ADAS research of local car companies: The NOA popularization storm has begun. How will the OEMs respond?

01. The NOA popularization storm has begun, and local brands have launched dimensionality reduction attacks to achieve market dominance.

According to the Zuosi Auto Research database, from January to August 2023, joint venture L2.5 and above assembly accounted for 3.0%, mainly driven by Tesla alone; independent L2.5 and above assembly accounted for 3.7%. An increase of 1.8 percentage points compared with last year (1.9%). From January to August 2023, the proportion of independent L2.9-level assembly was 1.9%, an increase of 1 percentage point from the whole year of 2022. The main brands of urban NOA include Ideal, Weilai, Avita, Wenjie, and Xpeng wait.

Penetration rate of ADAS function levels of China’s independent brand passenger cars in the first eight months of 2021-2023

Source: Zuosi Automobile Research Database

Judging from the models and plans released by various car companies, independent brands are actively deploying NOA, and are beginning to show price sinking and configuration improvement strategies. OEMs intend to use "cost-effectiveness" to occupy the market in advance.

For example, in September 2023, Wenjie's new M7 will be launched, with a price of 249,800-329,800 yuan (the price of the old model is 319,800-379,800 yuan). Xinwenjie M7 is equipped with 27 sensing hardware including 1 overhead lidar , 3 millimeter wave radar , 11 high-definition visual perception cameras and 12 ultrasonic radars. It supports Huawei ADS  2.0 system and can realize high-speed and urban high-speed navigation without relying on high-precision maps. Advanced intelligent driving . So far, Wenjie has achieved commercial implementation of NOA in six cities without pictures; it is expected to expand to 45 cities in the fourth quarter.

In October 2023, Zhiji LS6 will be launched (four versions), equipped with IM AD high-end intelligent driving system, with a price of 229,900-291,900 yuan and an equity price of 214,900-276,900 yuan. This model’s IM AD intelligent hardware system worth 36,800 yuan (Nvidia OrinX chip , 1 lidar, 3 millimeter wave, 11 cameras, 12 ultrasonics) can achieve high-speed and urban navigation assistance NOA (some functions are realized through OTA ).

According to Zhiji’s plan, Zhiji LS6 urban NOA will be put into public testing at the end of 2023, or will be launched one after another before the Spring Festival, and Shanghai will be the first to open it; in mid-2024, the “unmap version” urban NOA will probably be implemented; within 2024, the commuting mode will cover 100 key cities across the country a city.

As of October 2023, China’s passenger car independent brand city NOA launch and planning status

Source: "2023 China Passenger Car Own Brand OEM ADAS and Autonomous Driving Research Report"

02. Full-scenario city NOA is difficult, and many OEMs start with commuter NOA.

Commuting NOA is also called urban memory driving, which customizes "urban assisted driving" routes according to the user's travel habits. Compared with urban NOA, the advantage of commuter NOA is that it can be trained on a bicycle. It can memorize the trajectory according to the user's own driving route, realizing the vision of 99% automatic driving on fixed routes. According to Ideal, the simple route can be completed in one week, while the more complex route requires 2-3 weeks to complete the training.

As of October 2023, China’s independent passenger car brand commuter NOA launch status

Source: "2023 China Passenger Car Own Brand OEM ADAS and Autonomous Driving Research Report"

03. Independent traditional OEMs compete for talents and improve the technical capabilities of smart driving teams

In the process of upgrading smart driving from L2 to L3 level by independent traditional OEMs, the technical capabilities of the original smart driving team cannot keep up with the trend of industry technology development. Therefore, technology experts have been poached from major manufacturers, technology companies, and new forces to improve the technical level of the smart driving team.

For example, in August 2023, BYD introduced Liao Jie, the former Horizon Intelligent Driving R&D Director, as the head of BYD’s intelligent driving Shanghai team. In September 2023, Tao Ji, the former CEO of L4 truck company Qiangu Technology, joined Changan Automobile and was responsible for intelligent driving technology. Tao Ji once served as the general manager of the autonomous driving division of Baidu's intelligent driving business group and the general manager of intelligent transportation product research and development, and participated in the entire process of Baidu's autonomous driving project from 0 to 1.

The introduction of senior executives of China’s independent passenger car OEMs in 2023

Source: "2023 China Passenger Car Own Brand OEM ADAS and Autonomous Driving Research Report"

04. Upstream and downstream of the industry chain jointly promote performance and cost optimization solutions

High-precision maps have low urban coverage, high collection costs, and cannot guarantee update frequency, which is unsolvable for the industry. Therefore, the "light map" solution has become the "industry consensus" of major OEMs.

In August 2023, Zhiji and Momenta released a high-precision map removal solution based on DDLD technology. The DDLD model can replace high-precision maps, construct maps in real time during vehicle driving, integrate the identification information of road features in multiple mappings to generate road topology , and predict road network information that is difficult to observe with traditional perception algorithms. The first model, the Zhiji LS6, will be launched in September 2023 to open the NOA open beta for high-precision maps.

Summary of major OEMs adopting “light map” technical solutions

Source: "2023 China Passenger Car Own Brand OEM ADAS and Autonomous Driving Research Report"

In addition, in terms of cost reduction, Tier1 is also actively launching new solutions to reduce the cost of sensor solutions.

In April 2023, DJI Automotive released a thousand-yuan smart driving solution. This solution uses a 7V/9V pure visual configuration to achieve including urban memory through "strong visual online real-time perception, no reliance on high-precision maps, and no dependence on lidar" L2+ intelligent driving functions including driving (32TOPS)/urban pilot driving (80TOPS). Among them, the 7V solution will be launched on the Baojun Yunduo 460Pro Lingxi Edition in September 2023, priced at 125,800 yuan, popularizing high-end intelligent driving functions into the mainstream family car field with a price of 100,000 yuan. After dormant in the past few years, DJI has seen a surge in its designated projects in 2023. It is expected that by the end of 2024, more than 20 vehicles will be equipped with DJI's in-vehicle smart driving products.

In October 2023, Haomo Zhixing released three "cost-effective" all-in-one driving and parking products, HP170 ( computing power 5TOPS), HP370 (32TOPS), and HP570 (72TOPS or 100TOPS), which can realize driving from no map to high speed to no map to NOH and urban memory driving. , the whole city scene without pictures NOH, the price corresponds to the 3,000 yuan level / 5,000 yuan level / 8,000 yuan level respectively.

Haomo Zhixing HP570 product

Source: Haomo Zhixing

Looking at the overall market, the "volume" in the NOA field has led other OEMs to quickly implement high-end assisted driving to improve their competitiveness. However, high-end intelligent driving technology is highly complex. During the short window period, OEMs with insufficient self-research capabilities will prefer large Tier 1 companies with sufficient mass production experience, advanced and mature technology development, such as Huawei and DJI.