Introduction
Autonomous driving is hot again!
Main text
In June, the stock price of China’s autonomous driving company, TuSimple, rose by 70%, with a market value of over $13 billion.
At the same time, a large number of autonomous driving companies are on their way to going public. Domestic companies such as Pony.ai and ZhiJia Technology, as well as foreign companies such as Embark, Aurora, and Argo AI, have all announced plans to go public.
Following this trend is also huge financing. On June 16th, Google’s autonomous driving division Waymo announced a $2.5 billion financing round, following last year’s $3.25 billion financing round. The day before that, Cruise, a subsidiary of General Motors, also announced that it would receive a $5 billion credit limit.
In China, according to Entrepreneur China, in the short period from November 2020 to March 2021, less than half a year, a total of nine autonomous driving related companies have received a total of $3.4 billion in financing.
Two years ago, McKinsey released a research report indicating that if the prospects of autonomous driving are expanded in China, the scale of this industry’s revenue will reach tens of trillions of dollars.
It can be seen that the trillion-dollar market of autonomous driving is being ignited in 2021.
First and foremost, there are a series of external factors, such as ample capital under the flooding of the US dollars, explosive growth of new energy vehicles next door, the leading role of autonomous driving in special scenarios, among others.
More importantly, the impact of autonomous driving on China’s industry is the most significant internal factor: the systematic technological breakthrough of autonomous driving supported by vehicle-road collaboration and benchmark cases of successful commercialization of leading enterprises.
By introducing vehicle-road collaboration autonomous driving system-level solutions, autonomous driving vehicles can perceive road conditions through roadside equipment while also sensing themselves, equivalent to obtaining a “God’s-eye view”, thereby solving the perception bottleneck of single-vehicle autonomous driving in extreme rain and snow weather, front blocking, and other scattered sudden scenes and extreme operating conditions.
China’s autonomous driving leading company, Mogu Car Alliance, is an application representative based on vehicle-road collaboration commercialization. It is the first domestic company to land an open 5G commercial vehicle road collaboration demonstration road, the first domestic company to land a vehicle-road-cloud integrated autonomous driving system, and the first domestic company to land a city-level, large-scale autonomous driving operation project.
Mushroom Car Association’s Robotaxi Team makes a heavy appearance in the city’s public service fleet!
If we compare the bike perception in autonomous driving to car lights, then roadside equipment in the vehicle-road cooperation is like streetlights. Using car lights and streetlights together can make autonomous driving safer.
Mushroom Car Association not only knows how to use streetlights, but also how to make them. In September 2019, Mushroom Car Association landed the first open 5G commercial vehicle-road cooperation demonstration road in the national smart transportation demonstration base, successfully verified and practiced the seamless connection between 5G and V2X on the road. According to government data, the project has been operating steadily for nearly two years, and the safety of intersections has been improved by 60%.
On top of this system, in July 2020, Mushroom Car Association launched the first domestic vehicle-road-cloud integration autonomous driving. The entire system fully integrates vehicle-side perception, road-side perception, and cloud-side perception. It is the only autonomous driving system in China that can operate safely and stably in extreme weather conditions such as heavy rain and dark nights. It has set a benchmark for autonomous driving from limited closed scenes to open roads, and from technology testing to commercialization.
Based on this, Mushroom Car Association has taken the lead in entering a new stage of commercial operation for autonomous driving. In March this year, Mushroom Car Association reached a strategic cooperation with Hengyang City, achieving the first domestic urban-level, large-scale autonomous driving operation project landing. The operation of the autonomous driving fleet covers various urban public travel and public service scenes, including robotaxis, robobuses, autonomous driving sweepers, autonomous driving patrol cars, autonomous driving park vehicles, and autonomous driving medical vehicles.
Mushroom Car Association, based on its vehicle-road cooperation, has built a vehicle-road-cloud integrated autonomous driving system, which has broken through the two major pain points of safety and cost in single-vehicle autonomous driving. Its own technological landing strength and commercial operation capability have been fully recognized by urban infrastructure builders, boosting industry confidence. For the entire industry, this project will play a key benchmarking role over the long term.
As leading companies in autonomous driving, represented by Mushroom Car Association, demonstrate and practice, the vast trillion-dollar market space in this cutting-edge technology field has quietly opened up.
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.