Written | Cold Zelin
Edit the | Wang Pan
The new energy of passenger cars is vigorously being carried out, but the current results for the goal of carbon neutrality are still very small. At present, mainland vehicle carbon emissions account for 10% of total emissions, and trucks are the mainstay, accounting for 70% of the entire automotive sector.
Therefore, in order to achieve the goal of carbon neutrality, the transformation of new energy vehicles for commercial vehicles is undoubtedly the top priority.
Huang Chendong, CEO of Qianchen Automobile, told Photonic Planet that it is estimated that the commercial vehicle market will mature by 2025, and the ownership of intelligent new energy commercial vehicles will account for 20% of the entire commercial vehicle market.
Of course, like the current new energy passenger cars, the imagination space of commercial vehicles is not only electrified, but also intelligent and autonomous driving is a hot spot in the current competition.
On March 7, Qianchen Automobile announced that it has obtained an L4 level autonomous driving test license certified by China Automobile Research Institute. This means that the new car-making force in the commercial vehicle field, which has been established for less than two years, has been driving on the fast lane of commercial vehicles.
Recently, Huang Chendong held an in-depth dialogue with Photonic Planet and others, sharing with us the current progress of Qianchen Automobile and his thoughts on the future.
From 0.5 to 1
"Because we have some experience, some accumulation can start from 0.5, and some places are related to trucks, so we have to start from 0."
Although Qianchen Automobile was founded less than two years ago, its CEO Huang Chendong has been in the automotive industry for more than a decade, and has worked for Ford Motor in the United States to participate in the development of electric vehicles and fuel cell vehicles, and won the Best Invention Award of the Ford Automobile Research Institute.
After returning to China in 2008, Huang Chendong devoted himself to the cause of new energy. In fact, before founding Qianchen Automobile, Huang Chendong already had the experience of going from 0-1 twice. One is to form a new energy team for SAIC until it grows bigger, and the other is to join NIO as a senior vice president, responsible for the research and development of sandy electric and automatic driving.
Huang Chendong also said bluntly that these two experiences have helped him a lot. So the car started more than just 0-1.
At last year's press conference, Qianchen released two light electric trucks, iC1 and EC1 respectively, of which EC1 is an intelligent networked pure electric light truck jointly developed by Qianchen and Sinotruk, which was successfully rolled off the production line and began to be delivered at the end of October last year.
According to Huang Chendong told Photon Planet, Qianchen only officially began to exert efforts on the sales side in December last year, and has sold more than 80 cars so far, and there are hundreds of orders in hand. Such results will be of great help to the development of the entire company this year.
The other iC1 is independently developed by Qianchen Auto all-forward and will achieve mass production in the fourth quarter of this year. Its concept stereotyped car unveiled last year has an L4 level automatic driving system equipped with a millimeter-wave radar, five solid-state lidar, and 18 cameras, and the mass production car will be equipped with the L1-L2 automatic driving assistance system according to the current market demand to meet the demand.
For the morning before, light trucks will be the basic disk of the entire company. Different from the large amount of money in the field of new energy passenger vehicles in the early stage of burning money for the market, the morning before the sale of light trucks will obtain funds, improve data, and after having a basic disk, and then do addition on top of heavy trucks. According to the plan, Qianchen will launch an autonomous driving heavy truck next year.
In Huang Chendong's view, if passenger cars need 20 billion yuan, then commercial vehicles only need a quarter of the funds. However, commercial vehicles are simpler than passenger cars in terms of car building, but in terms of operation, commercial vehicles are more difficult.
Because commercial vehicles are a production tool, how to generate economic benefits for users is the most critical place. Rather than a consumer product, passenger cars focus on user experience.
The strategic planning of the morning is also formulated around this differentiation, commercial vehicles will eventually become part of the smart Internet of Things, but before doing this, first need a smart car, run through the manufacturing, selling, using, raising, turning the ecology, and finally advanced to the smart Internet of Things.
The current commercial vehicle market situation is similar to the passenger car market in 2015-2016, although many OEMs also want to occupy part of the market, but new forces like the previous morning may be able to concentrate on promoting the industry forward.
So far, two rounds of financing of about $60 million have been completed in the morning, and B+ rounds of financing are currently underway, and C rounds of financing will be launched in the second half of the year.
Another answer sheet the morning before
In fact, in the field of intelligent driving of commercial vehicles, the former morning is not one of the first to enter the market. At present, many autonomous driving companies have chosen to retreat to commercial automatic driving after "hitting a wall" in the field of passenger cars.
However, in Huang Chendong's view, the process of achieving full automatic driving is still long, but it can gradually enrich the automatic driving function of the vehicle and the applicable scenarios, and the situation of a driver driving two or even three cars may be achieved faster than completely unmanned.
Therefore, Qianchen did not insist on forming its own self-driving fleet in the early stage.
This is also what sets other companies in the commercial vehicle space different from other companies in the commercial vehicle field in the morning – from cars to autonomous driving, and more companies are from autonomous driving to cars.
Generally speaking, autonomous driving companies often need to find a car factory to cooperate and install automatic driving functions after landing, but because oil trucks have too many mechanical transmissions, they cannot play the full advantages of automatic driving.
The current morning has a forward-developed "Vision" electric chassis and the upcoming L4 level with redundant autonomous driving heavy truck chassis platform. The experience of car manufacturing enables its automatic driving to be adapted to the self-developed new energy vehicle and chassis, and better play the vehicle's automatic driving capabilities.
Pre-installed L4 level hardware, through the software to gradually realize the automatic driving of different scenarios. This may be the experience that Huang Chendong has learned from Weilai.
However, in this way, Qianchen has multiple identities, both the main engine factory, but also an autonomous driving company, and even the future will become a logistics company, how to achieve a variety of identities to distinguish the boundary, Huang Chendong shared with us the rhythm of the morning.
"We are not in a hurry to promote automatic driving to commercialization, the first step is to do a good job of the car first, build our own car, our own chassis can better match the automatic driving, and at the same time develop the full-stack software capability of automatic driving."
As for forming his own team, Huang Chendong said that due to the basic disk support of light trucks, he will not do this in the short term or this year. In the current order for heavy trucks, some autonomous vehicles will be added in the morning, and then gradually build their own fleets to accumulate real operating experience.
Just like in Weilai, "the bottom layer is arranged well, the car is also done, and then the automatic driving is a natural thing." ”
epilogue
Qianchen's business is not limited to light trucks and upcoming heavy trucks, and will also enter the VAN van market by the morning of 2024. At that time, the product line of this new car-making force in the field of commercial vehicles will be more perfect, and Huang Chendong's basic strategy will gradually be realized.
Light trucks and vans will take on the task of carrying volume, and the data obtained from this will be fed back to the research and development end to improve products and autonomous driving capabilities, while heavy trucks will supplement sales and be the focus of profitability.
In addition, the previous morning also plans to sell the chassis system and the automatic driving system, the accumulation of technology will eventually be translated into the book, in the past year, three customers have been willing to order their chassis system.