Autonomous Driving Brake-by-Wire Solutions

1 The trend of intelligence is clear, and the wire-controlled chassis comes into being

1.1 The general trend of new energy vehicles becoming intelligent

my country has become the world's leading country in new energy vehicles. The trend of automobile electrification, intelligence, networking and sharing is clear. In the field of new energy vehicles, my country has been at the forefront of the world. According to data from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, my country's production and sales of new energy vehicles in 2022 were 7.058 million and 6.887 million respectively, up 96.9% and 93.4% year-on-year, respectively, ranking first in the world for 8 consecutive years. In terms of market size, my country's new energy vehicle market share in 2022 was 25.6%, an increase of 12.1 percentage points year-on-year, and global sales accounted for more than 60%.

The rise of autonomy leads to the improvement of the level of intelligence. According to the data from the China Passenger Car Association, from January to May 2023, domestic brands accounted for 79.8% of the domestic new energy passenger car retail market and 49.5% of the passenger car retail market. Thanks to the heavy investment in the new energy field in the past few years, domestic brands have risen in the wave of electrification. In order to further enhance the competitiveness of models and expand market share, high-quality domestic brands have made improving the intelligent driving level of new models the next key task. At present, domestic intelligent driving cars have developed to the assisted driving stage. According to Gaogong Intelligent Automobile data, in 2022, the Chinese market (excluding imports and exports) will deliver 10.0122 million passenger cars with standard assisted driving (L0-L2), and the pre-installation rate will exceed 50% for the first time.

L3 is a key watershed in the intelligent driving industry chain. Companies represented by Xiaopeng, Ideal and HUAWEI have launched models that can realize urban and highway NOA functions. BYD, Great Wall, Changan and other companies have also stepped up research and development to reduce their reliance on high-precision maps. Related car companies have successively launched "heavy perception, light map" intelligent driving solutions to achieve the purpose of accelerating the implementation of high-level intelligent driving. However, due to the promulgation of relevant laws and regulations on intelligent driving and the lag in infrastructure construction, my country's intelligent driving level has not reached L3 and above. Policy support is expected to accelerate the pace of implementation of high-level intelligent driving. On November 2, 2022, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the Ministry of Public Security jointly issued the "Notice on the Pilot Work of Access and Road Traffic of Intelligent Connected Vehicles (Draft for Comments)", with the aim of accumulating management experience based on pilot evidence, supporting the formulation and revision of relevant laws, regulations and technical standards, and promoting the improvement of the production access management system and road traffic safety management system of intelligent connected vehicles. We believe that the release of the "Draft for Comments" will allow more qualified models to be tested on the road, optimize the OEMs' high-level intelligent driving technologies, and promote the promulgation of relevant laws and regulations, accelerating the OEMs' pace of deploying intelligent driving from the policy side.

On June 2, 2023, the State Council proposed to strengthen the key core technology research of the intelligent driving system and build an industrial ecology of the integrated development of "vehicle, energy, road and cloud". On June 21, the State Council's regular policy briefing proposed to launch a pilot program for the access and road access of intelligent connected vehicles, organize and carry out city-level "vehicle-road-cloud integration" demonstration applications, and release a new version of the intelligent connected vehicle standard system guide to accelerate the commercialization of L3 and above intelligent driving functions. The imperfect laws and regulations related to intelligent driving and the backward infrastructure construction have always been important reasons restricting the development of intelligent driving to L3 and above. This State Council meeting mentioned intelligent driving, which once again confirmed that intelligence is one of the strategic choices for my country to achieve an automobile power. We believe that the country is expected to introduce relevant policies as soon as possible to continue to promote intelligent development and promote higher quality development of my country's automobile industry.

1.2 Wire-controlled chassis becomes the key actuator of intelligent driving

The execution layer is one of the important links of intelligent driving. The hardware system of intelligent driving vehicles can be divided into three levels: sensor system, decision control system, and execution system, which are analogous to human sensory organs, brain, hands and feet. The sensor system includes radar sensors, visual sensors, V2X communication and navigation positioning, etc.; the decision control system includes intelligent driving domain controller, vehicle computing system, etc.; the actuator includes brakes and throttles, steering, automatic transmission, etc. Benefiting from the rapid development of new energy vehicles, intelligent driving actuators have gradually been upgraded to wire-controlled chassis execution systems.

The wire-controlled chassis is a new form of vehicle chassis. The wire-controlled chassis transmits information to the actuator through electrical signals instead of mechanical or hydraulic components to reduce or eliminate the physical connection between the cockpit and the chassis actuator. The wire-controlled chassis generally includes four subsystems, namely wire-controlled braking, wire-controlled suspension, wire-controlled steering and wire-controlled drive. Among them, the industrialization progress of wire-controlled braking is relatively fast, and its penetration rate in the domestic passenger car OEM market has exceeded 20%.

The wire-controlled chassis is the key execution layer for achieving high-level autonomous driving. Compared with fuel vehicles, new energy vehicles have a simpler structure and a higher degree of electrification, making them more suitable for the application of wire-controlled chassis. High-level intelligent driving functions require actuators to have faster response speeds. The wire-controlled chassis transmits information through electrical signals, so it has the characteristics of fast response speed and high control accuracy, which meets the requirements of advanced intelligent driving functions. The highly integrated wire-controlled chassis helps OEMs speed up vehicle model development. At present, some manufacturers have developed a highly integrated skateboard chassis, which integrates electric drive, battery, suspension, brake, steering and other components to form a chassis structure similar to a skateboard. The skateboard chassis can decouple the chassis from the upper body. The OEM develops differentiated upper bodies based on the fixed chassis architecture, which helps shorten the development cycle of new models, reduce the development cost of the whole vehicle, and better meet consumers' demand for differentiated products.

The wire-controlled chassis can help cars achieve lightweight. The wire-controlled chassis is highly integrated and can reduce the use of some or all mechanical parts of traditional actuators, which is conducive to reducing the weight of the vehicle. For new energy vehicles, it can also increase the range. With the Great Wall Coffee Smart 2.0 smart wire-controlled chassis, the entire chassis system can achieve a 10% weight reduction and increase the range by more than 20%.

1.3 Wire-controlled chassis receives key policy support

The drive-by-wire chassis has received top-level design support many times. In recent years, my country has launched a number of policy documents to support the development of drive-by-wire chassis technology: 1) In December 2018, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the "Vehicle Network (Intelligent Connected Vehicle) Industry Development Action Plan", which emphasized the need to accelerate the development and industrialization of high-performance vehicle intelligent drive, wire control braking, wire control steering, and electronic stability systems, focusing on breakthroughs in key core technologies such as vehicle platforms and wire control; 2) In October 2020, the State Council issued the "New Energy Vehicle Industry Development Plan (2021-2035)", which proposed a "three horizontal and three vertical" technical architecture; advocated the development of a new generation of modular high-performance vehicle platforms, tackled chassis integrated design, and broke through vehicle lightweight energy-saving technologies, emphasizing that the drive-by-wire execution system is the core technology of intelligent networking; 3) In March 2021, the State Council issued the "Outline of the 14th Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development and the Long-Term Goals for 2035", which clearly pointed out that it is necessary to accelerate the development of key components such as basic technology platforms and software and hardware systems for intelligent (connected) vehicles, intelligent drive-by-wire chassis, and intelligent terminals.

The industrialization of the wire-controlled chassis has made some progress. From the perspective of subsystems, some OEMs have already launched models equipped with wire-controlled suspension or wire-controlled braking and have achieved mass production. At the same time, they are also developing wire-controlled chassis integrated systems under new architectures. For example, the Coffee Smart 2.0 smart wire-controlled chassis developed by Great Wall is expected to be mass-produced in 2023. The skateboard chassis is one of the long-term potential mass production directions. Under the leadership of domestic companies such as Rivian, domestic auto parts companies including Alte have also begun to follow up, hoping to lay a solid foundation for subsequent industrialization opportunities through early research and development. According to Gaogong Intelligent Automobile data, in 2022, the total number of domestic (excluding imports and exports) passenger cars equipped with wire-controlled braking systems was 4.9739 million, a year-on-year increase of 56.56%, and the front-mounted rate reached 24.95%. From the perspective of the global and domestic markets, the wire control process of the braking link is relatively fast, and there is also a broad space for penetration. Therefore, this article will focus on wire-controlled braking products, study the overall market situation and potential investment opportunities.