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

Among them, BYD, due to its large terminal sales volume, ranks first in the list of domestic brands in terms of L2 supporting scale. But on the other hand, it can also be seen that the overall L2 carrying capacity of traditional domestic brands is not high, which precisely means huge room for improvement.

Especially in the field of NOA, which is a higher level of intelligent driving, new brands still dominate at this stage. According to the configuration data of Gasgoo Automotive Research Institute, from January to August this year, the cumulative number of high-speed NOA in the domestic market has exceeded 930,000 sets, with a corresponding penetration rate of 7%. Urban NOA has also begun to be installed on a large scale, with a penetration rate of 1.3%.

Image source: Gasgoo

Among them, Ideal, NIO, Avita and Zhijie all have a NOA penetration rate of 100%, and new brands such as Wenjie and Xiaopeng have also achieved a NOA penetration rate of over 90%. In comparison, traditional car companies are still at a relatively low level in terms of NOA installation rate.

Looking at the evolution of intelligent driving, the industry generally believes that NOA is the only way to autonomous driving, especially the large-scale popularization of urban NOA, which is crucial to the ultimate realization of true driverless driving . This means that it is imperative for traditional car companies to speed up NOA research and development, strengthen autonomy, and expand mass production.

Obviously, the leading car companies have realized this and are striving to catch up. Judging from the time points announced by each company, next year will be a critical year for everyone to sprint to the large-scale implementation of mid-to-high-end intelligent driving.

Chery has clearly stated that it will mass-produce and launch its flagship high-end intelligent driving NOA product in more than ten models of Chery's four major brands by 2025, with the configuration rate of the main selling models exceeding 50%. From the unmapped urban NOA to the flagship highway NOA, NOA will be mass-produced quickly based on end-to-end technology. It is expected that in the next three years, more than 4 million global users will experience the flagship product of Dazhuo Intelligent Driving, covering the entire series and making intelligent driving equal.

At present, Chery's Dazhuo Intelligent Driving end-to-end technology has been approved and is under development. It has completed the end-to-end research and development layout of the perception big model + planning big model, and plans to achieve mass production in 2025, complete the mass production of one-stage end-to-end and VLM big model safety-assisted urban NOA in 2026, and achieve mass production of VLA multi-modal big model by 2027, thereby gradually pushing Chery into the C-NOA era.

BYD has previously revealed at an internal meeting that it hopes to introduce advanced intelligent driving technology to models in the 100,000-200,000 yuan price range next year. Currently, most of BYD's main selling models above 200,000 yuan have versions with advanced intelligent driving.

You should know that BYD has the pricing power in the 100,000-200,000 yuan price range. According to the calculation of Gasgoo Automotive Research Institute based on the insurance volume, BYD's market sales in the 100,000-200,000 yuan range will account for 16.04% in 2023, ranking first in this price range. Among BYD's total sales in 2023, the sales of models in the 100,000-200,000 yuan range will account for 66.7%.

From January to August this year, BYD's 100,000-200,000 yuan range of models insured cumulatively reached 1,336,387 units, accounting for 65.24% of BYD's total insurance volume. Among them, the proportion of 100,000-150,000 yuan range models insured increased from 35.11% in 2023 to 44.96%.

With BYD's size, if high-end intelligent driving can be popularized on a large scale in this price range, its destructive power can be imagined.

Image source: Gasgoo

In fact, not only BYD, but also the entire domestic passenger car market, models in the 100,000-200,000 yuan range also occupy "half of the market". According to the calculation of Gasgoo Automotive Research Institute, in the first eight months of this year, the cumulative sales of models in the 100,000-200,000 yuan range in the domestic market reached 6,678,941 units, accounting for nearly 50% of the total sales.

This means that if high-end assisted driving systems represented by NOA are to be truly implemented on a large scale and achieve better data-driven continuous evolution of autonomous driving, it is imperative to further explore the 100,000-200,000 yuan market. Next year is also expected to be a key year for the sinking and implementation of mid-to-high-end intelligent driving.

Chen Liming, president of Horizon, believes that the first half of electrification is a foregone conclusion, and the second half of intelligence is just around the corner. At this stage, urban NOA is becoming a new driving force for intelligent driving, and continues to penetrate into models priced below 200,000 yuan. It is expected that 2025 will be the final point for high-end intelligent driving to "cross the gap."

Yu Qian, CEO of QINGZHOU Zhihang, even predicted that in the future, models priced around RMB 100,000 will be fully equipped with high-speed NOA as standard, and models priced around RMB 150,000 will basically have urban NOA. In Yu Qian's view, the entry of full-scenario NOA into the RMB 150,000 market is also a reflection of large-scale mass production and delivery, continuous optimization of technology, and maturity.

Momenta CEO Cao Xudong also expressed a similar view. According to him, the hardware BOM cost of implementing Urban NOA is now around 10,000 yuan, and it is expected to drop to around 5,000 yuan by the end of 2025 or early 2026. By then, all models priced above 200,000 yuan may be equipped with Urban NOA as standard, and models priced above 150,000 yuan may be equipped with it as standard or optional.

Even in Cao Xudong's view, high-end intelligent driving is not exclusive to new energy vehicles, and will also be installed on fuel vehicles in the future. Among them, Momenta is expected to realize the urban NOA function on fuel vehicles with air-cooled systems by the end of 2025.

It is worth mentioning that, in fact, it is not only Momenta. With the rapid popularization of intelligent driving, joint venture car companies represented by SAIC Volkswagen and SAIC General Motors have been vigorously developing intelligent electric vehicles . At the same time, adhering to the "oil-electric intelligence" development strategy, they are actively promoting the intelligence of fuel vehicles. At the same time, vehicle manufacturers and intelligent driving suppliers represented by Weilai, Xiaopeng, Huawei, etc. have begun to promote the application of high-end intelligent driving and have successfully installed them in related models.

This means that after the fierce price war in the auto market in 2024, a fierce battle in the intelligent driving market may still be unavoidable.