Under the umbrella of ChuXing BaiRenHui media, focusing on the evolution of the automotive travel industry chain.
Author: Zheng Wen
The Robotaxi circuit sees new competition.
On December 8th, Xiangdao Robotaxi officially launched in Jiading, Shanghai. As a media outlet that has been following autonomous driving for a long time, AutocarMax was one of the first to experience the L4-level Xiangdao Robotaxi, which lasted about half an hour with no interventions by the safety officer in the driver’s seat.
During the journey, the riding experience was very similar to that of a “veteran driver.” In a scene without protected left turns, Xiangdao Robotaxi did not make any mistakes. Even in congested traffic, there were no sudden accelerations or decelerations, and lane changes were very smooth.
Besides mimicking “veteran drivers” in driving, what surprised people about Xiangdao Robotaxi was the “service experience” perceived by passengers, which was rarely encountered in other Robotaxi experiences.
For example, after ordering through the Xiangdao app, passengers can select what music they want to listen to before boarding. The doors are unlocked automatically before boarding, and the screen behind the front seat displays not only the usual road information but also air conditioning temperature. These passenger-controlled features create a strong sense of private ownership in the vehicle.
This experience made me feel so safe and satisfied sitting in the car imagining bustling city scenes of driverless travel.
This perhaps is no longer a distant future. Just last month, 1,200 kilometers away in Beijing, Robotaxi was given a shot in the arm.
In Yizhuang, Beijing, autonomous driving travel services were officially launched for commercial trials. Baidu and Xiao Ma Zhi Xing, two companies whose technology level and strength have been certified, were granted licenses to start paid operation of their Robotaxis. Citizens can call Robotaxis at over 700 stations in the relevant area, and the number of autonomous driving vehicles in the area is close to 100. This means that Robotaxi can now start charging for operation in Yizhuang.
He Xia, chief engineer at the Policy and Economics Research Institute of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, said that Robotaxi will become a benchmark for the commercialization of autonomous driving. Initiating paid operations trial not only advances Robotaxi but also represents that it will formally begin to undergo commercial testing in safety, service, operation, and other aspects.
People are amazed that Robotaxi has made leaps and bounds in China within just a few short years from 0 to 1.In September 2019, Baidu officially announced the opening of the first Robotaxi trial operation service for ordinary citizens in the smart driving demonstration area in Changsha. By mid-2020, the giant travel platform, Didi, launched a large-scale Robotaxi trial operation in Jiading, Shanghai…
Meanwhile, enterprises such as Wenyuan Zhixing, Xiao Ma Zhi Xing, Momenta, and Auto X have all entered the market, showing the unstoppable momentum of Robotaxi’s development.
From the exploration of industry participants to the promotion of macro policies, the commercial trend of Robotaxi is undoubtedly irresistible, and the speed, distance, and barrier construction of participants are traceable.
The advantages of Enjoy Auto Robotaxi among these participants are quite outstanding. You can get a glimpse of it just from the experience. For example, the “old driver”-like driving skills must be backed by a strong foundation in automatic driving technology; the experience of controlling the air conditioning requires deep resource allocation at the level of car modification; and the delicate service experience also reflects the platform’s rich user operation experience.
These seemingly comfortable experiences reflect the platform’s powerful resource integration capabilities and system competitiveness at the underlying level.
Enjoy Auto Robotaxi is the first Chinese automaker’s L4 automatic driving operation platform, which fully integrates the advantages of the upstream and downstream industries such as SAIC Motor, SAIC AI Lab, Momenta, Enjoy Auto, etc. It combines “mature travel operation experience” with “leading automatic driving technology” in an organic way, exploring a more perfect Robotaxi commercial model through the “Smart Manufacturing + AI + Operation” three-in-one mode.
In this combination, the upstream and downstream industry advantages of SAIC Motor Group provide strong support for intelligent manufacturing and vehicle integration; SAIC AI Lab and Momenta provide a comprehensive software and hardware automatic driving solution, and Enjoy Auto focuses on the most grounded operation part.
Their integration fully confirms a simple truth: one person can run fast, but a group of people can run far.The first batch of vehicles used by Xiangdao Robotaxi is the RisingAuto MARVEL R model, which has original factory-level hardware design requirements to ensure the reliability and safety of vehicles. The original factory-designed and optimized modification process achieves seamless integration between the vehicle and the intelligent driving end, ensuring high integration and improved aesthetics and safety, thus enhancing the riding experience.
It is worth mentioning that the iEPS redundant wire-controlled chassis independently developed by SAIC subsidiary Lianchuang Automotive Electronics improves vehicle handling accuracy and has dual-channel redundant backup, further enhancing safety levels.
Based on the GVDP vehicle development process, SAIC has established a modification system for Robotaxi, providing a solid foundation for future large-scale production.
Behind Xiangdao Robotaxi’s “old driver” performance are two important players: SAIC Artificial Intelligence Lab (AI Lab) and Momenta.
The software and hardware integrated autonomous driving solution provided by the joint efforts of AI Lab and Momenta for Xiangdao Robotaxi provides powerful computing support with over 600TOPS, and the “vision + radar” solution can independently complete 3D perception and ensure multiple high-level redundancies based on data-driven fusion.
“Data-driven fusion” is a critical element, particularly in urban travel scenarios involving numerous typical scenes such as unprotected intersections and malicious Cut-ins. Undoubtedly, such typical scenes are massive. Therefore, manual parameter tuning and algorithm iterations are increasingly inefficient, non-quantifiable, and non-reusable.
For example, at an intersection during dusk, the road is filled with students leaving school, vehicles heading home from work, and delivery riders crisscrossing the street. Ensuring that Xiangdao Robotaxi can cruise through the intersection like an “old driver” requires building an effective and reasonable algorithm framework and efficient closed-loop automation toolchain.
SAIC’s Fanyi Cloud platform and Momenta Framework provide technical capabilities to establish a full-process data-driven algorithm and efficient closed-loop automation toolchain, enabling seamless transmission of production vehicle and Robotaxi autonomous driving data and technology integration and promoting rapid iteration of autonomous driving technology.
Although Xiangdao Robotaxi has just entered the market, it has the advantage of learning from several years of exploration in the ride-hailing market, possessing a clear understanding of the core competitiveness of Robotaxi and establishing high barriers to resource integration.The automobile industry has formed a complementary relationship between mobility platforms, large automakers, and autonomous driving companies, which has a significant advantage in the commercial competition of Robotaxi and is currently the best solution discovered.
CEO of Momenta, Cao Xudong, summarized, “Our three-in-one cooperation model has advantages in the experience, understanding, and operation of cars.”
The Main Theme of Robotaxi’s Second Half Competition
By 2030, the total market size of shared mobility in China will reach 2.25 trillion yuan, of which the proportion of Robotaxi will reach 60%, or 1.3 trillion yuan. The future shared mobility market will gradually shift to the market for autonomous driving. IHS Markit’s “China Autonomous Driving Market and Future Mobility Market Outlook” provides people with enough imagination.
Now, from road testing to operation, Robotaxi has entered the second half of the race, and participants are pouring in.
From the perspective of the final outcome, the commercialization capability is the most important and core goal of Robotaxi, and the operational capability determines its commercial efficiency and profitability.
Robotaxi tests the operational capability of the platform extremely. The platform’s operational scheduling experience and vehicle management capability are important factors determining the commercial efficiency of Robotaxi. A good platform can ensure that the empty rate of autonomous driving vehicles is as low as possible, thereby improving the commercial efficiency of Robotaxi.
According to Wenyuan Zhixing’s data, labor costs for taxi drivers account for nearly 60% of the overall cost. Substituting drivers with autonomous driving technology can save 60% of the cost in the long run, and the profit model is clear.
However, the short-term reconstruction cost of Robotaxi is also relatively high, and the key point of profitability is the time when the cost of transforming autonomous driving vehicles is lower than labor costs. Fortunately, in recent years, the cost of core components such as lidar has also been rapidly declining.
From the perspective of company operating costs, the initial investment in a single city is at least tens of billions. Robotaxi is a typical bilateral platform economic model. If there are not enough autonomous driving vehicles, the waiting time for users to hail a ride will be too long, making it difficult for the platform to attract enough taxi customers. If there are not enough customers, deploying a large number of autonomous driving vehicles is costly and can lead to resource waste.Therefore, in order to ensure the accessibility of Robotaxi services and the user experience, the service provider of Robotaxi must deploy a certain density of autonomous vehicles during the early cold start. This is also a huge “pain” for many Robotaxi startups without traffic accumulation to start from scratch.
However, a ride-hailing platform with a huge user base can avoid this problem, and the combination of traditional ride-hailing and Robotaxi calling methods can effectively solve the problems brought by the “two-sided economic model” to the company’s operations. For example, Xiangdao has accumulated nearly 30 million registered users in nearly 40 cities, and Robotaxi services can be seamlessly connected.
At the same time, based on a large amount of historical data accumulation, Xiangdao uses deep reinforcement learning technology to empower itself and can complete the best matching of people, vehicles, time, and space in all dimensions in milliseconds, helping Xiangdao Robotaxi operate efficiently.
If technology confidence is the strongest guarantee for commercial operation, then operational advantages are the most powerful weapon for commercial operation. Therefore, as an “operational” platform, Xiangdao has a strong mission and undertakes the responsibility of quickly pushing Xiangdao Robotaxi to the market.
“When Xiangdao is placed in front of Robotaxi, it is both a trust and a positive spur.” When I tried the ride, a Xiangdao team member said to me with shining eyes.
“When the attributes of the car space are enlarged, it is necessary for our operation and technology companies to define and interpret user needs, and then meet them through technical solutions. This is very critical.” Cai Bin, chairman of Xiangdao, repeatedly emphasized the quality of “service” in terms of operation.
Compared with traditional ride-hailing services, Xiangdao Robotaxi places more emphasis on the role of “cars”. Xiangdao has put a lot of effort into vehicle modification in order to improve the comfort of passengers during operation.
“Xiangdao Robotaxi is not just a simple ride-hailing service. It pays more attention to what consumers care about from the beginning of placing an order, getting on the car, and arriving at the destination, including every link in the driving process. Therefore, we think more from the perspective of whether the Robotaxi ride experience is perfect.”
“Safety and Compliance” is a New Proposition
Whether it is the ride-hailing market that has passed the wild era or the Robotaxi that is gaining momentum, regulatory compliance has appropriately intervened at this point in time.
In the face of the joint talks held by five government departments, including the Ministry of Transportation, with 11 ride-hailing platforms, including T3, Meituan and Caocao, and the suspension of Didi, compliance has become a high-pressure line in the transportation industry.
Returning to the commercial pilot policy for autonomous driving in Beijing, what conditions must Robotaxi meet to obtain a license for charging operation? In addition to the test of autonomous driving technology level, compliance is also a key factor in various dimensions such as enterprise propaganda management policy, payment and wallet management, network data security, and service supervision.
The government’s attitude is clear: promoting the commercialization of Robotaxi is an inevitable trend, but compliance is also a hard requirement. It is not just a difficult threshold to meet, but also a competitive dimension.
In the monthly ranking of compliance rate of orders by the transportation department, the compliance rates of some platforms that have seen an increase in orders have dropped significantly in recent months. According to the latest data in October, among 18 platforms with more orders, Xiangdao (Enjoytech) ranked first in order compliance rate. In fact, Enjoytech has claimed the top spot six times in compliance rate ranking.
In terms of network data security, Enjoytech Robotaxi ensures the safety of personal information from end to cloud through data encryption, desensitization and other measures involving facial information and trajectory data. Enjoytech has been certified by both ISO27001 Information Security Management System and ISO27701 Privacy Information Management System.
Apart from network data security, Enjoytech Robotaxi has also optimized safety measures beyond expectations.
For example, the intentionally modified iEPS redundant wire-controlled chassis with dual-path redundancy backup can further improve safety level. The Smart Driving Data Monitoring Platform established by the SAIC Artificial Intelligence Laboratory has also created a complete data loop from vehicle-side to cloud for Enjoytech Robotaxi, enabling real-time monitoring of the operation of the smart driving system of each Robotaxi and ensuring the safety of the journey.
As planned, Enjoytech Robotaxi will increase its Shanghai fleet to 40 vehicles within this year and launch 20 operational vehicles in Suzhou. In 2022, Enjoytech Robotaxi plans to launch in Shenzhen, achieving a total fleet size of 200 operational vehicles. By 2025, Enjoytech will establish a commercial Robotaxi fleet to define a new sharing economy for sustainable profitable business models.According to McKinsey’s prediction, it is expected that around 2025, after Robotaxi cancels the safety officer and deploys on a large scale, cost advantages will be highlighted. Compared with traditional taxis, Robotaxi’s cost advantage will reach the inflection point between 2025 and 2027, and it will subvert the current way of consumer travel, gradually becoming the mainstream mode of transportation supplementing urban capacity.
Baidu Chairman and CEO Robin Li also predicted that the comprehensive service cost of Robotaxi will be lower than that of manual driving in 2025. When the service order exceeds 50 million, the cost of Robotaxi will be reduced by 80%, lower than the average price of ordinary fast car service, with the opportunity to achieve normalized profitability.
As we can see, 2025 is a critical time point. What kind of participant with specific characteristics will survive until then? Maybe you already have the answer in your mind.
An interesting phenomenon is that after DiDi’s fall, the domestic ride-hailing market has seen a wave of capital heat. Many travel companies, including Xiangdao, announced financing, and in just a few months, the industry has received more than 13 billion yuan in investment.
What is worth pondering is that the investment logic is changing in this wave of investment frenzy, and scale and expansion speed are no longer the primary measures. An investment professional said: “Now more emphasis is on health power, that is, whether an enterprise’s model can be sustainably developed.”
From the current operating mode, Xiangdao Robotaxi takes “safety as the starting point, scale as the goal, and experience as the center” as its core purpose, which not only directly hits the current pain points of competition but also lays a foundation for the next commercial operation.
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.