In 2022, the "Top Ten Keywords" for intelligent driving

The year 2022 that has just passed is undoubtedly full of drama for intelligent driving.

During this year, faced with the question “When will smart driving be implemented on a large scale?” posed by the market, every company seems to be struggling to cope alone.

However, this year is also a key breakthrough year for the development of intelligent driving. Under the cold wave, the industry gradually returned to rationality, shifting from "technology first" to "mass production first", and intelligent driving officially moved from the concept stage to the commercialization stage.

There are only 365 days in a year.

Looking back now from the starting point of 2023, although the intelligent driving industry spent a relatively disappointing year in 2022, it still crossed many technical and policy barriers, and now ushered in a new chapter.

New Smart Driving attempts to sort out the context, summarize the top ten annual keywords in the smart driving circle, and outline a complete smart driving in 2022 for readers.

Keyword 1: blind-filling lidar

In 2022, under the pursuit of intelligent driving routes that "emphasize perception and ignore maps", the importance of lidar has once again been faintly elevated. 2022 is also known as the first year of lidar being put on the road.

As more models have lidar onboard, more product demand will arise in different smart driving scenarios.

This year, the domestic market has ignited a war to "compensate for blind spot sensing", and blind spot compensation lidar has also entered people's field of vision.

The so-called blind-filling lidar, to be understood in layman's terms, is a lidar that supplements blind areas. It can replace certain sensors or be mixed with other sensors.

The blinding lidar market will be fierce, especially in the second half of 2022.

Within a week, three domestic lidar companies have announced new developments in blind-filling lidar.

On November 2, Hesai Technology officially released the short-range blind-filling lidar FT120, and claimed that it has obtained mass production quotas of more than 1 million units from multiple OEMs.

On November 7, Sagitar Jutron released the solid-state blind-filling lidar E1 based on self-developed chips and a new technology platform at its first Science and Technology Day.

On November 8, Liangdao Intelligent stated that the SPAD chip of blind-filling lidar LD Satellite has passed AEC-Q100 certification.

All three manufacturers have unanimously set the mass production time of blind-filling lidar in the second half of 2023.

Blind-filling lidar is becoming a new battlefield for domestic lidar manufacturers to compete. Players are also working hard to bring products to the market and compete for market opportunities.

Zooming in on the entire market, with the vigorous promotion of urban NOA scenarios, there is still huge room for market growth in the blind-filling laser category.

Keyword 2: Large model

Large models have always been the technology "darlings" pursued by the entire artificial intelligence industry and academia. In 2022, as high-end assisted driving accelerates "entering the city", AI large models are increasingly valued by leading autonomous driving companies.

The reasons are that firstly, large model technology has obvious advantages in autonomous driving's perception ability, decision-making ability, safety and stability, and secondly, the trend of large computing power chips and self-built AIDC by car manufacturers starting in 2022 is huge. The model provides underlying support.

Large model technology is applied to the field of autonomous driving, and Tesla is the "originator."

In 2019, Tesla introduced the Transformer large model to help it continuously improve FSD based on purely visual routes.

In recent years, with more autonomous driving companies leaning towards the "heavy perception" route, the domestic market has also set off a research boom in large-model technology.

In 2022, Transformer large-model technology will be the absolute protagonist, whether at the AI ​​DAY or technology interpretation meetings held by various autonomous driving companies.

In August this year, Xpeng Motors announced the completion of China's largest autonomous driving intelligent computing center "Fuyao" in Ulanqab for autonomous driving model training.

In September, Hao Mo Zhixing CEO Gu Weihao said at a media technology sharing meeting that the Attention large model is a new trend in the current development of AI, and introduced the latest progress in Attention large model technology research.

At Baidu's Apollo Day technology open day in November, Wenxin's large-scale model was also launched for the first time to implement technology for autonomous driving.

From the perspective of the entire market, the development routes of various autonomous driving companies seem to be gradually converging. They first developed self-developed terminal computing power platforms and established cloud supercomputing centers. Then, based on the establishment of a "heavy perception" route, they proposed using big data to drive big data. model to achieve the goal of accelerated iteration of autonomous driving.

Under the demand for large computing power in autonomous driving, players who have mastered large-scale model technology may become the top players in the industry.

Keyword 3: Sodium-ion battery

At the 2022 World Power Battery Conference, Zeng Qinghong, chairman of GAC Group, said, "I am working for CATL," exposing the dilemma in the automotive power battery field to the public's view.

In recent years, problems such as high prices and limited resource reserves of lithium-ion batteries have driven up the cost of power batteries, which has also stumped many car companies.

While car companies are looking for new suppliers, they are also relying on the market to bring new "substitutes."

In 2022, many companies will focus on sodium-ion batteries, which have widely distributed resources, and have successively announced the latest progress in the research and development of sodium-ion batteries.

CATL has stated on public platforms many times that the sodium battery released by the company has a single cell energy density of 160Wh/kg, and the energy density target of the next generation of sodium batteries is 200Wh/kg, and it plans to promote the industrialization of sodium batteries in 2023.

Honeycomb Energy revealed that the development of the first-generation sodium-ion battery prototype has been completed. It plans to complete the development of a 160Wh/kg sodium-ion battery in the fourth quarter of 2023, with an expected cycle life of more than 2,000 times.

BYD, which has a large presence in the field of power batteries, has also been reported that "sodium-ion batteries have begun to enter the battery condition testing stage."

In addition to enterprises, the government is also continuously supporting the development of the sodium-ion battery industry. In July 2022, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology officially issued the first batch of sodium-ion battery industry standard plans. A month later, the "Guiding Opinions on Promoting the Development of the Energy Electronics Industry (Draft for Comment)" was released, proposing to accelerate technological breakthroughs and large-scale application of sodium-ion batteries.

In November, news came from the China Electronics Technology Standardization Institute that the formulation of standards for the sodium-ion battery industry was accelerated and efforts were made to report to relevant departments as soon as possible. It is reported that the draft for comments on the sodium-ion battery industry standards has been completed and is currently soliciting opinions from the industry.

Although sodium-ion batteries currently do not meet the conditions for mass production and use in vehicles, under the constantly updated trends, sodium-ion battery-related industries may usher in new development nodes.

Keyword 4: Integrated travel and parking

In 2022, "all-in-one travel and parking" continues to be popular last year.

Behind the popularity lies the "special needs" of the Chinese market. On the one hand, China’s vast land area and developed highway system have put forward higher requirements for the driving functions of vehicles. On the other hand, the difficulty of finding parking spaces has become the norm in some cities, and parking has also put challenges on the skills of many drivers. tested.

Looking back at the development history of "all-in-one travel and parking", the concept first broke into people's horizons in 2021.

At first, many chip companies launched SoC chips designed for integrated parking and parking functions. Later, many domestic tier 1 players including MAXIEYE, Desay SV, and Freetech launched integrated parking and parking solutions.

Specifically, "integrated driving and parking" emerged from the evolution of automobile electronic and electrical architecture from distributed to centralized. It also has the core advantages of reducing costs, improving development efficiency, improving driving experience, and improving driving experience.

With obvious advantages, both OEMs and domestic tier 1s are accelerating their layout of the track.

By 2022, the "integrated driving and parking" intelligent driving solution has officially arrived on the eve of large-scale installation.

On the one hand, domestic OEMs are rushing to release plans for models equipped with integrated parking and parking functions, such as the well-known car brands such as BYD, Jikrypton, and Ideal. Previously, models including the Xpeng P7 have already achieved mass production of integrated parking and parking solutions. Land.

On the other hand, with the massive demand from OEMs, Tier 1 naturally did not miss the opportunity. More than 20 suppliers, including Zhixing Technology, Zongmu Technology, and Desay SV, have released integrated travel and parking solutions, and some companies have already begun Entered the pre-installation mass production stage.

In 2022, "integrated driving and parking" will become the promotional selling point of new models, and it will also become a new competition track for car companies.