Behind the rapid development of NOA, car companies are competing in intelligent driving

Since the popularity of "intelligent driving" last year, the entire intelligent driving market has set off a new round of bloody competition, and then this murderous aura gradually spread to the high-end intelligent driving market. According to the monitoring data of Gaogong Intelligent Automobile Research Institute, in 2023, 12.3806 million passenger cars with standard ADAS installed in the Chinese market (excluding imports and exports) will be delivered.

Among them, the delivery of L2 and above standard configurations increased by 36.97% year-on-year, while the high-end intelligent driving market represented by NOA increased by 189.02% year-on-year. Entering 2024, although there is a certain uncertainty in the growth rate of the auto market, NOA high-end intelligent driving remains popular.

Data shows that in January and February 2024, the delivery volume of new passenger cars with standard NOA increased by 201.42% year-on-year, and the growth rate continued to maintain an upward trend. The internal competition among automobile companies around NOA is also intensifying year by year.

The fierce competition among car companies NOA

Since the beginning of this year, many companies have joined the competition for urban NOA. As high-speed NOA has gradually become a standard feature of intelligent driving for mainstream car companies in recent years, some companies want to go a step further in intelligent driving capabilities - moving towards urban NOA. In September 2022, Xiaopeng P5 took the lead in launching urban NOA in Guangzhou; then, Alpha S, Weilai, Great Wall, Ideal, Seres and other car companies announced to accelerate the development of urban NOA, and urban NOA stood at the forefront of the industry.

So, what is so attractive about NOA?

First, promoting the evolution of intelligent driving from high-speed NOA to urban NOA is of great significance to car companies. If previous intelligent driving was mainly concentrated on closed roads and highways in cities, then urban NOA means that the intelligent driving ability of cars has truly entered a new stage. Because it means that smart cars have gradually acquired the ability of "self-learning and self-correction" in application scenarios with complex road conditions, and they have the ability to evolve to higher-level intelligent driving in terms of recognition, perception, decision-making, and execution. For car companies, with the help of the big model, the basic algorithm framework is built, and then through a large number of practical applications, data is "filled" into the relevant framework, so as to simulate and restore more scenarios through data annotation and mining, and help the implementation of urban NOA. At present, the leading car companies led by Xiaopeng and Seres have basically completed the framework construction at the algorithm level. The next step is to promote the implementation of NOA in more urban scenarios.

Second, with the improvement of the basic capabilities of large manufacturers, traditional marketing methods such as battery life and interior configuration have become difficult to occupy the minds of users. Urban NOA has increasingly become a new standard for car companies to occupy the minds of users. In the past, when car companies held press conferences, they either compared battery life, batteries , or interior configurations; now with the maturity of the entire industry, many of the things that needed to be compared in the past have gradually evolved into industry standards. In this case, traditional marketing methods centered around battery life are no longer attractive, and new marketing methods represented by intelligent driving have gradually become the core elements that influence the minds of users. Based on this, various car companies have entered the Urban NOA market, obviously wanting to seize this opportunity and get the Urban NOA ticket as soon as possible.

Seize the strategic window

Judging from the feedback from the market, except for a few car companies such as Huawei and Tesla , the urban NOA of most car companies is still in its infancy and cannot meet the users' intelligent driving needs. For example, the NOA of car companies such as Xiaopeng and Ideal have been frequently exposed by users, such as the failure of the intelligent system to "brake" at critical moments, etc. These all reflect the true level of urban NOA of some car companies from the side.

So, why do car companies still choose to accelerate the urban NOA process when their NOA capabilities are obviously insufficient?

On the one hand, urban NOA is a key step in the upgrade of automobile intelligent driving. Whoever can seize this strategic commanding height will be able to establish a first-mover advantage in the future. As mentioned earlier, compared with intercity highways, the environment in the city is more complex and changeable, because to promote the level of automobile intelligence , more data is needed, at least 6 times more than high-speed NOA, so it is imperative to speed up the opening of cities to collect data. After all, with the increase in data collected by automobile terminals and the maturity of algorithm frameworks, the NOA capabilities of automobile companies will gradually increase in the future, thereby further improving the NOA system and preparing for the next stage of higher-level L3 level autonomous driving . It is not difficult to understand that although many car companies' urban NOA is immature, they still choose to open it to the public.

However, if the automakers do not do a good job in active and passive safety, the brand itself may face backlash from public opinion. But if they do not make arrangements as soon as possible, automakers will also face competitive pressure from the continuous occupation of users' minds by "friendly competitors" of intelligent driving.

On the other hand, from a policy perspective, the current national laws have no clear provisions on the geographic data collection of new energy vehicles , and the policy is still in a blank and chaotic period. As an emerging field, the current domestic intelligent driving standards and regulations are not yet complete, and because many car companies are still in the early stages of NOA implementation, there are currently no very clear written legal provisions. However, the corresponding relevant policies are being introduced one after another, which means that legislation in the field of intelligent driving is gradually brewing.

According to the "Guidelines for the Construction of the National Internet of Vehicles Industry Standard System ( Intelligent Connected Vehicles ) (2023 Edition)", the implementation of urban NOA must follow three principles: coordination with urban road traffic rules and signs: urban NOA must accurately adapt to the complex urban traffic environment, comply with national laws and regulations and ethical norms (do not infringe on human rights and user privacy) and comply with international standards and norms. If the current automotive industry really implements the corresponding policies, many car companies that do not meet the regulations may only be blocked from the "regulatory" door, and the gap between them and their competitors may be infinitely widened.

Cost competition has become a key theme

Compared with previous years, domestic car companies are no longer blindly investing in smart driving. Instead, they are gradually and rationally moving towards the corporate management level, allowing smart driving to stimulate customer demand while helping companies reduce costs and increase efficiency to the greatest extent possible.

Against this background, the price reduction of NOA configuration has become an inevitable trend. According to incomplete statistics, more than 4 car companies have announced price cuts. The new Zeekr 001, which was only launched in February, announced in early March that users who placed their first order before March 31st can activate the ZAD fully intelligent assisted driving system for free, including urban highway NZP and all intelligent driving functions of urban NZP for life. Xiaopeng Motors followed up and announced that before March 31, 2024, the entire series of Xiaopeng G6 models will be reduced by 20,000 yuan for a limited time. The starting price after the discount is 189,900 yuan, and the standard NOA will enter the price range below 200,000 yuan.

In addition, BYD and Ideal Auto have all offered similar conditions. It is not difficult to see that at a time when car companies are engaged in a fierce price war, smart driving and urban NOA, as a selling point for car companies, have to serve this overall situation. Of course, this has also brought about chain reactions in many aspects.

First, under the industry price war, the lower-cost NOA solution may make the pure visual algorithm route more popular. Take Xiaomi SU7 as an example. In order to further reduce the cost of NOA, the standard version of Polit Pro also uses the lower-priced Nvidia Orin-N platform. At the same time, as the smart cockpit begins to use the Qualcomm 8295 platform on a large scale, the parking part begins to be integrated, further reducing the computing power pressure of driving. In fact, it is not just Xiaomi SU7. Car companies including Seres, Ideal, and Xiaopeng are working hard to reduce the cost of smart driving solutions. For example, Ideal directly canceled the four corner radars , while Xiaomi, Xiaopeng and other car companies only retained the two corners of the laser radar . Huawei's car manufacturing companies also have similar operations. For example, the Avita 11 and Alpha S Huawei HI version, which were previously equipped with Huawei's ADS 1.0 system, used three laser radars, so the overall cost was relatively high; but the newly launched M5 is equipped with Huawei's ADS 2.0 system. Due to the improvement of the system's comprehensive capabilities, the number of its laser radars has been directly reduced to 1, but because the new system is more powerful (it can cover more than 90% of road scenes), the overall cost has been reduced. Compared with the operations of Xiaopeng, Xiaomi, etc., some relatively "radical" car manufacturers in the industry are working hard to promote pure visual perception solutions to achieve the goal of completely removing forward radars. According to this development trend, pure visual technology solutions may be favored by more car companies in the future.