Exciting Developments in the New Car Industry at the Beginning of 2021

The new car industry is booming at the start of 2021.

On January 8th, Korean media reported that Apple is in talks with Hyundai Motor Group to develop an autonomous electric vehicle, with plans to launch the Apple Car.

On January 11th, Baidu announced the formation of a new intelligent car company to enter the automotive industry as a vehicle manufacturer.

On January 13th, the Jidu Auto Group, a joint venture between SAIC, Zhangjiang High-Tech, and Alibaba, launched two mass-produced car models.

On March 30th, Xiaomi announced the establishment of a smart electric vehicle business. The company plans to establish a wholly-owned subsidiary to handle its smart electric vehicle business.

On April 12th, DJI officially launched its intelligent driving business brand, “DJI Automotive,” and announced that it will release related products at the Shanghai Auto Show in April.

On April 13th, the Chinese version of the Ford Mach-E was officially launched.

On April 15th, Geely Automotive’s new sub-brand Zeekr, launched its first mass-produced car, ZEEKR 001.

On April 17th, a vehicle, the ARCFOX Alpha S Huawei HI version, equipped with Huawei’s autonomous driving technology, drove 12 kilometers without intervention from anyone, including the main and secondary roads and residential areas with mixed traffic. This was witnessed by many media.

On April 19th, Jidu Auto officially launched the luxury all-electric smart car Jidu L7’s “Angel Wheel Edition” model, priced at RMB 408,800, accepting pre-orders. The first owners of the “Angel Wheel Edition” are entitled to upgrade the laser radar hardware to original factory form when the laser radar commercial production reaches maturity.

On April 20th, reports emerged that ByteDance had registered and established a company related to its car business, indicating that it may enter the automotive industry.

On April 21st, Ideal Automotive announced that all of its future vehicle models would be fully equipped with advanced driving assistance systems and autonomous driving technology, including software, data services, maps, and more.

The latest developments include independent brands from traditional car manufacturers, consumer electronics companies, and other players entering the automotive industry, opening the door to a new era of car manufacturing and a redefined industry landscape.

Changes brought by the new trend in car manufacturing

Comparing the product concepts of the new powerhouses in the 1.0 era and the recent 2.0 era announcements, we see several clear trends:- When new cars are launched, the cutting-edge hardware for autonomous driving and intelligent cockpit are embedded and waiting for subsequent software OTA updates to enhance the driving experience. After the release of the new car, the software continues to evolve, leading to a continuous upgrade of the user experience.

For example, the IM L7 released at the recent Shanghai Auto Show is equipped with autonomous driving hardware configuration including NVIDIA Xavier chips, 12 cameras, 5 millimeter-wave radars, 12 ultrasonic radars, high-precision IMU, and high-precision maps. Based on these embedded hardware, the goal is to achieve automatic driving functions such as intelligent summon, AVP (valet parking), Highway NOA (highway intelligent navigation), and City NOA (city intelligent navigation) Door to Door Pilot, among others.

• All modules of the vehicle control software are interconnected, combining hardware functions and breaking through system limitations, to provide customized experience for different driving scenarios.

This trend is also exemplified by the IM L7, with the SOA open full-stack software architecture jointly developed by SAIC Zero-Tribe, which has distributed multi-core heterogeneous system capabilities, breaks down the boundaries between different functions from the bottom up, and achieves cross-domain integration. Users’ functional requirements in different scenarios can be provided with seamless experience through the collaboration of multiple subsystems of the vehicle.

The data-driven active evolution behind the user driving experience

The embedding of hardware, OTA software to enhance functionality, and other trends under the new car production model are visible changes, while the different practices of each car manufacturer to meet user demands and to improve experience using massive amounts of data are hidden behind these trends.

At the forefront, there is the continuous improvement of autonomous driving experience. In traditional assisted driving and active safety features, the improvement of the user experience mainly depends on extensive testing of test vehicles by the automaker before mass production.

Even in the era of autonomous driving, many car manufacturers continue to follow this logic, even if the functionality can be upgraded and the experience can be updated. The remote OTA activation of the function is still based on the completed test calibration under the functional experience planning route.

In this logical mode, the advantages of intelligence and network connectivity in this era have not been fully utilized, and the industry’s expected solution to long-tail problems in autonomous driving and the elimination of Corner Case (extreme scenarios) still depend entirely on the manufacturer’s limited testing vehicles, limited testing mileage, and limited test scenarios.To truly improve the driving experience in real-world environments, user participation is essential. This requires a shift away from solely relying on manufacturer-led testing of assisted driving systems, towards a collaborative approach with users to provide real-world data for continuous improvement. The sheer quantity of user-generated data is unmatched in scale, and essential to achieving higher levels of automatic driving capability. Through this collaboration, a closed loop can be established between real-world testing data and algorithm adjustments.

Integrating these principles, the Data-Driven algorithm system used by ZhiJi Auto is designed to leverage this closed loop. Its ultimate vision is an intelligent cloud network that quickly processes user-contributed corner cases and issue reports, diagnoses problems, and deploys updates. By analyzing and mirroring user driving habits, the system constantly learns and improves its abilities, from lane changes to acceleration and braking.

At the launch of ZhiJi Auto’s L7 vehicle, the company’s Senior Director of Intelligent Driving, Tuo Yue, noted that Data-Driven systems have increased problem recognition rates by nearly 10 times compared to traditional methods and visual-assistance annotations hundred-fold.

In the age of automotive intelligence, real-time online vehicles generate massive amounts of user data. While this data drives continuous improvements in vehicle experience and functional upgrades, it should not solely benefit vehicle manufacturers. User contributions should correspond with gains in user experience and increased shareholder status in the growing company. Enabling users as stakeholders allows them to receive real value for their contributions.

Previously, one may have joked that those who contribute ideas to brands and manufacturers after purchasing a vehicle are “spiritual shareholders.” But, given their contributions and help, these efforts should be taken seriously, and feedback should bring real value and benefits.In this era, some companies have launched data ownership plans that enable users to co-create, contribute data, and upgrade their experience while also benefiting from the data. Leading this trend is IM Auto’s “CSOP User Data Ownership Plan.”

From the beginning, IM Auto had reserved 4.9% of its equity to incentivize users to contribute their data, with the aim of redefining the relationship between users and companies in the intelligent era.

Under this plan, IM Auto launched the CSOP platform, where users continuously optimize and iterate products and brands through data-driven insights. The CSOP User Data Ownership Plan rewards users who contribute data with 4.9% of the equity returns they own.

Current benefits under the plan include the “Angel Round” users, with 3000 users eligible, who can exchange their data ownership for IM Auto’s next-generation laser-radar fusion driving system after driving more than 5000 kilometers in their normal driving each year after vehicle delivery. Once the system matures, IM Auto’s OEM hardware and software will provide an integrated upgrade for these users.

After driving for three years, Angel Round users can also use their data ownership to upgrade to the next-generation high-end energy battery with a capacity of at least 120 kWh, extending the cruising range to over 800 km. Any remaining data ownership will be reserved in the user’s account.

In this plan, data ownership becomes a quantifiable benefit that promotes further experience upgrades throughout the entire user journey, not just advancements in autonomous driving.

In conclusion, in the new era of intelligent vehicles, data-driven experiences are bringing about a transformative shift in user experiences. Although hardware is mostly finalized when a vehicle is manufactured, users’ needs can continue to be met and upgraded through evolving software, driving progress in the vehicle experience and company’s vehicle manufacturing logic.Because of this symbiotic relationship between data, the relationship between users and enterprises is changing. After being desensitized, the user’s car usage data is becoming a source of symbiotic and collaborative creation between users and enterprises. As Liu Tao, co-CEO of Zhiqi Automotive, said at the press conference, in the era of artificial intelligence, only by symbiosis with users can we truly define what the intelligent automotive era should look like.

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.