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BMW Group Media Day 2021: Delivering 1 Million Electric Cars in 2021
On March 17th, BMW held the online Media Day 2021 and announced the plan for electric vehicles. MINI will become the first pure electric brand under BMW, and its last gasoline vehicle model will be launched in 2025. Rolls-Royce will also launch pure electric products. At the same time, BMW plans to launch a small batch of products equipped with hydrogen fuel cells next year.
According to the plan, BMW will deliver 1 million electric cars in 2021, and launch 13 pure electric models in 2023. BMW will deliver 2 million electric cars by 2025. In terms of carbon emissions, BMW plans to reduce the average carbon emissions of each car by 80%, 20%, and 40% in the production process, supply chain, and usage process by 2030.
Comment:
Coincidentally, Volkswagen CEO Diess also revealed that the sales target for Volkswagen’s pure electric vehicles in 2021 is 1 million. At Power Day, Volkswagen stated that its annual sales of pure electric vehicles in the Chinese market will reach 4.75 million by 2025. By then, 15 MEB models will be launched to meet the market demand. In China, Volkswagen hopes to achieve over 2 million pure electric vehicle sales by 2025.
In February this year, Ideal Car stated in its internal newsletter that it plans to capture 20% of the Chinese intelligent electric vehicle market share by 2025, which corresponds to a sales volume of 1.6 million vehicles.
Musk: Tesla has Strong Willingness to Keep Secrets, Will Not Conduct Spy Activities.On March 20, Musk participated in the “China Development Forum 2021” economic summit through online means and had a conversation with Xue Qikun, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and president of the Southern University of Science and Technology, on the topic of “the next disruptive innovation.” In the dialogue, Musk talked about topics such as artificial intelligence, 3D tunnel, and higher education.
At the same time, Musk stated that if a commercial enterprise is indeed engaged in espionage, it will have a great negative impact on the company. For example, if Tesla conducts espionage activities in China through its products, Tesla will be unable to move. Tesla has a strong desire for confidentiality, otherwise the company will be shut down. He said that commercial enterprises attach great importance to confidentiality and hope to have a future of mutual trust.
Editorial Comment:
Musk took the opportunity to remotely participate in the conference and responded to previous news that Tesla’s in-car cameras may lead to user data leakage. At the same time, he also stated that the issue of commercial espionage has raised some concerns. For example, the United States once planned to close down TikTok, but this is unnecessary concern on the part of the United States; he hopes that we can have a future of mutual trust.
Tesla orders the world’s first 8,000-ton die-casting machine in preparation for the production of Cybertruck
Recently, Italy’s die-casting technology company Idra announced that a “global leader in new energy vehicle manufacturing” has ordered the world’s first 8,000-ton casting machine from it. Elon Musk previously stated that Tesla is seeking to purchase the world’s largest die-casting machine for the production of the Cybertruck.
At present, Tesla’s four super factories have all installed 6,000-ton die-casting machines for the production of the integrated die-cast rear body of the Model Y. The components have been reduced from the original 70 to 1, reducing manufacturing costs and improving production efficiency.
Editorial Comment:
A larger die-casting closing force can produce larger-volume and more complex parts. Currently, die-casting machines used in the automotive industry are between 1,000 and 4,000 tons, and can produce relatively smaller parts. Tesla was the first to introduce a 6,000-ton die-casting machine to produce larger-volume parts needed for the Cybertruck, and is once again the first to introduce an 8,000-ton die-casting machine.### Foxconn Plans to Acquire VinFast Electric Vehicle Production Line in Vietnam
According to Reuters on March 19th, Foxconn and Vietnamese automaker VinFast held negotiations on cooperation, involving battery and automotive component manufacturing. Foxconn intends to acquire VinFast’s electric vehicle production line, but VinFast prefer cooperation.
Previously, Foxconn planned to provide components or services for 10% of global electric vehicles by 2025.
Quick Comment:
In recent months, Foxconn has been active in the field of electric vehicles. In January, Foxconn signed a strategic cooperation framework agreement with Byton and Nanjing Economic and Technological Development Zone, stating that it will accelerate the production of Byton’s first model M-Byte and strive to achieve mass production before the first quarter of 2022. Subsequently, Foxconn and Geely Group signed a strategic cooperation agreement to form a joint venture to provide foundry services. In February, Foxconn announced a partnership with Fisker, with production expected to begin in the fourth quarter of 2023. As a supplier of Apple, Foxconn has accumulated a lot of experience in electric vehicle production in anticipation of Apple’s own auto production.
IM Auto to Incorporate Momenta’s Smart Driving Technology Solution
On March 19th, SAIC Group participated in the joint lead investment of Momenta, an automated driving start-up, and announced that IM Auto will become the first smart electric vehicle brand to incorporate Momenta’s technology solution. According to previous reports by IM Auto, its first mass-produced model will come with a visual perception solution that includes 15 cameras, 5 millimeter-wave radars, and 12 ultrasonic radars, achieving “urban smart navigation, high-speed smart navigation, and centimeter-level high-precision fixed-point automatic parking.”
Momenta’s autonomous driving solution for mass-produced cars is called Mpilot and is mainly aimed at automatic driving on highways/city ring roads, parking scenarios, and urban roads.
Quick Comment:Momenta is currently mainly promoting two business models: first is Mpilot, which provides mass-produced solutions for automatic driving for car companies; and second is Robotaxi, which is about to start trial operation in the second half of this year. Among them, the technical route of Mpilot is different from domestic car companies such as NIO and XPeng in the current stage, and is more similar to Tesla. It uses 2D images collected by cameras and uses visual SlAM to achieve intelligent driving in different scenarios.
The completion of the C-round financing has made Momenta the Chinese autonomous driving company with the highest single-round financing amount since 2021, helping Momenta to simultaneously promote B-end and C-end businesses, which also lays the foundation for attracting more financing.
On March 18, SAIC Group held the R-TECH press conference in Shenzhen and released the new car ES33 and the R-TECH technical brand.
The new ES33 is planned to be launched globally in the second half of next year and will be manufactured at the new digital factory in Lingang, Shanghai, equipped with the PP-CEM full-stack and self-developed high-level automatic driving solution.
The PP-CEM full-stack and self-developed high-level automatic driving solution is also the core of R-TECH. Its perception capability consists of 1 Luminar 1550 nanometer lidar, 2 4D imaging lidars + 6 long-range point cloud lidars, 12 cameras, 12 ultrasonic radars, 5G-V2X and high-precision maps.
Comments:
Looking at the hardware, R-TECH is undoubtedly very strong, but the real experience and software capabilities are also very important. The difficulty here is not only the visual perception capability but also the ability of multi-sensor fusion.
The ES33 equipped with the PP-CEM full-stack and self-developed high-level automatic driving solution is expected to be launched in the second half of next year, which is very urgent for research and development. From the market perspective, many new forces and traditional car companies’ products will appear in the second half of 2022. Early 2023 may be the time for L4 autonomous driving to compete.
This article is a translation by ChatGPT of a Chinese report from 42HOW. If you have any questions about it, please email bd@42how.com.