From 0.5 to 1

Author: Leng Zelin

Editor: Wang Pan

The promotion of new energy vehicles in passenger cars has made great strides, but in terms of carbon neutrality goals, the current progress is still limited. The total carbon emissions of China’s automobiles are contributed 10% by passenger cars. However, trucks dominate the automobile industry, accounting for 70% of the total emissions.

Therefore, the transformation of new energy sources in commercial vehicles is undoubtedly a top priority for achieving carbon neutrality goals.

Huang Chendong, CEO of Qianchen Automotive, told Photon Planet that it is estimated that by 2025, the commercial vehicle market will mature, and the ownership of intelligent new energy commercial vehicles will account for 20% of the entire commercial vehicle market.

Of course, just like new energy vehicles in passenger cars, the imagination of commercial vehicles goes beyond electrification, and it is a hot topic in competition in areas such as intelligence and autonomous driving.

On March 7th, Qianchen Automotive announced that it had obtained the L4 level autonomous driving test license certified by CARRI. This means that this new force in the commercial vehicle field, which was established not even two years ago, has already been driving on the fast track of commercial vehicles.

Recently, Huang Chendong had a deep conversation with Photon Planet and others, sharing with us the current progress of Qianchen Automotive and its thinking about the future.

“We can start from 0.5 because we have some experience and accumulation. It’s related to trucks in some places, so we have to start from 0.”

Although Qianchen Automotive was established less than two years ago, its CEO Huang Chendong has been in the automotive industry for more than ten years. He worked for Ford Motor Company in the US and participated in the development of electric vehicles and fuel cell vehicles, winning the Best Invention Award from Ford Research Institute.

After returning to China in 2008, Huang Chendong devoted himself wholeheartedly to new energy. In fact, before Qianchen Automotive was established, Huang Chendong had two experiences of starting from 0-1. One was to set up a new energy team for SAIC until it became big, and the other was to join NIO as a senior vice president responsible for the research and development of three electric and autonomous driving.

Huang Chendong also frankly admitted that these two experiences were of great help to him. Therefore, Qianchen Automotive’s start is definitely not just from 0-1.

At last year’s press conference, Qianchen announced the release of two light-duty electric trucks, the iC1 and the EC1. The EC1 is a smart and connected pure electric light truck jointly developed by Qianchen and FAW Jiefang, which was successfully completed and began delivering at the end of October last year.

According to Huang Chendong, Qianchen only began to exert sales efforts in December last year, and has sold more than 80 vehicles, with several hundred orders in hand. Such achievements will help the development of the entire company this year.And another iC1, fully self-developed by Qiantong Auto, is scheduled to go into large-scale production in the fourth quarter of this year. The concept car, which was first unveiled last year, boasts an L4-level autonomous driving system, equipped with one millimeter-wave radar, five solid-state lidars, and eighteen cameras. The production version will be equipped with L1-L2 autonomous driving assistance systems in accordance with current market demand.

For Qiantong, the light truck will be the company’s backbone. Unlike the early days of the new energy passenger car market, where large amounts of money were burned to build market share, Qiantong will raise funds and improve its data by selling light trucks. After establishing the foundation, Qiantong will then go further and develop heavy-duty trucks. According to the plan, Qiantong will launch an autonomous driving heavy-duty truck next year.

In Huang Chendong’s view, if the passenger car market requires 20 billion yuan, then the commercial vehicle market will need only a quarter of that amount. However, although making commercial vehicles is easier than making passenger cars, the operational aspect is more difficult because commercial vehicles are tools for production, and the most critical requirement is to generate economic benefits for customers, not just to focus on user experience, which is the case for passenger cars.

Qiantong’s strategic planning is also based on this differentiation, with commercial vehicles ultimately becoming a part of the smart Internet of Things. However, before doing so, Qiantong needs to build an intelligent car that can run through the entire ecosystem of manufacturing, selling, using, maintaining, and reselling, and then advance to the smart Internet of Things.

Currently, the commercial vehicle market is similar to the passenger car market of 2015-2016. Although many OEMs want to occupy a portion of the market, newcomers like Qiantong may be more capable of driving the industry’s development.

So far, Qiantong has completed two rounds of financing, raising about 60 million US dollars, and is currently conducting a B + round of financing. In the second half of the year, it will also launch a C round of financing.

Qiantong was not one of the first companies to enter the field of smart driving for commercial vehicles. Many autonomous driving companies in the passenger car market have turned to commercial autonomous driving after encountering difficulties. However, in Huang Chendong’s view, achieving fully autonomous driving is still a long process, but the richness of the vehicle’s autonomous driving functions and applicable scenarios can be gradually improved, and a driver driving two or even three vehicles may be realized faster than full unmanned driving.

Therefore, Qiantong did not blindly form its own autonomous driving fleet in the early days. This is also the difference between Qiantong and other companies in the commercial vehicle field, where more companies start from autonomous driving and then move to manufacturing. Normally, autonomous driving companies need to cooperate with vehicle factories to land, installing autonomous driving functions after the fact. However, due to the mechanical transmission of gasoline cars, they cannot fully demonstrate the advantages of autonomous driving.Frontier Intelligence has a forward-looking electric chassis platform and an upcoming L4 autonomous driving heavy-duty truck chassis platform with redundancy. The experience in car manufacturing allows for good compatibility between Frontier’s autonomous driving technology and independently developed new energy vehicles and chassis for better autonomous driving capabilities.

Pre-installed L4 hardware will gradually achieve autonomous driving under different scenarios through software, which is perhaps Huang Chendong’s experience from NIO.

However, Frontier Intelligence has multiple roles, not only as an original equipment manufacturer and autonomous driving company, but also as a logistics company in the future. Huang Chendong shared Frontier’s plan for how to manage these different roles.

“We are not in a rush to commercialize autonomous driving. The first step is to make good cars, with our own self-developed chassis that can better match autonomous driving, and our own full-stack autonomous driving software capabilities.”

Regarding the formation of its own fleet, Huang Chendong said that due to the basic support of light trucks, this will not be done in the short term or even this year. In the current heavy-duty truck orders, Frontier Intelligence will increase the proportion of autonomous driving vehicles and gradually accumulate real operational experience in building its own fleet.

As with NIO, “setting up the bottom layer and making good cars, and then doing autonomous driving in the future is an effortless process.”

Conclusion

Frontier Intelligence’s business is not limited to light trucks and upcoming heavy-duty trucks. By 2024, Frontier will also enter the VAN box truck market. This new player in the commercial vehicle field will have more complete product lines and Huang Chendong’s basic strategy will gradually come to fruition.

The light truck and box truck will handle the task of traffic volume, with data feedback to the development side to improve products and autonomous driving capabilities. The heavy-duty truck will serve as a supplement to sales and will also focus on profitability.

In addition, Frontier Intelligence plans to sell chassis and autonomous driving systems. The accumulation of technology will eventually translate into revenue. Three customers have already expressed their willingness to order Frontier’s chassis system.

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.