Cross-border manufacturers, OEMs, and suppliers, who will determine the rise and fall of autonomous driving?

On the eve of mass production of autonomous driving, the industry is extremely lively.

Under the wave of the new four trends of automobile electrification, networking, intelligence, and sharing, the cross-level integration of the technological revolution brought about by automobile intelligent networking and autonomous driving has enabled OEMs to invest heavily while promoting the upgrading of traditional automobile suppliers. It has also allowed more and more companies from IT, communications and other industries to enter in large numbers. Transformation is the general trend.

At the 2019 Shanghai Auto Show, Huawei, which participated in the first exhibition for the first time, became the focus of attention among many well-known cross-border enterprises. "Huawei does not manufacture cars, but focuses on ICT technology to help car companies build better cars. Huawei is committed to becoming an incremental component supplier for intelligent connected cars." Huawei's rotating chairman Xu Zhijun announced Huawei's automotive strategy at the scene.

As for other suppliers, well-known international parts companies such as Bosch, Aptiv, Continental, and Valeo have also brought the latest new technologies that can help OEMs promote the autonomous driving revolution. At present, most OEMs have launched mass-produced models equipped with L2-level assisted driving functions and technologies, and have begun to advance to L3-level models. The help of suppliers is a key link in accelerating their intelligent process.

From the products and technologies launched by various suppliers, we can find that L2-level assisted driving is the current focus of promotion, and L3-level autonomous driving is often mentioned in mass production. Since L4/L5 high-level autonomous driving is still a long way from us, it is rarely mentioned. Suppliers pay more attention to installing the latest technology on mass-produced vehicles, and quickly realize commercialization and gain profits by empowering OEMs.

Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent, which entered the automotive field earlier, have been continuously cultivating the automotive industry and building a complex ecosystem. In the eyes of the outside world, Huawei wants to build a new ecosystem in smart cars.

In the automotive field, Huawei mainly focuses on solving the following four aspects: connectivity: providing 4G and 5G communication modules; computing platform: computing brain for autonomous driving, simulation, etc.; Huawei Cloud, providing an autonomous driving training platform called Octopus; integration of smart terminal ecology and cars: realizing full-scenario smart life for people, cars and homes, mainly by connecting Huawei mobile phones with the automotive ecology.

Huawei is entering the automotive industry, not making cars, not competing with OEMs, but only being a supplier to OEMs, not competing with existing automotive suppliers, and only focusing on incremental business. Huawei's automotive business actually does not overlap much with BAT, the former focusing on hardware, and the latter focusing on software and services.

It can be seen that in the process of moving towards intelligence, cars will no longer be a single entity. The advent of the 5G era and the rapid development of artificial intelligence have led more and more Internet and communications companies to join the new battlefield of smart cars. Before the entire smart connected car industry has matured, it is a consensus that everyone should unite and improve the technology first.

However, behind the surface cooperation, OEMs, Tier 1 suppliers and cross-border ICT companies are quietly learning more about their partners’ core competitiveness while consolidating their own core competitiveness. Car companies are also unwilling to rely on only one ICT company to realize all intelligent technologies, but instead choose partners by weighing the strengths and weaknesses of different companies in different core areas.

However, for the autonomous driving industry, which is currently on the eve of mass production, the commercialization of assisted driving is the key, and the gradual development from L2 to L3 has become the mainstream. In the supply chain of assisted driving, first-tier suppliers and ICT companies have begun to seek a more in-depth and complex cooperation model with car companies.

The autonomous driving industry chain is still in the process of transformation, and it is still too early to discuss who will ultimately have the dominant voice.