In 2023, it has closed. Looking back on the past year, the intelligent driving industry has ushered in a leap-forward development. For example, NOA in urban areas ushered in the first year of landing, the computing power of intelligent driving chips was greatly improved, and the policy of intelligent driving cars was further evolved and improved. It has also stepped onto a new level. So what are the major events worthy of attention in 2023? This paper will make an annual inventory of the smart driving industry in chronological order.
The ideal AD Pro equipped with Journey 5 gets on the bus, and the domestic 100 TOPS smart driving chips usher in mass production.
On February 17, 2023, the ideal L-series model ushered in a major OTA, and the high-speed NOA function of the ideal AD Pro was officially launched. As the computing power cornerstone of the ideal AD Pro, the computing power of a single chip of Journey 5 is as high as 128 TOPS, and the power consumption is as low as 30Watt. The mass production of Journey 5 on the train represents that domestic chips have truly entered the market-recognized era of 100 TOPS computing power production.
According to the latest data, Horizon Journey 5 has obtained the fixed-point production of more than 20 models from more than 9 car companies. Besides the ideal L-series Pro and Air models, it has also obtained the cooperation from domestic and foreign car companies such as BYD, Weilai Automobile, SAIC Motor, Changan Automobile, Ai ‘an, Hongqi, Nezha Automobile and Chery Automobile.
As a leader of high-performance intelligent driving computing solutions, Horizon will also launch Journey 6, which was revealed at the Guangzhou Auto Show in 2023. The new generation Journey 6 is a platform-based series of computing solutions based on a unified architecture, flexibly covering ADAS to high-level intelligent computing solutions, with a maximum computing power of 560 TOPS. In addition, Journey 6 will be officially launched in April 2024, and the first batch of production models will be delivered in the fourth quarter.
It can be said that Horizon, established in 2015, has now grown into one of the weather vane enterprises in the smart driving industry, and he is leading the smart driving industry to accelerate mass production and popularization.
BYD released the high-order intelligent driving system "Eye of God", which impacted the intelligent second half.
On July 3, 2023, at the launch conference of Tengshi N7, BYD simultaneously released the high-order intelligent driving assistance system "Eye of God", and Tengshi N7 became one of the first models to take the "Eye of God".
BYD is a leader in the field of new energy. It is recognized in the industry that its three-power technology and vertical integration ability are far ahead, but its achievements in intelligent technology and intelligent driving technology are not outstanding. The release and boarding of the high-order intelligent driving system "Eye of the God" means that BYD has taken a solid step in the field of intelligence.
In fact, BYD has already started its own research on intelligence. In April 2023, BYD announced that the BEV fusion sensing scheme based on Horizon Journey 5’s self-research will be mass-produced during the year, and the mass-produced vehicles will be officially released in 2024. At the same time, in the first year of 2024, BYD made a big move in intelligence, and announced that it would invest 100 billion yuan in the field of vehicle intelligence in the future to study the technical route of vehicle intelligence, bring more industry-leading technological achievements and accelerate the intelligent transformation of the automobile industry. It can be said that BYD’s attention and investment in intelligent driving will directly promote the entire automobile industry to accelerate the embrace of a new era of intelligent driving.
L3 and L4 models are officially qualified for road testing.
On November 17, 2023, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Public Security, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development and the Ministry of Transport jointly issued a notice to carry out the pilot work of intelligent networked vehicles’ access and on-road traffic, requiring L3 and L4 intelligent networked vehicles with mass production conditions to carry out on-road pilot projects in a limited area, and to clarify the accident liability judgment for the first time. This means that from the policy level, intelligent networked cars equipped with L3 and L4 functions are officially qualified to go on the road.
Although the national authorities are still cautiously supportive of L3 and L4 smart cars in terms of policy content, the further liberalization and support of the policy will undoubtedly push the smart driving industry to a new development milestone.
Within one month after the above-mentioned policy notice was issued, BYD, Tengshi, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Extreme Fox, Zhiji, Deep Blue and other automobile brands successively announced that they had obtained corresponding autopilot test licenses.
Horizon and Volkswagen Group formally set up a new joint venture company "Core Process" to jointly create a cooperative model room.
On December 8, at the 2023 World New Energy Vehicle Conference, Horizon announced the formal establishment of a joint venture company jointly established by Horizon and CARIAD, a software company of Volkswagen Group. The Chinese name of the new company is Core Cheng.
Enterprise survey information shows that Core Program was officially registered on November 20, 2023 with a registered capital of 6.757 billion yuan. According to the news from Horizon, the share ratio structure of Core Process is that Horizon holds 40% and CARIAD holds 60%. It is reported that Core will provide intelligent driving solutions for all electric vehicles in Volkswagen China in the future. According to the plan, the advanced intelligent assisted driving system developed by the company will be gradually introduced to the China market in 2025 and 2026.
Since the signing of the strategic cooperation agreement in October 2022, the cooperation between Horizon and Volkswagen CARIAD has been receiving much attention from the industry. According to the agreement, Volkswagen Group will invest about 2.4 billion euros in this cooperation, which is the largest single investment since Volkswagen entered China nearly 40 years ago. This iconic cooperation has also been recognized as a milestone in the smart driving industry by the industry, which means that the new zero-integration relationship in the software-defined automobile era is quietly reshaping.
In the supply ecological network currently built by Horizon, it is committed to cooperating with major car companies and Tier1 enterprises as Tier2, and supporting the OEM with software and hardware service providers by providing some bottom-level products and services to promote the development of the whole autonomous driving technology. In the cooperation mode, the Core Process jointly established by Volkswagen and Horizon will become one of the brand-new standard models for domestic smart electric vehicle industry cooperation.
In addition to the above-mentioned major events, brands such as Ideal/Tucki/Wenjie concentrated on promoting the landing of NOA in urban areas to become a phenomenal event in the smart driving industry, making 2023 officially the first year of NOA landing in urban areas; Weilai released Shenji NX9031, which took the first step for China car companies to develop their own smart driving chips; Tesla announced that it will build the next generation of autonomous driving based on a large model and explore a new direction of intelligent driving … … It can be seen that the pace of the smart driving industry is developing and evolving beyond the expectations of the industry.
It can also be seen from the above-mentioned landmark events that the development of the intelligent driving industry has reached a key node, and the upgrading of intelligent driving technology and products is gratifying. More and more consumers have realized the experience of smart cars at a lower cost. However, the current intelligent driving technology is still not mature. From intelligent assisted driving to driverless driving, related enterprises still have a long way to go, but we believe that in 2024, the intelligent driving industry will usher in a more magnificent and diverse new future. (Source: Horizon)