Weilai, who started to stall, is adding more autonomous driving research and development!

Traditional car companies shape their competitive advantages in engines, gearboxes and vehicle adjustment; Under the trend of the new four modernizations, many new car-making forces choose to cut in from electrification and take intelligent technology as the core advantage in an attempt to change lanes and overtake.

After years of development, Weilai, Tucki and Ideality have successfully listed in the US stock market and won the first round of elimination. So from a technical point of view, who is the car company with the strongest autonomous driving ability among the top three? Today, the editor will evaluate the perceived hardware, chip computing power, implementation function and R&D layout, and analyze who is the most intelligent China brand!

Weilai article: Representative model Weilai EC6

EC6 is the coupe version of ES6, and it is also the most intelligent vehicle currently on sale by Weilai Automobile.

Automatic driving awareness hardware:

In terms of sensing hardware, EC6 chooses a group of first three cameras, a Bosch fourth-generation 77GHz millimeter-wave radar, four 24GHz angle radars, four panoramic cameras and 12 ultrasonic radar.

Three-eye cameras cover wide and medium distances. Among them, the 28-degree camera is responsible for long-distance targets and traffic lights, the 52-degree camera is responsible for road condition detection, and the 150-degree camera is responsible for vehicles that cut in line at close range; The fusion recognition of three cameras can basically reach the same recognition range as Tesla.

The 77GHz long-range millimeter wave radar is used to realize the identification of car-following objects such as adaptive cruise and the calculation of car-following distance. Four 24GHz millimeter wave radars are used to realize blind spot detection and other functions. The last four fisheye cameras cooperate with 12 ultrasonic radar, which can realize 360 camera shooting and automatic parking.

In terms of computing chips, Weilai EC6 adopts Mobileye? EQ4 chip, the computing power is only? 2.5? At most.

In terms of software, the automatic driving systems of mainstream car companies in the market at present all belong to L2-level systems defined by SAE Association. NIO of Weilai EC6? The Pilot system is similar to the mainstream assisted driving in the market, and both are L2-level systems.

Unlike many traditional car companies that adopt soft and hard packaging schemes such as Bosch and Mainland China, Weilai EC6? L2 automatic assisted driving selects the software algorithm independently developed and the subsequent FOTA upgrade.

At present, the functions that EC6 can open to users are: 1. High-speed automatic assisted driving, 2. Congestion automatic assisted driving, 3. Automatic road maintenance, 4. Turn signal control and direction, 5. Road sign recognition, etc.

According to EyeQ4? According to the official introduction of the chip, EC6 can theoretically drive automatically from FOTA to L3. The introduction said: "The support for driving strategy and all-round vehicle detection, the upgrade of lane detection technology, and the collection and integration of map information can be supported at the highest level? L3？ Level automatic driving. "

But the editor thinks, L3? There are many other hardware, including redundant support for decision-making and actuators. These are not available in Weilai EC6 developed in the early stage, so EC6 may develop in the direction of "better L2" next, but it will not be upgraded to the real L3 level.

At a test drive meeting of Weilai Automobile, its official also confirmed this view. It said: "Our sensor configuration is forward-looking. Based on more and more data collected, NP's software will continue to iterate, and then it will use the integration of multiple sensors to maximize the continuous use time of users. This is different from Tesla's emphasis on purchasing NGP once, and you can enjoy the existing automatic assisted driving for life. Upgrade the future automatic driving system. "

Therefore, Weilai EC6 has more "upgrade advantages" than L2 fuel vehicles that can't OTA, but there is still a gap compared with Tesla with sustainable iteration. Its autopilot capability is just a set of "very useful L2".

Lost:

Faced with the layout of new forces such as Tucki (the second full-stack self-research institute in the world) in autonomous driving, Weilai is obviously a beat behind.

According to informed sources, Weilai adopted the strategy of Chinese mainland and North America, and the two models were listed alternately in parallel.

Among them, China District focuses on three power systems (Wei Ran Electric Power) and power exchange systems, aiming at building NP 1 platform (NIO? Platform1.0); The software was developed by Li Zhuang, the former head of Cheetah Browser.

The North American team focuses on autonomous driving and intelligent research and development, and is led by Wu. However, the subsequent progress was not smooth. At the end of 20 18, Weilai ES8 went public, and negative news followed. Weilai Automobile encountered a capital chain crisis, and the company cut costs and saved resources. The North American autopilot team laid off employees three times before and after, and the research and development was nearing completion. Soul figure wu also chose to leave.

Weilai's existing autopilot and cockpit intelligence are based on Li Zhuang in China District, but in June 2065438+2009, NOMI and NIO were released. OS？ After 2.0, Li Zhuang also chose to leave his job to start a business.

How to maintain the competitive advantage of autonomous driving in the face of financial difficulties? Weilai began to seek other solutions.

20 19? Year? 1 1? Month? 5? In March, Weilai and Mobileye, the Israeli autonomous driving visual perception overlord, jointly announced that they would build it based on Weilai's second-generation vehicle platform? L4？ Self-driving model level.

Mobileye？ In the announcement, Mobileye will provide? L4？ Automatic driving system kit (L4? AV？ Kit), including EyeQ? Series of chips, hardware, driving strategy, software and map solutions, while Weilai is responsible for vehicle regulation engineering, integration and mass production.

From Weilai's point of view, give up choosing self-developed Mobileye? This not only means that the pressure of R&D investment is greatly reduced, Mobileye? Absolute leading technology can also ensure that Weilai will not be hanged by Tesla in the competition. However, from the perspective of iterative optimization, compared with the vertical integration and independent research and development route led by Tesla, Weilai's scheme of selecting suppliers obviously does not have the upper hand in execution efficiency, and may completely lose the initiative on the smart car track, but at this time Weilai has no choice.

Counterattack:

With the increase in delivery and investment in Hefei, Weilai's revenue began to improve in the first quarter of 2020, and Weilai also had a new layout for the research and development of autonomous driving technology.

The cash flow in the second quarter reached1165438+68 million yuan; At the end of the third quarter, the cash equivalent was * * * 2154.3 million yuan. In early February, Weilai announced the issuance of 60 million ADSs. If all the additional issuance is completed, Weilai's current cash flow will exceed 40 billion yuan, with sufficient food and grass.

August 2020? Month? 14? The pictures that flowed out on the Internet that day showed that before? Monenta? Ren Shaoqing, four founders and directors, has joined Weilai as assistant vice president, reporting directly to Li Bin. This is the weather vane for Weilai to regain the research of autonomous driving.

Ren has a deep understanding of the field of computer vision. 20 16? Won the top conference in the field of computer vision? CVPR？ what's up The best? Paper? Reward. In "20 18? In the annual Google academic citation list of autonomous driving, Ren's cumulative academic citation of autonomous driving direction ranks second in the world.

Ren's joining is just? NIO？ A pilot? The first step of the independent research and development revival plan, in the face of Tesla, Wei Lai understands that it is not enough to rely solely on Ren Shaoqing.

Then, Weilai promoted a young executive, Zhang Jianyong, the director of autonomous driving, and set up a dual AVP for the autonomous driving team.

It is reported that Zhang Jianyong, an early employee of Weilai, was responsible for the early development of SAIC autopilot during 20 13 to 20 14. His previous report was to North America's original Weilai autopilot VP? Jamie. Carlson who left in June this year.

In addition to the self-research of software algorithms, Weilai has also laid out the intelligent industrial chain as widely as Tesla.

It is reported that in terms of chip self-research, Bai Jian and 65438+, former general managers of Xiaomi Chip and Forward-looking Research Department, joined Weilai as vice president of intelligent hardware at the beginning of 10, and then began to conduct research inside the car owners, asking the car owners what functions Weilai's chips hoped to support.

June 30, 2020 165438+ Some media reported: "Weilai officially confirmed the L4-level self-driving research project, and the assistant vice president joined in August? (AVP) Ren Shaoqing is in charge. In this regard, Wei Lai neither denied nor admitted it. However, what is basically certain is that Weilai Automobile, which started to stall, has now embarked on the road of self-driving and self-research.

This article comes from car home, the author of the car manufacturer, and does not represent car home's position.