Intelligent cabin and pilot: ice and fire

The fluctuations in the automotive terminal market are also having a profound impact on the core intelligent industry chain. The business performance of some leading suppliers in the first quarter of this year showed a series of new changes.

Among them, the intelligent part of the cockpit continues to advance by leaps and bounds.

Monitoring data from Gaogong Intelligent Automobile Research Institute shows that from January to March 2024, 3.3272 million passenger cars with standard pre-installed connected entertainment cabins (with OTA) were delivered to the Chinese market (excluding imports and exports), a year-on-year increase of 37.90%, with the growth rate increasing significantly by nearly 25 percentage points.

Among them, 1.0393 million vehicles were delivered with standard cockpit domain controllers, a year-on-year increase of 93.47%. At the same time, the proportion of domain controller configuration in the overall cockpit entertainment system host market during the same period exceeded 20% for the first time.

At the same time, the standard-equipped cabin market in the 100,000-200,000 yuan range accounted for 46.14% of the overall market, becoming the main growth force. The penetration rate of about 20% further highlights the huge potential for market growth throughout the year.

Among them, taking Desay SV as an example, the company's third-generation high-performance intelligent cockpit domain control products have been mass-produced to support customers such as Ideal Auto, Chery Auto, GAC Aion, and GAC Passenger Cars, and have been designated for new projects by many mainstream customers such as Chery Auto, GAC Passenger Cars, GAC Aion, and BYD.

In addition, the fourth-generation intelligent cockpit domain control products have been designated for new projects by customers such as Ideal Auto, Geely Auto, GAC Aion, and Jidu Auto, and have been put into mass production and supply. At the same time, more differentiated cockpit domain controller solutions have successively obtained new project orders from independent and joint venture brands.

Judging from the data, in the first quarter of this year, Desay SV's overall revenue still achieved a year-on-year growth of more than 40% (41.78%), which has not changed much compared with the year-on-year growth rate in 2023 (46.71%).

Another leading supplier, Ecarx Technology, had total revenue of 928 million yuan in the first quarter of this year, a year-on-year increase of 21.28% (the growth rate in the same period last year was 16%). One of the positive factors was the continued growth in demand for new digital cockpit projects.

Last year, Ecarx launched the Antora series of cost-effective cabin, travel and berthing solutions. At the same time, it also deployed Qualcomm's fourth-generation Snapdragon® (8255/8295) cockpit platform (Atlas computing platform and Parker computing platform) and the Chogori computing platform built on the third-generation Snapdragon 8 mobile platform.

In addition, the Makalu cockpit computing platform developed in cooperation with AMD will also be mass-produced and delivered this year. Previously, Tesla was AMD's first automotive cockpit platform customer; this also means that Ecarx has become a supplier in the market with the ability to mass-produce and deliver multiple mainstream domestic and foreign solutions.

In the main chip part, in addition to Qualcomm's multiple products occupying the main share of the cockpit domain control SoC market, several Chinese local cockpit SoC suppliers including CoreDrive, CoreEngine, and JieFa are also striving for the market.

Among them, CoreEngine Technology's "Dragon Eagle No. 1" has been delivered for mass production in many models. By the end of 2023, the shipment volume has exceeded 200,000 pieces, and it is expected that the shipment volume will reach one million pieces this year.

In addition, in the first quarter, 497,100 passenger cars with pre-installed (including optional) 5G networking functions were delivered to the Chinese market (excluding imports and exports), an increase of 85.07% year-on-year; at the same time, the penetration rate of 5G pre-installed functions exceeded 10% for the first time, reaching 10.39%.

In terms of technological iteration, 5G-A (5G-Advanced, also known as 5.5G) will be the market focus this year, and capabilities such as large uplink bandwidth, deterministic latency, high reliability and precise positioning will be further enhanced.

Qualcomm also continues to benefit.

Data shows that in the first quarter of this year, Qualcomm's revenue from automotive business (cockpit, 4G/5G) was US$603 million, a year-on-year increase of 35%, which continued to increase by 15 percentage points compared with the 20% growth rate in the same period last year.

In comparison, the smart driving track is showing signs of differentiation.

On the one hand, car companies have further raised the demand for cost reduction for intelligent driving, especially high-end intelligent driving represented by NOA. From lidar to overall system cost, suppliers are focusing on "price war". On the other hand, the new market of integrated cabin and driver is at a critical landing time.

For example, DJI continues to launch the "7V/10V+100TOPS" mid-to-high-end configuration based on the "7V+32TOPS" basic version configuration, while controlling the hardware cost of the urban NOA system to less than 7,000 yuan.

Monitoring data from Gaogong Intelligent Automobile Research Institute shows that in the first quarter of 2024, 249,500 passenger cars with standard NOA pre-installed configuration were delivered to the Chinese market (excluding imports and exports), a year-on-year increase of 203.52%; among them, the installation rate in the 300,000-350,000 yuan range was close to 30%.

However, behind the seemingly significant growth, another set of data shows that the penetration rate in the 200,000-250,000 yuan segment is less than 5%, and the 150,000-200,000 yuan segment is less than 1%. The delivery volume of new cars below 250,000 yuan accounts for more than 70% of the overall market.

In addition, the quarter-on-quarter growth rate of NOA in the first quarter was only 4.26%, while the year-on-year growth was due to the change in the proportion of chip solution players. Among them, solutions equipped with Huawei Kirin chips grew by 1681.40% year-on-year, completely overshadowing Nvidia, and its market share exceeded 30% for the first time.

Official data shows that in the first quarter of this year, Nvidia's automotive business revenue was $329 million, up only 17% from the previous quarter and 11% from the previous year. In comparison, Nvidia's overall business revenue in the same period was $26 billion (including $22.6 billion in data center revenue), up 18% from the previous quarter and 262% from the previous year.

At the earnings conference, NVIDIA repeatedly emphasized that Tesla's FSD fully autonomous driving system is based on NVIDIA's high-performance AI chips (expected to be expanded to 35,000 H100 GPUs this year) for back-end data/model training, and it is expected that the automotive industry will become one of the important sources of revenue for the data center business this year.

As for NVIDIA, in order to further lower the prices of models equipped with intelligent driving, car companies have shown an irreversible trend, whether it is the number of chips installed in a single vehicle (for example, NIO's sub-brand Ledao directly cut the number of chips from 4 to 1 Orin) or seeking more cost-effective alternatives (Black Sesame Intelligent A1000 has been delivered one after another and obtained more orders).

In addition, NVIDIA's accelerated development of its own full-stack software solutions has also affected existing customer partnerships to a certain extent. Whether it is car companies or Tier 1, they are no longer all in NVIDIA. At present, most car companies have at least 2-3 computing solution suppliers as alternatives for their intelligent driving platforms.

In the vehicle-side business, in addition to the existing Orin project, NVIDIA's focus is also shifting to the next-generation central computing platform; according to the plan, many car companies including BYD, Xiaopeng, GAC, and Ideal will begin to introduce DRIVE Thor, and mass production is expected to start next year.

Qualcomm, a strong competitor, is also actively competing for customers.

For example, Nezha will be the world's first to launch Qualcomm 8775 cabin-driver integrated chip (with Chelian Tianxia as Tier 1); in addition, the two automobile giants Toyota and Volkswagen have basically finalized the Qualcomm 8775 designated project, and Desay SV and Bosch, two Tier 1 companies, are expected to be deeply involved in the above projects.

In the Chinese market, Heizhima Intelligence, as the first company to launch cross-domain computing chips (Wudang series C1200 family), also unveiled two products, C1236 and C1296, at this year's Beijing Auto Show. Among them, C1236 is the first local chip platform that supports NOA integrated driving and parking; C1296 is the industry's first chip platform that supports cross-domain fusion solutions with a single chip.

Unlike NVIDIA and Qualcomm, a C1200 series chip can integrate related functions of four major domains: mainstream cockpit functions, NOA, body control MCU, and gateway, which is more in line with the high cost-effectiveness demands of the large-scale popular market.

The actual implementation progress is also accelerating. For example, Heizhima Intelligent cooperated with Wind River to develop a platform solution based on the new Wudang series C1200 family chip for an internationally renowned Tier 1, which is planned to be mass-produced in the first half of 2025.

In addition, in the basic intelligent driving market, some players have also been affected by the downward trend of high-end NOA and the launch of the integrated driving and parking market. This involves changes in both chip computing power requirements and changes in architecture concentration.