The Combination of Cars and Algorithms behind the Cooperation
Driven by the era of intelligence, changes are taking place in major car manufacturers, the automobile industry chain and the ecology. Players from all sides are entering the car-making track, and old car companies are also actively seeking change.
On December 29, Geely announced a cooperation with self-driving company Waymo, and Geely’s high-end smart electric brand Geometry will provide exclusive vehicles for Waymo One’s autonomous vehicle fleet and be put into commercial operation in the United States.
In response to this, An Conghui, CEO of Geometry Intelligent Technology, said: “The Geometry brand adheres to the values of equality, diversity, and sustainability, not only creating with users, but also insisting on co-creation with high-quality global ecological partners.”
On the other hand, with the continuous increase of new energy penetration rate, exploration of self-driving and assisted driving has become more frequent, giving rise to two routes: L4 leapfrogging with algorithm technology companies as the main player and L2 approaching with major car manufacturers as the main player.
Algorithm companies entered the field early and invested heavily, so their technology is relatively more mature. Taking Waymo as an example, it was originally a self-driving car team of Google X Laboratories in 2009, and before it became independent, Google spent at least 1.1 billion U.S. dollars to develop self-driving technology. However, car companies often take commercialization as a prerequisite, and without radical technology-type companies, their entry time is relatively late, and they mainly focus on the research and development of assisted driving that can bring in cash flow at this stage.
One lacks technology in vehicles, and the other has technology but no vehicle. The advantages and disadvantages are obvious, which is a major characteristic of players in the current self-driving track. Geely’s partnership with Waymo also has the intention of complementing each other’s strengths and weaknesses.
One is the leading domestic independent brand, and the other is the world’s leading autonomous driving company. The cooperation between the two will present what kind of answer to the self-driving market.
Without doubt, self-driving is the ultimate goal that all companies are pursuing, regardless of which route they choose. However, there is still no consensus on the vehicle form and business model of self-driving at this stage.
Especially, the development and commercialization of self-driving technology is an expensive and time-consuming process, and the improvement of self-driving technology and related policies and regulations is slower than industry insiders originally expected, so it is still difficult to estimate the time point for large-scale commercialization.
Waymo, which entered the field earlier, launched the self-driving taxi service Waymo One at the end of 2018, and at that time, the self-driving service still required a safety officer. In 2020, Waymo announced the launch of completely self-driving technology and removed the safety officer for the first time. However, completely self-driving has not been widely promoted. In addition to license management, another factor is the lack of vehicles designed for self-driving.In 2019, Waymo announced the establishment of the world’s first L4 autonomous driving car factory in Michigan, USA. However, the factory was not dedicated to producing vehicles specifically designed for autonomous driving, but was responsible for converting 62,000 hybrid Chrysler Pacifica and 20,000 pure electric SUV Jaguar I-PACE vehicles.
This collaboration with Jidu Auto is not just about converting vehicles, but rather it is based on the Atlas-M architecture, designed and developed by Jidu Auto’s European Innovation Center to explore new areas of autonomous driving.
Unlike traditional car models, the product jointly created by Jidu Auto and Waymo transcends people’s understanding and focuses on passengers instead of drivers.
The design of this car focuses on the passenger experience, with a flatter floor and a straightened A-pillar. The vehicle also features dual control and non-control options, and supports multiple seating arrangements, including two-person, five-person, six-person, and seven-person models.
This flexible design has two main reasons. First, there is no consensus on the shape of a vehicle in autonomous driving mode, and Jidu Auto and Waymo need to continue to explore. Second, laws and regulations for autonomous driving are not perfect, and more flexible options can help adjust policies.
It is reported that the vehicle will be equipped with Waymo’s Waymo Driver autonomous driving solution. This solution was updated to the fifth generation last year, with actual driving mileage of more than 32 million kilometers and simulated driving mileage of more than 16 billion kilometers.
Despite the fact that autonomous driving has been a hot topic for many years, there is still no significant trend towards large-scale commercialization. The reasons for this include technological limitations (such as a large number of corner cases) and legal and regulatory restrictions.
Waymo, with more than ten years of development history, leads the industry in terms of testing vehicle numbers, road test mileage, and commercialization. Geely, as the first private car maker in China, may not have as long a history as European, American, and Japanese car makers, but has annual sales in the millions.
Both are leaders in their respective fields, but autonomous driving is not a product on a single track, and the actions of Geely and Waymo have given new answers to the integration of cars and algorithms.
The mutual selection of top playersDespite being a pioneer in the field of autonomous driving technology, Waymo is ultimately unable to escape its status as a technology company.
Building cars has never been an easy task. For example, Dyson’s car project started in 2016, and despite an expected investment of up to $2.5 billion, it had to withdraw three years later due to the complexity of the automobile industry and commercialization challenges. James Dyson, the founder, admitted that supply chain services charged higher fees for new players in the automobile industry, and the high costs raised the selling price, leaving no one willing to pay.
It can be seen that building cars is not only time-consuming and costly, with many technological barriers, but also requires the establishment of factories and the construction of upstream and downstream chains. For technology companies still relying on funding and in urgent need of commercialization, this can be said to be a thankless task.
In such a situation, collaboration with automotive companies seems to be one of the few options for internet technology companies to develop their own car manufacturing path. As a technology company, Waymo is clearly more aware of this, and it is inevitable that it chooses the path of cooperation.
However, there are many automotive companies with car manufacturing capabilities. As a pioneer in autonomous driving technology, what does Waymo’s collaboration with Zeekr Xueyuan mean?
Generally speaking, new car manufacturers cooperate with automotive companies to build cars mostly for economic considerations, to save various costs of building cars on their own, and automotive companies can also consume idle production capacity. In this type of cooperation, automotive companies do not participate heavily in vehicle design, but rather provide production capacity in an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) role.
Zeekr Xueyuan, on the other hand, has been trying to take a third path different from traditional automotive companies and new car manufacturers since its inception, with its core focus on co-creation. In the current period of transformation and change in the global automotive industry, Zeekr Xueyuan’s partnership with Waymo is clearly beyond the traditional OEM model of providing production capacity.
Specifically, the vehicle is built on the Zeekr Haohan-M architecture, designed and developed by CEVT, Zeekr Xueyuan’s European innovation center, with Zeekr Xueyuan itself participating in product design and optimization.
According to publicly available information, the Haohan-M architecture is the world’s first intelligent mobile travel platform specifically developed for autonomous driving scenarios, based on SEA Haohan architecture’s technology and experience accumulation, aimed at autonomous driving applications. This meets the needs of Waymo and also fits Zeekr Xueyuan’s co-creative approach.
Therefore, Waymo’s choice of Zeekr Xueyuan not only affirms Zeekr Xueyuan’s technological research and development capabilities and commercial expansion potential, but also perhaps hints at a co-creative sense. The coupling of the two also reveals Zeekr Xueyuan’s next step-to deepen the road of intelligent driving.
It is not difficult to imagine that through the pilot commercialization cooperation with Waymo, the Haohan-M architecture can also be applied to the passenger car market in the future, thus enhancing Zeekr Xueyuan’s brand competitiveness. In the future, Zeekr Xueyuan plans to launch a model for the Chinese market based on the Haohan-M architecture, which may be its next step.