Car stuff (public number: chedongxi)
Author | Juice
Edited by | Xiaohan
2022 will undoubtedly become the first year of large-scale mass production of navigation assisted driving.
Driven by Tesla and the new car three wei Xiaoli, whether it has the function of navigation assistance has become a very important product selling point of the vehicle. On the other hand, navigation-assisted driving also reflects the strength of autopilot capabilities of car companies.
Because of this, traditional car companies have also begun to layout navigation assisted driving, and the products of many car companies are about to achieve mass production this year.
Specifically, car companies realize navigation assisted driving mainly in two ways: First, car companies set up automatic driving teams to develop themselves, which requires car companies to invest a lot of manpower, material resources and time cycles to make achievements.
Another method is direct procurement, compared with car companies, suppliers have targeted the autonomous driving track from the beginning and have more accumulation in product research and development. At present, a large number of suppliers of autonomous driving solutions have been born in China, and stable and reliable navigation assistance driving functions have been developed.
Zhixing Technology is one of them, the Suzhou-based autonomous driving company has independently developed a mobile parking integration solution, which can realize navigation assisted driving and memory parking functions at the same time, greatly reducing costs. It is understood that compared with the two controllers of driving and parking, the integrated solution of Zhixing Technology can reduce the cost by about 30%.
At present, Zhixing Technology has harvested a number of mass production projects of car companies, and the intelligent driving assistance system of the popular model Extreme Kr 001 delivered last year was built by Zhixing Technology.
With the increase in demand from car companies and the continuous efforts of autonomous driving suppliers, the loading volume of new car navigation assistance driving in China this year is bound to have a very large increase.
First, the rapid popularization of navigation assisted driving Many suppliers have entered the game
Navigation assisted driving has become the main focus of car companies, and more and more consumers have begun to contact this concept and have gradually accepted it.
So what exactly is navigational assisted driving? The core of navigation assisted driving is Naviggate (navigation), in simple terms, based on the navigation route set by the user, the vehicle can achieve automatic driving assistance from point A to point B in the structured roads such as high-speed, fast loops, and urban roads covered by high-precision maps, and the current hot NOA, NGP, NOP, NOH, NOM, etc. belong to navigation assisted driving.
Many car companies have opened up a larger market with this new feature.
At present, Tesla, the leader of the intelligent automotive industry, is the first car company to launch the NOA function. In October 2018, Tesla officially launched the NOA function, which opened up autonomous driving from entrance to exit on highway sections, which can provide automatic lane change, overtaking and entry and exit ramp functions. This feature has also become a label for Tesla and a killer of sales.
Tesla took the lead in mass production of NOA functions
After that, wei Xiaoli, a new domestic car-making force, also began to rapidly promote navigation assisted driving. In October 2020, WEIO became the second car company in the world to provide navigation assisted driving to users; then Xiaopeng also officially opened navigation assisted driving in January 2021; Ideal Auto also officially launched navigation assisted driving in December 2021.
At this stage, whether it is Tesla or Wei Xiaoli, its navigation assistance driving function has become a unique label, and its users' use of this function is getting higher and higher.
On the other hand, memory parking is also a trump technology of Wei Xiaoli, especially like Xiaopeng Motors, which has launched cross-floor memory parking.
This has also boosted the demand for this product from other car companies, so at present, mainstream domestic car companies such as Great Wall, Geely, and GAC have begun to exert efforts in this regard.
However, traditional car companies have long adopted the traditional Tier 1 product supply, and the accumulation of self-developed automatic driving is not much. Therefore, some car companies will choose to set up or hold a supplier for autonomous driving research, while some car companies will directly choose suppliers' products.
Because the development of automatic driving requires a lot of investment in manpower, material resources and time, many car companies do not have the conditions for their own research and development of automatic driving, and direct procurement from suppliers has become the most cost-effective way.
At present, a number of autonomous driving suppliers have also been born in China, and they have strong technical accumulation in navigation assisted driving and automatic parking.
Zhixing Technology is one of the more outstanding, and its products have landed on Geely's high-end brand Extreme Kr. In addition, it is also promoting cooperation with Dongfeng and Tencent to assist navigation and driving, and it is expected that multiple projects will be developed and promoted simultaneously this year.
▲Zhixing technology staff is participating in the debugging of the Krypton 001 software
At present, Zhixing Technology has synchronously laid out L2+ level assisted driving products and L4 level automatic driving products, which is a full-scenario intelligent driving technology company and has become a very powerful player in the industry.
Second, the integration of berths has greatly reduced costs
From a technical point of view, the technical solutions adopted by Zhixing Technology are different from other suppliers.
The driving assistance and parking assistance functions of many suppliers adopt the model of separate driving and parking function development, but this solution also has the problem of high cost. Zhixing Technology has launched a domain controller for travel and parking, and only one domain controller can realize the functions of driving assistance and parking assistance at the same time.
This is also the reason why Zhixing Technology can gain the favor of many car companies. We believe that Zhixing Technology has unique achievements in the following aspects.
At present, the number of electronic control units (ECUs) in automobiles is increasing, and the traditional distributed architecture can no longer meet the needs of computing, so the automotive electronic and electrical architecture has begun to move from distributed to centralized, and the DCU (domain controller) integration architecture with domain as a unit has gradually landed.
Zhixing Technology has developed a set of integrated domain controllers - IDC, which can support compatible domestic chips, support multi-sensor fusion, support cross-platform operating systems and operating environments, provide open development environments, support cloud and big data closed-loop development, and provide continuous OTA upgrades.
▲Zhixing Technology IDC MID configuration
Zhixing Technology's IDC opens up software and hardware, supports ISO 26262 ASIL-B (D) functional safety level in terms of hardware, supports continuous iterative upgrading of the expansion of large computing power platform, and also provides rich interfaces for flexible configuration of customers.
The algorithm is also very core, which can efficiently decouple the software and hardware, so the upper-layer application can be ported to different platforms, which significantly reduces the development cost and shortens the development cycle.
Based on this set of domain controllers, Zhixing Technology has launched two versions: IDC MID and IDC HIGH. Among them, IDC MID can realize NOA and L2 driving functions, HPA memory parking and 360 panoramic functions, and this set of products will be mass-produced in the second half of the year.
The IDC MID uses a 4R5V hardware configuration to achieve NOA by incorporating a surround view camera, which greatly reduces the cost. In order to achieve this function, Zhixing Technology has carried out tens of thousands of kilometers of testing, tested many special scenarios, and the data-based closed-loop fleet verification and development work has been fully carried out.
▲Zhixing Technology completed the NOA road test
At present, Zhixing Technology has also launched a set of shadow mode, which can collect a large amount of data, transmit it back to the cloud platform, improve the functional algorithm, continuously iterate on the product, and continuously ensure the safety of navigation assistance driving.
On the other hand, Zhixing Technology's IDC MID can also support the memory parking function. The user only needs to drive the vehicle in the parking lot to complete the parking instruction once, and the vehicle will automatically produce the road map.
When the vehicle reaches this area again, it will remind the user to turn on the memory parking function, and the vehicle can automatically bypass the obstacle and search for parking spaces to complete the parking task. It is understood that the follow-up Zhixing Technology will also iterate cross-floor memory parking.
In addition to the driving assistance function, it is also possible to realize automatic parking. Zhixing Technology helps users improve the comfort of the car to the greatest extent.
In addition, Zhixing Technology's IDC MID also provides a 360 panoramic function. Through multi-view virtual camera technology, dynamic stitching technology, GPU high-precision car model rendering and other technologies, users can experience the realistic surrounding driving environment and interaction, which can well avoid some dangers caused by visual blind spots.
Overall, Zhixing Technology's IDC MID already has a number of advantages, a domain controller makes the maintenance of the product easier, but also reduces the cost. In addition, the software and hardware configuration of the product is more flexible, the high-end and low-end configuration can share a set of solutions, the architecture can be buried, and the iteration of functions is more efficient.
Third, the urban NOA is also planning to promote L4
In addition to IDC MID, Zhixing Technology has also developed IDC HIGH, which can be regarded as an upgraded version of IDC MID, and has further improved its performance and feature richness.
It is understood that the computing power planning of IDC HIGH has reached 100+ TOPS, which can achieve full coverage of automatic driving functions, including safety assurance functions, driving assistance functions, low-speed parking functions, and automatic driving assistance functions.
In terms of specific use scenarios, IDC HIGH supports complex elevated road and urban intersection scenarios, that is, urban NOA can be realized, further expanding the boundaries of intelligent driving.
▲Zhixing technology engineers are debugging the software
For an autonomous driving company, achieving fully unmanned driving is the ultimate goal, so many companies are also promoting the research and development of L4 level automatic driving, and Zhixing Technology has also made a layout in this regard.
At present, Zhixing Technology has launched L4-level unmanned vehicles in some demonstration areas, completed the unmanned logistics operation application of a car company's factory, and also promoted the operation project of the national demonstration area.
In terms of L4 driverless passenger cars, Zhixing Technology has also made a layout.
Overall, the product planning of Zhixing Technology is very rich, and there are already high-speed L2 and urban L2 in L2. In addition, there are low-speed parking, low-speed enclosed area unmanned L4, which is also in line with the company's positioning of the company's all-scenario intelligent driving technology company. At this stage, Zhixing Technology is mass-producing and landing in accordance with the market rhythm.
Conclusion: Zhixing Technology leads the way
Whether or not to have the function of navigation assisted driving has become an important competitiveness of car companies in the next stage, whether it is a new car or a traditional car company is further deployed in this regard.
However, for most car companies, it is not realistic to develop self-developed navigation assistance from scratch, and investing a lot of time and resources may not be able to make a good product, but it will also affect their own progress. Purchasing directly from suppliers can quickly make up for this shortcoming.
At present, a number of supplier companies have been born in China, as a full-scenario intelligent driving technology company, Zhixing Technology has also come up with its own mass production plan, and has obtained mass production orders from a number of car companies, and has taken the lead in this track.