The era of intelligence is rapidly advancing, and the definition of automobiles is changing from "transportation" to "smart products." What follows is that some automobile hardware that was originally important in the mechanical and electronic ages has gradually lost ground in the era of intelligence.
The cake of smart cars is getting bigger and bigger.Accenture's research report predicts that by 2020, there will be 2.1 million smart connected cars in the world, with a penetration rate close to 60%; McKinsey once proposed that by 2025, the global smart car market will reach US$1.9 trillion.
At the same time, the status of intelligence in the hearts of consumers is getting higher and higher.According to JDPower’s “2018 Chinese Consumers’ Perceptions of Smart Connected Cars”, 91% of Chinese consumers will prioritize smart connected cars when buying new cars, and over half of Chinese consumers are willing to bear an additional 20% of the price to purchase smart connected car.
The ever-expanding market and consumers' increasing emphasis on intelligence have prompted auto companies to continue to pay more attention to the field of automobile intelligence.
On the other hand, China is also advancing the process of automobile intelligence through the policy dimension.
The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the National Development and Reform Commission and other departments have successively proposed to promote the technological innovation of intelligent and connected vehicles.The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology puts forward in the "Mid- and Long-term Development Plan for the Automobile Industry" that by 2020, the assembly rate of new cars for DA (driving assistance), PA (partially automated driving), and CA (conditional automated driving) will exceed 50%, and a networked driving assistance system The assembly rate will reach 10%; in 2025, the assembly rate of DA, PA and CA new cars will exceed 80%.
When intelligence becomes a trend in the auto industry, global auto companies can only choose to move forward.And in this process, which parts will withdraw from the automotive stage?
Cars become "core": where will the internal and external hardware go?
"The foundation of automobile intelligence is electrification." BYD Chairman Wang Chuanfu Zeng said.
The underlying technologies of automobile intelligence, such as computer technology, communication technology, Internet technology, etc., all rely on the continuous and stable supply of electric energy.Therefore, smart cars first need to be equipped with batteries.
Compared with electric motors, internal combustion engines are extremely difficult to achieve electronic control, and are not in line with intelligent trends such as automatic driving.Now that the vehicle is equipped with a battery, it simply "does nothing but endlessly" and replaces fuel-driven with electric drive, thus supporting the intelligentization of the car.
While electrification brings the dawn of intelligence to automobiles, it also sets out a mandatory question for the four major components of traditional automobiles (engine, chassis, body, and electrical equipment): Is it eliminated or transformed?Although there are many hardware options for the former, the most interesting ones are undoubtedly the engine and gearbox.
The engine is the heart of the car, which determines the power, economy, and stability of the car; the gearbox helps the engine to exert better power performance by changing the transmission ratio to adapt to different driving speeds and conditions.After the electric transformation of the car, the engine and the gearbox will "live and die together" and will move towards the "museum."
It is not only the internal hardware such as engines and gearboxes that will be eliminated. When the era of intelligence comes, some external hardware that has "close contact" with consumers will also be "forever gone."
The first to bear the brunt is the central control physical buttons.Just as the physical button mobile phone is completely replaced by the touch mobile phone, the physical button central control is being replaced by "a screen". The first car company to eat crabs is Tesla.
Before 2012, the car center control was dominated by physical buttons: In the T-shaped center console layout, the physical buttons for controlling multiple functions such as music and air conditioning were densely distributed.How to arrange the keys both beautifully and practically has become the most troublesome thing for interior engineers.
When Tesla Model S made a stunning debut with a large screen in 2012, the car central control entered a new era.More and more car companies are beginning to take pride in "a piece of screen". Among them, new energy car companies are particularly aggressive, and physical buttons have come to an end.
Followed by the steering wheel, accelerator pedal, brake pedal and other components closely related to automatic driving. SAE Inernational (International Association of Automotive Engineers) divides autonomous driving into 5 levels, of which the L5 level of fully automatic driving is automatically controlled by the trip computer and does not require human operation. Therefore, the car will remove the steering wheel, accelerator pedal, brake pedal and other human beings for driving. Parts of the car.
As early as February 2013, Toyota demonstrated the FV2 concept car without a steering wheel; in March 2, Volkswagen also launched a four-door electric coupe IDVizzion concept car without a steering wheel.For some electric vehicle owners who are accustomed to using the strong kinetic energy recovery mode, single-pedal operation has become one of the users' daily habits.
In addition to the above "big objects", some "small objects" are also leaving our lives, and will become increasingly rare.Take the car key as an example, "keyless entry" has become a feature that most cars now carry.Of course, most of the current "keyless entry" actually refers to replacing mechanical keys with smart keys.However, car companies such as Tesla have realized the use of smartphone apps to open doors and start cars, and the value of car keys is being weakened.
"Unexpected" car hardware
Although a lot of hardware is destined to disappear in the future, Yiou Automobile believes that it is unreasonable to blindly advocate the disappearance of hardware, and most of the hardware will be retained for quite some time.
First of all, electric drive cannot completely replace fuel drive in a short period of time, mainly because the volume of new energy vehicles is still small, and it is still not economical and environmentally friendly.
According to data from the British automotive research company Jato Dynamic, global car sales in 2018 were 8600 million units, of which 126 million were pure electric vehicles, accounting for only 1.5% of total sales.According to Deloitte’s analysis and prediction, global sales of new energy vehicles will reach 2030 million in 2100, which is still a “minority” and fuel vehicles will occupy most of the market. After the subsidy declined in June 2019, China's new energy vehicle market suffered heavy losses, with sales falling for 6 consecutive years from July to November year-on-year.
On the one hand, the electric vehicle industry is small in size, highly dependent on subsidies, and has not yet achieved self-reliance; on the other hand, at the moment, electric vehicles are less environmentally friendly than fuel vehicles and may even emit more pollutants.According to research data from Paul Miles, director of the Engine Combustion Laboratory at Sandia National Laboratory in the United States, as of 2018, thermal power accounts for a high proportion of electricity sources, which leads to a relatively high carbon emissions of pure electric vehicles throughout the life cycle Fuel vehicles are still on the high side.
Secondly, fully autonomous driving is still difficult to achieve in a short time. In March 2019, Thomas Sailand, the head of Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles, stated that it will take 3 years for Volkswagen to master higher-level autonomous driving technology.His judgment represents the opinions of most people in the auto industry on the date of the full automatic driving landing: humans still need to wait 5 to 5 years, or even longer.
Yiou Automobile believes that components such as engines and gearboxes that are "tightly bound" with fuel vehicles will maintain "tenacious" vitality with fuel vehicles; steering wheels and other components that are repulsive to automatic driving will be "absent" due to fully automatic driving. Be retained.The central control entity buttons, keys and other components are on the verge of being eliminated at the beginning of the intelligent era. As the degree of intelligentization of automobiles deepens, they may become less common.
Machinery is the bottom, intelligence is the top
“CES in Las Vegas used to be an exhibition for the home appliance industry, and most of the products on display now include AI, 5G and other technologies.” Li Xuanyou, chief operating officer of KATRI Auto Safety Research Institute, once told Yiou Automobile that the automotive industry is Similar to the home appliance industry, it is moving from a single manufacturing category to an intelligent direction.
Yiou Automobile believes that in the wave of intelligence, the right to speak in the automotive industry is being redistributed: machinery is the bottom and intelligence is the top.
Take the above automobile as an example. Since the signing of a strategic cooperation agreement with Alibaba in July 2014, the two have jointly promoted the intelligent networking of automobiles around Zebra.Following the reorganization of Zebra Networks and YunOS in August 7, SAIC chose to "release" Zebra, and Ali became the largest shareholder. This is behind the helplessness of traditional car companies.
The key technologies of intelligent networked vehicles are ADAS and V2X. The core of the former is sensors, chips and algorithms. The latter not only requires the "evolution" of the vehicle itself, but also pays attention to the coordination of cars, roads, and people. These are all in traditional car companies. Beyond the scope of its capabilities.In order to achieve intelligent transformation, car companies have to seek the help of IT and Internet giants, but the latter's goal is often not limited to one or a few car companies, but the trillion-level automotive intelligent network market.Therefore, while car companies are seeking help, they are also losing their right to speak, which is incompatible with the "big car companies" in the traditional car ecosystem.
In any case, Chinese car companies are undoubtedly ushering in a new turning point.
Compared with the Western auto industry, China's auto industry started nearly a hundred years later.As a latecomer, China has been in a catching-up situation. This situation has not been reversed. The current situation of China's auto industry can be glimpsed from the auto import and export data.
According to China Customs data, in 2018, China exported 120 million cars with an export value of US$147 billion; imported 114 million cars with an import value of US$507 billion.The export volume is more than the import volume, but the export value is much lower than the import value. This shows that the unit price of China's exported vehicles is low, and the majority of them are still "low-end vehicles".
The problem hanging over the heads of Chinese Autobots is: How to get rid of the stigma of low-end remanufacturing?Intelligentization may win the opportunity for Chinese car companies to overtake on corners.
In traditional mechanical fields such as engines and gearboxes, Chinese car companies have little chance of overtaking.The strategy of changing the market for technology has brought strong impetus to the development of China's auto industry in the past two decades. However, as reverse R&D enters the deep water zone, the shortcomings of Chinese auto companies' insufficient positive R&D capabilities have begun to become prominent.
If you want to challenge the traditional giants, you must seize the window of change.Nowadays, intelligent new tracks are replacing traditional mechanical tracks. China and foreign countries will be on the same starting line, and a real "fair competition" is about to begin.
However, the development of automobile intelligence has begun to face bottlenecks today. Autonomous driving at the L5 level and even the L4 level is delayed in the future, and vehicle interconnection has not been realized. Intelligence only stays at the level of driving assistance and human-computer interaction.People can't help asking: Where is the next frontier of intelligence?
Yiou Automobile believes that automobile intelligence is not a unilateral task of auto companies. How to break industry barriers and realize the innovative and coordinated development of the automobile industry and multiple industries will be the key to automobile intelligence.With the continuous popularization of smart cars, and the continuous emergence of new variables such as 5G, the distance of smart cars will be closer and closer.
The cake of smart cars is getting bigger and bigger.Accenture's research report predicts that by 2020, there will be 2.1 million smart connected cars in the world, with a penetration rate close to 60%; McKinsey once proposed that by 2025, the global smart car market will reach US$1.9 trillion.
At the same time, the status of intelligence in the hearts of consumers is getting higher and higher.According to JDPower’s “2018 Chinese Consumers’ Perceptions of Smart Connected Cars”, 91% of Chinese consumers will prioritize smart connected cars when buying new cars, and over half of Chinese consumers are willing to bear an additional 20% of the price to purchase smart connected car.
The ever-expanding market and consumers' increasing emphasis on intelligence have prompted auto companies to continue to pay more attention to the field of automobile intelligence.
On the other hand, China is also advancing the process of automobile intelligence through the policy dimension.
The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the National Development and Reform Commission and other departments have successively proposed to promote the technological innovation of intelligent and connected vehicles.The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology puts forward in the "Mid- and Long-term Development Plan for the Automobile Industry" that by 2020, the assembly rate of new cars for DA (driving assistance), PA (partially automated driving), and CA (conditional automated driving) will exceed 50%, and a networked driving assistance system The assembly rate will reach 10%; in 2025, the assembly rate of DA, PA and CA new cars will exceed 80%.
When intelligence becomes a trend in the auto industry, global auto companies can only choose to move forward.And in this process, which parts will withdraw from the automotive stage?
Cars become "core": where will the internal and external hardware go?
"The foundation of automobile intelligence is electrification." BYD Chairman Wang Chuanfu Zeng said.
The underlying technologies of automobile intelligence, such as computer technology, communication technology, Internet technology, etc., all rely on the continuous and stable supply of electric energy.Therefore, smart cars first need to be equipped with batteries.
Compared with electric motors, internal combustion engines are extremely difficult to achieve electronic control, and are not in line with intelligent trends such as automatic driving.Now that the vehicle is equipped with a battery, it simply "does nothing but endlessly" and replaces fuel-driven with electric drive, thus supporting the intelligentization of the car.
While electrification brings the dawn of intelligence to automobiles, it also sets out a mandatory question for the four major components of traditional automobiles (engine, chassis, body, and electrical equipment): Is it eliminated or transformed?Although there are many hardware options for the former, the most interesting ones are undoubtedly the engine and gearbox.
The engine is the heart of the car, which determines the power, economy, and stability of the car; the gearbox helps the engine to exert better power performance by changing the transmission ratio to adapt to different driving speeds and conditions.After the electric transformation of the car, the engine and the gearbox will "live and die together" and will move towards the "museum."
It is not only the internal hardware such as engines and gearboxes that will be eliminated. When the era of intelligence comes, some external hardware that has "close contact" with consumers will also be "forever gone."
The first to bear the brunt is the central control physical buttons.Just as the physical button mobile phone is completely replaced by the touch mobile phone, the physical button central control is being replaced by "a screen". The first car company to eat crabs is Tesla.
Before 2012, the car center control was dominated by physical buttons: In the T-shaped center console layout, the physical buttons for controlling multiple functions such as music and air conditioning were densely distributed.How to arrange the keys both beautifully and practically has become the most troublesome thing for interior engineers.
When Tesla Model S made a stunning debut with a large screen in 2012, the car central control entered a new era.More and more car companies are beginning to take pride in "a piece of screen". Among them, new energy car companies are particularly aggressive, and physical buttons have come to an end.
Followed by the steering wheel, accelerator pedal, brake pedal and other components closely related to automatic driving. SAE Inernational (International Association of Automotive Engineers) divides autonomous driving into 5 levels, of which the L5 level of fully automatic driving is automatically controlled by the trip computer and does not require human operation. Therefore, the car will remove the steering wheel, accelerator pedal, brake pedal and other human beings for driving. Parts of the car.
As early as February 2013, Toyota demonstrated the FV2 concept car without a steering wheel; in March 2, Volkswagen also launched a four-door electric coupe IDVizzion concept car without a steering wheel.For some electric vehicle owners who are accustomed to using the strong kinetic energy recovery mode, single-pedal operation has become one of the users' daily habits.
In addition to the above "big objects", some "small objects" are also leaving our lives, and will become increasingly rare.Take the car key as an example, "keyless entry" has become a feature that most cars now carry.Of course, most of the current "keyless entry" actually refers to replacing mechanical keys with smart keys.However, car companies such as Tesla have realized the use of smartphone apps to open doors and start cars, and the value of car keys is being weakened.
"Unexpected" car hardware
Although a lot of hardware is destined to disappear in the future, Yiou Automobile believes that it is unreasonable to blindly advocate the disappearance of hardware, and most of the hardware will be retained for quite some time.
First of all, electric drive cannot completely replace fuel drive in a short period of time, mainly because the volume of new energy vehicles is still small, and it is still not economical and environmentally friendly.
According to data from the British automotive research company Jato Dynamic, global car sales in 2018 were 8600 million units, of which 126 million were pure electric vehicles, accounting for only 1.5% of total sales.According to Deloitte’s analysis and prediction, global sales of new energy vehicles will reach 2030 million in 2100, which is still a “minority” and fuel vehicles will occupy most of the market. After the subsidy declined in June 2019, China's new energy vehicle market suffered heavy losses, with sales falling for 6 consecutive years from July to November year-on-year.
On the one hand, the electric vehicle industry is small in size, highly dependent on subsidies, and has not yet achieved self-reliance; on the other hand, at the moment, electric vehicles are less environmentally friendly than fuel vehicles and may even emit more pollutants.According to research data from Paul Miles, director of the Engine Combustion Laboratory at Sandia National Laboratory in the United States, as of 2018, thermal power accounts for a high proportion of electricity sources, which leads to a relatively high carbon emissions of pure electric vehicles throughout the life cycle Fuel vehicles are still on the high side.
Secondly, fully autonomous driving is still difficult to achieve in a short time. In March 2019, Thomas Sailand, the head of Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles, stated that it will take 3 years for Volkswagen to master higher-level autonomous driving technology.His judgment represents the opinions of most people in the auto industry on the date of the full automatic driving landing: humans still need to wait 5 to 5 years, or even longer.
Yiou Automobile believes that components such as engines and gearboxes that are "tightly bound" with fuel vehicles will maintain "tenacious" vitality with fuel vehicles; steering wheels and other components that are repulsive to automatic driving will be "absent" due to fully automatic driving. Be retained.The central control entity buttons, keys and other components are on the verge of being eliminated at the beginning of the intelligent era. As the degree of intelligentization of automobiles deepens, they may become less common.
Machinery is the bottom, intelligence is the top
“CES in Las Vegas used to be an exhibition for the home appliance industry, and most of the products on display now include AI, 5G and other technologies.” Li Xuanyou, chief operating officer of KATRI Auto Safety Research Institute, once told Yiou Automobile that the automotive industry is Similar to the home appliance industry, it is moving from a single manufacturing category to an intelligent direction.
Yiou Automobile believes that in the wave of intelligence, the right to speak in the automotive industry is being redistributed: machinery is the bottom and intelligence is the top.
Take the above automobile as an example. Since the signing of a strategic cooperation agreement with Alibaba in July 2014, the two have jointly promoted the intelligent networking of automobiles around Zebra.Following the reorganization of Zebra Networks and YunOS in August 7, SAIC chose to "release" Zebra, and Ali became the largest shareholder. This is behind the helplessness of traditional car companies.
The key technologies of intelligent networked vehicles are ADAS and V2X. The core of the former is sensors, chips and algorithms. The latter not only requires the "evolution" of the vehicle itself, but also pays attention to the coordination of cars, roads, and people. These are all in traditional car companies. Beyond the scope of its capabilities.In order to achieve intelligent transformation, car companies have to seek the help of IT and Internet giants, but the latter's goal is often not limited to one or a few car companies, but the trillion-level automotive intelligent network market.Therefore, while car companies are seeking help, they are also losing their right to speak, which is incompatible with the "big car companies" in the traditional car ecosystem.
In any case, Chinese car companies are undoubtedly ushering in a new turning point.
Compared with the Western auto industry, China's auto industry started nearly a hundred years later.As a latecomer, China has been in a catching-up situation. This situation has not been reversed. The current situation of China's auto industry can be glimpsed from the auto import and export data.
According to China Customs data, in 2018, China exported 120 million cars with an export value of US$147 billion; imported 114 million cars with an import value of US$507 billion.The export volume is more than the import volume, but the export value is much lower than the import value. This shows that the unit price of China's exported vehicles is low, and the majority of them are still "low-end vehicles".
The problem hanging over the heads of Chinese Autobots is: How to get rid of the stigma of low-end remanufacturing?Intelligentization may win the opportunity for Chinese car companies to overtake on corners.
In traditional mechanical fields such as engines and gearboxes, Chinese car companies have little chance of overtaking.The strategy of changing the market for technology has brought strong impetus to the development of China's auto industry in the past two decades. However, as reverse R&D enters the deep water zone, the shortcomings of Chinese auto companies' insufficient positive R&D capabilities have begun to become prominent.
If you want to challenge the traditional giants, you must seize the window of change.Nowadays, intelligent new tracks are replacing traditional mechanical tracks. China and foreign countries will be on the same starting line, and a real "fair competition" is about to begin.
However, the development of automobile intelligence has begun to face bottlenecks today. Autonomous driving at the L5 level and even the L4 level is delayed in the future, and vehicle interconnection has not been realized. Intelligence only stays at the level of driving assistance and human-computer interaction.People can't help asking: Where is the next frontier of intelligence?
Yiou Automobile believes that automobile intelligence is not a unilateral task of auto companies. How to break industry barriers and realize the innovative and coordinated development of the automobile industry and multiple industries will be the key to automobile intelligence.With the continuous popularization of smart cars, and the continuous emergence of new variables such as 5G, the distance of smart cars will be closer and closer.
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