In the second half of the battle of intelligent driving, traditional car companies are "standing up"

Recently, Gasgoo Automotive Research Institute announced the latest domestic L2 system installation data. From January to August 2024, the domestic market L2 and above intelligent driving installation volume reached 6.051 million sets, of which 907,000 sets were installed in August. The overall L2 penetration rate has reached nearly 47%, a significant increase compared to 40% in the same period last year.

From the perspective of brands, new car manufacturers are undoubtedly the main force in the rapid popularization of intelligent driving. For example , Ideal Auto , Wenjie, Weilai, etc., almost all of them have L2 as standard. At present, the focus of competition among various companies has shifted to NOA, especially the large-scale implementation of more complex urban NOA.

But at the same time, traditional car companies represented by BYD , Geely, Changan, Volkswagen, Toyota , etc., with the initial results of the electrification transformation in the first half, are also competing to accelerate the intelligent upgrade. On the one hand, they continue to expand the overall intelligent driving penetration rate of the brand horizontally, and on the other hand, they continue to promote the iterative upgrade of high-end intelligent driving vertically.

Over the past period of time, many traditional car companies have announced that they will invest heavily in intelligent driving, and some have even made changes to their existing research and development systems to accelerate the large-scale implementation of mid- and high-end intelligent driving systems. This is the most direct proof.

Head autonomy, collective acceleration of intelligence

Recently, people familiar with the matter revealed that in order to sprint for the implementation of mid-to-high-end intelligent driving by 2025, BYD's self-developed intelligent driving team has started closed development.

Considering that BYD has been making frequent moves in the field of intelligent driving over the past year, it is not difficult to guess that BYD's move is intended to accelerate the seizure of new heights in the intelligent driving transformation.

As the leader in the field of independent new energy vehicles , BYD officially confirmed at an internal meeting in the first half of 2023 that it would upgrade intelligent driving to one of BYD's core strategies.

At about the same time, BYD made a series of personnel and organizational adjustments to its intelligent driving R&D team, and launched large-scale external recruitment, highlighting its determination to transform into an intelligent vehicle. In July of the same year, BYD officially launched its self-developed high-end intelligent assisted driving system "Eye of God", which was successfully installed on the Denza N7, marking a major breakthrough for BYD's self-developed intelligent driving.

On this basis, BYD further released the "intelligent vehicle" strategy at the beginning of this year, and stated that it will invest 100 billion yuan in the field of intelligence in the future. At the same time, BYD once again adjusted the intelligent driving R&D team, reorganized the original product planning and automotive new technology research institute, and renamed it "BYD Automotive New Technology Institute", which has three R&D teams, namely the Intelligent Driving Development Center, Tianxuan Development Department and Tianlang Development Department, which are responsible for the mass production and delivery of solutions, self-development of high-computing power platforms and self-development of low-computing power platforms.

With the support of a strong internal R&D team, BYD has made rapid progress in its intelligent transformation. According to Gasgoo, BYD's Yangwang U8, Denza N7, Han EV, Song L EV, Haishi 07 EV, Haibao and other models have been equipped with the self-developed "Eye of God" advanced intelligent driving system.

Among them, Yangwang U8 is equipped with the "Eye of God" advanced intelligent driving assistance system DiPilot600, the 2025 Han DM-i and Han EV are equipped with DiPilot300, and the 2025 Song L EV is equipped with DiPilot 100. The main difference between DiPilot 100/300/600 here is the intelligent driving chip . The chip of DiPilot 100 is Horizon Journey 5, DiPilot 300 uses a single NVIDIA OrinX, and DiPilot600 is equipped with dual OrinX.

Next, it is reported that the upcoming models such as the Denza N9 and Tang L will also be equipped with the "Eye of God" system, achieving wide coverage of BYD's main selling models with a price of more than 200,000 yuan.

It is worth noting that in addition to fully promoting self-developed intelligent driving, BYD has also reached in-depth cooperation with upstream and downstream companies in the industry chain , such as Bosch , Huawei , Momenta, Horizon Robotics, and NVIDIA . Among them, BYD's upcoming Leopard 8 has been confirmed to be equipped with Huawei Qiankun Intelligent Driving ADS 3.0, and other new cars of the Leopard brand in the future are reportedly also developed together with Huawei.

Like BYD, Changan Automobile has also chosen to pursue both self-research and cooperation in the field of intelligent driving.

On October 21, Changan Qiyuan E07 was officially launched. As the first product of Changan's own brand to impact the high-end market, Changan Qiyuan E07 is built on Changan SDA Tianshu architecture and is equipped with Changan Automobile's self-developed Tianshu large model , Changan Intelligent Driving, Tianyu OS, Tianyu Smart Cockpit and many other intelligent technologies.

It is worth mentioning that Changan Qiyuan E07 is also the first model equipped with Changan’s self-developed “Changan Intelligent Driving”, which can realize high-speed navigation and parking assistance functions. In the future, it can also support urban navigation assisted driving through upgrades.

In the second half of 2023, Changan Automobile introduced Tao Ji, a former Baidu autonomous driving "veteran", as Changan Automobile's chief intelligent driving technology officer, leading the self-development of Changan's intelligent driving system. Subsequently, under Tao Ji's leadership, Changan Automobile quickly established an intelligent driving R&D team to strengthen its self-development of intelligent driving.

At the same time, Changan Automobile has also carried out in-depth cooperation with Huawei for Changan Deep Blue and Avita. Among them, Deep Blue's S07 and L07 models are already equipped with Huawei Qiankun Intelligent Driving Solutions. As for Avita, from the early cooperation with Huawei around the "HI model" to the official acquisition of Huawei Yinwang in August this year, and the opening of a new "HI Plus" cooperation model with Huawei, it has successively equipped Huawei's intelligent driving solutions on its Avita 11, Avita 12, Avita 07 and other models. Among them, Avita 07 is also the first model equipped with Huawei Qiankun ADS 3.0.

According to Changan Automobile's plan, Changan's high-end intelligent driving will be equipped with 500TOPS computing power as standard in the future. Changan Automobile's goal is to become a leader in the intelligent driving industry in 2027. To this end, Changan Automobile plans to launch 37 new digital smart car products to the world in the next three years, and plans to invest 250 billion yuan in the next five years and add a new technology innovation team of about 10,000 people.

Geely has also recently announced adjustments to its intelligent driving R&D system.

As we all know, due to its huge brand lineup, Geely has a complex R&D structure. Among them, there are currently five intelligent driving R&D centers, including the Geely Research Institute Intelligent Driving Center, Zeekr Self-Developed Intelligent Driving Team, Lotus Intelligent Driving Team, Ecarx, and Fortech, which was born out of Geely . There are serious problems of duplicate development and waste of resources, and integration is imperative.

To this end, it is rumored that Geely has recently set up an integration team aimed at integrating the intelligent driving, cockpit and other teams of Geely Central Research Institute and its sub-brands.

In addition, GAC, Chery, Great Wall, etc. have also announced to increase their layout of intelligent driving in the past period of time. Among them, GAC has not only invested in WeRide, Pony.ai and Didi Autonomous Driving, increased its investment in Robotaxi research and development, but also reached in-depth cooperation with Momenta through GAC Aion to jointly promote the popularization and application of high-level intelligent driving.

Chery recently released a high-end intelligent driving technology solution for the future, evolving from C-Pilot 4.0 to C-Pilot 5.0, marking the first year of Chery's intelligent car entering the high-end intelligent driving NOA. On this basis, Chery clearly announced that "next year, Chery's intelligence will also be unceremonious" and even put forward the goal of "must enter the top of the industry."

It can be said that if in the first half of the intelligentization, the protagonists are more new car-making forces, then starting from this year, more and more traditional car companies will gradually enter the core arena of intelligent driving.

2025 is a crucial year for the battle of high-end intelligent driving

There is no doubt that in the domestic market, various intelligent driving systems are becoming standard features of more and more new cars.

According to the latest statistics from Gasgoo Automotive Research Institute, from January to August this year, the L2 system (including L2+ and L2++) installed by the four major domestic brands BYD, Geely, Chery and Changan were 725,000 sets, 229,000 sets, 123,000 sets and 121,000 sets respectively, and the corresponding brand penetration rates were 37.1%, 39.7%, 29.9% and 22.4% respectively.