Decisive victory in the second half of intelligentization, domestic wire-controlled chassis accelerates breakthrough

"The key to my country's transformation from an automobile power to an automobile power is to establish a solid and powerful industrial chain support. Core key technologies and supply chains, including drive-by-wire chassis, must be accelerated to achieve safety, independence, and controllability." On April 2, At the China Electric Vehicle Hundreds Forum (2023) Smart Vehicle Forum, the words of Tao Zhe, founder and CEO of Shanghai Nason Automotive Electronics Co., Ltd., focused the industry’s attention on the electrification and intelligence of the automotive industry, which are two major areas of wire-controlled chassis. The core intersection of development directions.

Tao Zhe, founder and CEO of Shanghai Nasen Automotive Electronics Co., Ltd.

Image source: China Electric Vehicles Committee of 100

According to the degree of automation, the industry generally divides autonomous driving into five levels. L1 and L2 are defined as assisted driving, and their applications have become very popular. However, the advancement of L3 and L4 is slower.

Compared with L2, L3 is considered a watershed in autonomous driving. Its biggest change is that it takes away part of the control of the vehicle from the driver's hands and hands it to the vehicle system. In other words, regardless of regulations, infrastructure and other factors, L3-level cars will directly determine the personal safety of drivers and passengers, which is a huge test for the vehicle-machine system.

The cornerstone of realizing high-level autonomous driving

"For L3+ autonomous driving, the control-by-wire chassis will be the key to determine whether this technology can finally be implemented." Tao Zhe pointed out that in the development process of new energy vehicles, whether it is electrification in the first half or intelligence in the second half, ization and drive-by-wire chassis are the intersection of these two major changes.

Taking smart electric vehicles as an example, whether it is L1 and L2 level functions represented by AEB, ACC, etc., or L3 and L4 level functions represented by valet parking, remote control parking, etc., they must ultimately be controlled by wire. The chassis is implemented, that is, the intention of ultimate autonomous driving is realized through the longitudinal control, lateral control, vertical control, and stability control of the car.

Therefore, as a key component in the execution of autonomous driving and the core safety component with the highest functional safety level in automobiles, the control-by-wire chassis is directly related to the safety, comfort, controllability, passability, etc. of the vehicle, and is regarded as autonomous driving. Cornerstone.

In addition, the wire-controlled chassis has the characteristics of fast response, high control accuracy and strong energy recovery, which can better adapt to L3 level and above intelligent driving solutions.

Based on this, "wireless control, no autonomous driving" has long become the consensus of industry development.

In this regard, Tao Zhe specifically pointed out that for L3-L5 high-end autonomous driving, the redundancy + safety of the wire-controlled chassis are the two most important factors.

Because of L3 and L4 autonomous driving, considering that in many scenarios the driver cannot take over the car immediately after an emergency occurs, but requires the system to make a short or even longer driving transition during this period, and then transfer the driving rights to When it is handed over to the driver, this requires that the control-by-wire chassis must have redundant backup capabilities to ensure that if one system has a problem, another system can make up for it in time to ensure the safe operation of the autonomous vehicle.

Take the braking system as an example. For L3 autonomous driving, in 90% of driving scenarios, when a single point failure occurs, the driver is required to take over within 10 seconds. Even in extreme situations, the driver's takeover time should be less than 2 seconds. minutes, in this case a second system is required to perform redundant braking in the shortest possible time. As for L4 autonomous driving, due to the longer backup takeover time, the redundancy requirements for the control-by-wire chassis will be relatively higher.

More than that, autonomous driving has various requirements for redundant braking systems, such as: requirements for redundant actuators, requirements for degradation schemes, requirements for actuators, requirements for responding to external braking, and avoiding potential failures. Requirements that occur, etc.

The "stuck" industrial chain must be independent

It is worth noting that the wire-controlled chassis, as the cornerstone of realizing high-level autonomous driving, is one of the key core technologies that is "stuck" in my country.

For a long time, the chassis system (such as ESC, brake-by-wire, steering-by-wire, etc.) as the core component of automobiles has been firmly dominated by foreign parts giants. In contrast, domestically, due to the difficulty, high threshold and high investment in the development of relevant core technologies, the late start of domestic related layout and weak foundation, the core chassis technology has been blocked by foreign countries for a long time, and my country has long lacked independent control-by-wire chassis companies.

Frankly speaking, this situation has inadvertently added a bit of crisis to the safe and stable development of our country's automobile industry, and this crisis will be further exacerbated by emergencies such as the epidemic.

"For Chinese automobiles to truly achieve overtaking on corners and change lanes, and truly move from a major automobile country to a powerful automobile country, the key is to establish a solid and powerful industrial chain support. Under the influence of the changing international political and economic situation, including drive-by-wire chassis The stuck-neck technology and industrial chain must accelerate the realization of safety, autonomy and controllability," Tao Zhe emphasized.

Its analysis pointed out that judging from the pain points of ensuring the supply of new energy vehicles in recent years, braking, steering, and batteries are the three major supply chain systems that OEMs are currently most concerned about. From this perspective, the problem of independent control of the chassis industry chain (chassis accounts for two of the three major supply guarantee pain points) must be resolved.

"So in the face of the needs of industry development and the pain points in the industrial supply chain, Nason has taken advantage of the trend and is committed to becoming the leader of wire-controlled chassis in China." As the founder of Shanghai Nason Automotive Electronics Co., Ltd., Tao Zhe said Be clear about the strategic vision for your business.

Fortunately, with the encouragement of national policies and the in-depth transformation of the automobile industry towards electrification and intelligence, OEMs have quickly broken the black box delivery model of traditional Tier 1 manufacturers and provided services to local suppliers represented by Nason. Created an excellent breakout opportunity.

In 2018, Nason realized the mass production of China's first electronically controlled brake assist system NBooster, half a year earlier than the mass production of similar products by international giants in China. This product was also recognized as "the first high-end intelligent equipment" "Breakthrough" has now gone through three generations of technology iterations.

In 2020, the vehicle stability control system ESC independently developed by Nasun was mass-produced, once again achieving a breakthrough in the domestic substitution of another core product of the brake-by-wire system, thus forming a complete brake-by-wire Two-box solution. This product can not only compete one-to-one with international giants in terms of functions, but also be superior to foreign products in some aspects of performance.

In 2021, Nason launched a new generation of integrated intelligent braking system NBC, which is an integrated and fully decoupled one-box solution. It has the characteristics of high integration, high efficiency and high performance, providing more convenience for OEMs. and more cost-effective solutions.

With its solid product technology and differentiated innovation capabilities, Nasun has reached cooperation with nearly 30 well-known automakers and autonomous driving companies, including Changan, GAC, Geely, Great Wall, BYD, BAIC, and Baidu, and has developed more than 100 supporting development projects.

A complete solution for autonomous driving in the future

In order to fulfill its vision of becoming China's leader in drive-by-wire chassis, Nason's actions obviously don't stop there.

As mentioned at the beginning of the article, the control-by-wire chassis is the key to determining whether L3 and above high-end autonomous driving technology can finally be implemented. To this end, Nason has laid out a complete set of solutions for future autonomous driving.

According to Tao Zhe, in order to fully meet the redundancy and safety requirements of L3 and above autonomous driving systems (from perception to control to execution), Nason has deployed a complete set of solutions in the field of online control braking systems.

One set is a two-box solution with hardware redundancy, namely the NBooster electronically controlled brake assist system and the ESC vehicle stability control system. In this solution, NBooster and ESC are decoupled from each other and back up each other, which can not only meet the requirements of high-level autonomous driving, fully realize safe braking in different scenarios, but also provide OEMs with flexible architectural solution options at a cost-effective Advantage.

There is also a one-box integrated solution. Compared with the two-box solution, it is highly integrated, small in size and space, and low in cost. It can meet the future trend of intelligent integration of wire-controlled chassis.