial ecosystem, an infrastructure system, a regulatory standard system, a product supervision system, and a network security system, laying the foundation for cultivating industrial development advantages, breaking through key technical bottlenecks, and enhancing the ability to lead change.

The "Xiongan New Area Smart City Standard System Framework (Version 1.0)" has constructed a smart city standard system of 9 items in three categories: "infrastructure and perception system construction, intelligent applications, and information security", realizing the integration of "dual planning" and synchronization of "dual infrastructure" of urban physical space and digital virtual space, and promoting the construction of intelligent infrastructure such as full-domain intelligent perception systems, new-generation communication networks, urban computing capabilities, and "city brains", setting an example for future urban construction and planning management.

The "Guidelines for the Construction of a National New Generation Artificial Intelligence Standards System" proposes detailed work nodes. In 2021, it will clarify the top-level design of artificial intelligence standardization and study the overall rules for standard system construction and standard development. In 2023, it will initially establish an artificial intelligence standard system, focusing on the development of key and urgently needed standards such as data, algorithms, systems, and services, so as to strengthen the top-level design of standardization in the field of artificial intelligence and promote technology research and development and standard setting in the artificial intelligence industry.

In fact, China's large-scale investment in intelligence and interconnection began in 2016. During the 13th Five-Year Plan period, my country has vigorously improved the development environment of emerging industries, established access conditions, regulatory rules and standards systems that are conducive to the development of new technologies, new products, new formats and new models, and established national strategic industrial development funds in the fields of new generation information technology, space information intelligent perception, high-end materials, etc. At the same time, subsidies to encourage the development of new energy are on the way to decline.

Since 2017, "artificial intelligence" has been continuously included in the "Government Work Report". The 2019 Government Work Report even proposed the concept of "intelligence +": "Build an industrial Internet platform, expand intelligence +, and empower the transformation and upgrading of the manufacturing industry", and to achieve Internet + government services, Internet + regulatory reforms, Internet + education, Internet + culture, Internet + inspection... Gradually increase the weight of intelligence and interconnection.

In the "14th Five-Year Plan", regarding forward-looking and strategic major national scientific and technological projects, "artificial intelligence" ranks first, followed by quantum information, integrated circuits, life and health... At this point, China's development strategy has become clear: based on our country's industrial scale advantages, supporting advantages and first-mover advantages in some fields, we will build emerging industrial chains and promote the high-end, intelligent and green development of traditional industries.

If we say that during the 13th Five-Year Plan period, my country laid a solid foundation and made a vigorous change in direction, then during the 14th Five-Year Plan period, my country must insist on innovation-driven and technology-driven development to create new advantages for sustainable development. Now, when planning and laying out the future, we must put artificial intelligence and information interconnection in the development strategy, while emission reduction and new energy are just tactical actions.

industry

At the end of 2020, Elon Musk tweeted that he tried to boost Tesla's year-end sales by offering three months of free use of "full self-driving" (which costs about $10,000 to purchase), but the final result was disappointing. GM's Super Cruise super-intelligent driving system has been in the Chinese market for three years, but few people have purchased or used it.

This is due to the tightening of government supervision, the weak onboard sensors and computing power, and more importantly, the fact that "autonomous driving" has not yet become an important and urgent option for users to purchase, and its role is limited to "planting grass". But from another perspective, this is also an opportunity for automobile companies and the entire supply chain. Pure electric drive has entered commercialization, while the "smart" engine is still on the road to maturity.

2020 is a year of rapid development for vehicle OTA (over-the-air software download to upgrade vehicle performance). Remote upgrades of mobile phones and apps have become commonplace, and car companies have also started vehicle OTA to fix vulnerabilities, optimize and improve performance. This is an important sign that software "determines" the capabilities of cars and that cars have entered the intelligent era.

Through OTA, the Chinese brand Xiaopeng upgraded its autonomous driving assistance system, the joint venture brand Buick improved the response speed and recognition ability of voice control, and the luxury brand BMW upgraded its iDrive 7.0 operating system... It is worth mentioning that NIO started the whole vehicle OTA three years ago and achieved about 40 version iterations through FOTA. From the perspective of long-term development trends, OTA upgrades have greater development potential, which will not only improve the interaction between people and cars, but also promote cars to become smart terminals like mobile phones.

2020 is a year of rapid development in real-road testing of autonomous driving, not only due to the innovative research and development of start-ups and the acquisitions of traditional car companies, but also due to regional economic organizations setting standards and local governments investing resources.

Baidu's Western Autonomous Driving Open Test Base, which has already started construction, can meet the testing needs of Level 4 autonomous driving; the autonomous driving test area located in the Beijing Economic and Technological Development Zone has 74.4 kilometers of open test roads, of which 40 kilometers are available for V2X testing. In Europe, Lower Saxony, Germany, has begun installing fixed induction piles on the A39 highway for autonomous driving road testing; Jaguar Land Rover has also invested 7.1 million pounds to build interconnected highways in the UK... Compared with closed parks, open testing on real roads is more meaningful, whether it is machine autonomous learning, data collection, or program checking and supplementing, and capability upgrade.

2020 is also the year when the Industrial Internet builds the backbone of manufacturing and high-speed data determines product quality.

Xiaopeng Motors' Zhaoqing factory and the second phase of BMW Brilliance Power Battery Center were completed and put into production in 2020. The former, based on the digital factory, uses Internet of Things technology and monitoring technology to visualize production information, equipment information, process information and quality information, and realize transparency of the manufacturing process; the latter uses "Industry 4.0" technologies such as plasma cleaning and intelligent optical inspection, and adopts automatic navigation vehicles (AGVs) as product carriers throughout the line, and adjusts the driving route at any time according to production needs.

Remote upgrades have been fully launched, autonomous driving continues to mature, industrial interconnection has become a standard... In the automotive industry, "intelligence" has begun to become the keyword for all progress and development.