Is it convenient for ＂AI to drive＂ to start the commute mode and ＂eight people early＂
If the destination is set in navigation, the vehicle can reach the destination through assisted driving without manual takeover … In 2023, the intelligent assisted driving function began to be applied to urban roads from expressway sections. On June 30th, Aouita 11 equipped with Huawei’s advanced intelligent driving system opened the city navigation assistance function to Hangzhou users, and Hangzhou car owners can experience the "AI driving service" at their doorsteps.
Since the beginning of this year, new forces such as Ideality, Tucki and Weilai have actively laid out the plan for the landing of urban navigation assistance functions. With the acceleration of related technologies and the gradual improvement of policies and regulations, the intelligent driving industry is gradually welcoming the triple turning point of technology, regulations and user acceptance.
"AI Commuter Driving" Landing in Hangzhou
Commuting in the morning and evening rush hours is a nightmare of "eight people early" in Hangzhou. On the urban roads with "heavy traffic", if smart cars can automatically identify traffic lights, flexibly handle traffic jams, avoid sudden pedestrians, and go up and down the ramp independently, it may be much easier to catch up with the early "working" road.
On June 30th, Aouita 11 opened the auxiliary function of urban navigation to users in Hangzhou, and Aouita became the first brand to open this function in Hangzhou. According to China’s "Automatic Classification of Automobile Driving" standard, the city navigation assistance function is between L2 and L3 automatic driving, which can realize intelligent navigation assistance driving from point A to point B based on the navigation route set by users.
In order to experience the "cool" of commuting "AI driving", the reporter tested this model and chose a route covering complex road conditions such as urban roads and elevated expressways. After setting the navigation route, dial the lever twice to quickly activate the city navigation assistance function, the vehicle automatically recognizes the speed limit sign and automatically adjusts the speed limit, and the body always automatically keeps the lane centered. With 34 sensors, the surrounding vehicles, pedestrians and obstacles can be dynamically displayed on the dashboard, and the road conditions can be seen at a glance.
Driving to the stadium road, which has always been congested, an SUV suddenly jammed from the right, and Aouita 11 took the initiative to slow down, flexibly avoided, and made accurate decisions. Facing the traffic lights at intersections, Aouita 11 can accurately identify traffic signals; Facing the road conditions to be turned, Aouita 11 will turn on the turn signal in advance and enter the waiting area to wait based on the traffic signal lights. What makes the reporter even more happy is that Aouita will take the initiative to show courtesy to pedestrians and non-motorized vehicles on the zebra crossing, and change lanes to overtake them on the premise of ensuring safety, and the ramp is also very slippery.
During the driving process, the reporter held the steering wheel with both hands as required, and basically did not take over. If you want to return the vehicle to the manual driving state, just lightly step on the brake, and the intelligent driving navigation assistance function will be turned off immediately.
A group of car companies are heading for the "commuting mode" city, and there is huge room for navigation assistance.
If the "volume" of smart driving in 2022 is high-speed pilot assistance, urban pilot assistance with urban commuting as the core scene is the core of smart driving competition for new car-making enterprises in 2023.
A few days ago, LI officially announced that the urban navigation assistance has been opened for internal testing, and this function will be opened within six months. Xpeng Motors’s urban navigation assistance function was opened in Shanghai, Shenzhen, Guangzhou and other places, and recently it was opened in Beijing. In addition, Celeste, Weilai and other car companies have also announced plans to launch the city-level intelligent assisted driving function.
At present, different car companies have slightly different names for intelligent navigation-assisted driving, including NOA, NGP, NOP and NCA, but the basic functions and internal logic of these systems are consistent.
At the launch conference at the end of June, Tucki G6 launched the "AI driving" function, and plans to launch it to all XNGP owners in the fourth quarter of this year. Then, at the press conference of Family Science and Technology Day in LI, LI introduced an assisted driving mode called "Commuting NOA".
In addition to car companies, DJI has also applied the automatic inspection technology of drones to intelligent driving, and also introduced the so-called "commuting mode", which is officially called memory driving function, and this function will be applied to the upcoming Baojun Yunyun model.
According to the reporter’s statistics, as of July, 16 models of 7 brands have announced that their high-equipped models support urban navigation assistance functions, including Aouita, Ideality, Weilai, Tucki, Extremely Fox, Wenjie and Weipai. "Automotive Industry Report 2022: Redefining Smart Cars in Cities by NOA" predicts that the total number of cars to be carried in 2023 will be 700,000, and this number is expected to reach 3.48 million in 2025. Among them, the proportion of vehicles supporting urban navigation assistance functions will rise rapidly from 17% in 2023 to 70%.
Are consumers willing to "pay the bill" for high-level smart driving into the city?
With the accelerated development of urban navigation assistance technology, the future of liberating drivers’ hands seems no longer far away. The most important question is, how willing will consumers be to pay for the smart driving function of cars at present?
Xiao Qi, who has just been driving for one year, immediately placed an order for a Aouita 11 after hearing about the pilot assistance of Hangzhou Open City: "This function is simply the light of urbanites, and the driving pressure is much less after opening it."
However, the "old drivers" generally hold the opposite attitude. Mr. Wang, who lives in Gongshu District, expressed disappointment with the city’s auxiliary functions after testing several smart cars. "No matter which car is the same, as a new function, it is too conservative in decision-making to ensure safety on urban roads, and it has to wait until there are no obstacles around it, which lengthens the commuting time. I often can’t help but take over." He also said that assisted driving is not really automatic driving. At extremely complicated intersections, the system occasionally makes mistakes in judgment, and it cannot completely rely on and trust this function.
In addition, cost is also the focus of consumers’ consideration. At present, most car companies still rely on high-precision maps and lidar sensors, or large computing chips, which are veritable "burning money" games, and the costs of car companies and supply chain companies will inevitably increase. These costs will eventually be transferred to the shoulders of car buyers.
At present, the landing price of vehicles equipped with urban navigation assistance functions is mostly between 300,000 yuan and 600,000 yuan.
Technical iteration does not stop.
Going to high-precision maps has become a new force in the industry.
During the test drive of Aouita 11, the reporter found that in some auxiliary roads or internal roads, the city navigation assistance function was temporarily unavailable. Mr. Wang, the shopping guide of Aouita Experience Center in Xixi Impression City, said that at present, the realization of this function mainly depends on high-precision maps, and the coverage area is limited, so it can only be used on the main roads in the main city, and some remote roads and internal roads are temporarily unavailable.
Yu Chengdong, managing director of Huawei, CEO of BG and CEO of BU, a smart car solution, said that it is too difficult to cover the whole country with high-precision maps, and the roads in China are changing almost all the time. If we rely on high-precision maps, there is no way to popularize them. A senior artificial intelligence expert said in an interview that high-precision map data is related to national security, with increasingly strict supervision and high entry threshold; On the other hand, the high-precision map route has some problems, such as expensive data, long cycle and difficult iteration, which makes it difficult to cover more cities quickly on a large scale.
For this reason, in the process of exerting the auxiliary function of urban navigation, more and more car companies have adopted the mode of "removing high-precision maps".
Recently, LI publicly displayed the company’s newly launched version of NOA. It is reported that the ideal city NOA has achieved four functions: independent of high-precision maps, recognizing everything, planning and decision-making and continuous evolution through large-scale model algorithm. Its core is to use BEV model to perceive and understand the road structure information in the environment in real time, which is close to the human eye’s perception and judgment, and its perception characteristics are more in line with the needs of autonomous driving.
Xpeng Motors, which has been deeply involved in the field of automatic assisted navigation and driving for a long time, has also begun to develop "de-high-precision maps". In March this year, Xpeng Motors announced the second generation intelligent assisted driving system XNGP, whose "AI driving" mode can customize intelligent driving routes according to users’ habits in areas not covered by high-precision maps, and realize high-level assisted driving from point A to point B..
HUAWEI ADS 2.0, Huawei’s advanced intelligent driving scheme to be updated in the third quarter, has also achieved intelligent driving without relying on high-precision maps. Yu Chengdong revealed: "In the third quarter of this year, the urban NCA that does not rely on high-precision maps will land in 15 cities and will increase to 45 cities in the fourth quarter."
At a time when unmanned driving can’t fully land in a short period of time, "commuting mode" seems to be a transitional answer given by many car companies. The urban navigation assistance function not only relieves the commuting pressure of consumers, but also gives consumers the initiative to use intelligent driving. With the continuous optimization of technology cost, it is believed that in the future, more and more models with mainstream price segments will be equipped with "commuting mode" to truly achieve large-scale popularization.