Another financing of more than 1 billion yuan, wire-controlled chassis to meet the best era?

"Popular fried chicken" wire-controlled chassis, financing continues to be hot.

According to the latest news, on June 19, Likr Technology, an intelligent chassis system solution provider, announced the completion of more than 1 billion yuan in Series C financing, which will be used to expand production capacity, ensure the delivery of large-scale mass production orders for its wire-controlled chassis products in a number of leading car enterprise customers, continue to promote the upgrading and efficiency of the supply chain, and accelerate the global market layout.

In addition, Likr Technology has also built supporting manufacturing capacity, the first phase of the advanced manufacturing center can achieve an annual production capacity of 300,000 sets, and the second phase of the advanced manufacturing center is expected to be put into operation in the third quarter of this year, when the annual production capacity can reach 1.5 million sets. The new production line will further strengthen the company's mass production capacity.

In addition to Likr Technology, local players such as Nathan Technology, Glubo, Tongyu Automotive Technology, and Bibst have also completed a new round of financing and won the mass production designation.

From the perspective of the fastest-growing brake-by-wire segment, foreign investors such as Bosch and ZF still occupy the main market share. However, thanks to the inherent opportunity of "domestic substitution", domestic suppliers are trying to catch up and seize more market share.

According to data from the Gaogong Intelligent Vehicle Research Institute, from January to December 2023, 7,957,700 new cars were delivered to passenger cars (excluding imports and exports) in the Chinese market, a year-on-year increase of 60.31%, and the installation rate rose to 37.68%;

Among them, the One Box solution has gradually become the main technical solution of choice for OEMs due to its higher integration and low cost advantages, and the new models launched in 2023, especially the new energy models, basically adopt the One BOX system. Domestic suppliers, with the large-scale One Box program to break through, are eating more dividends.

For example, the integrated intelligent braking system, an innovative product of Nasen Technology, has been put into mass production since the end of last year, and has been designated by a number of benchmark models from many domestic first-tier OEMs, and is expected to ship 1 million units in 2024.

It is revealed that compared with the traditional braking system, the volume and weight of NBC are more than 50% smaller, and the volume and weight are also 18% smaller than the mainstream joint venture integrated braking system in the current market, which can provide better pressure building accuracy and pressure construction response.

At present, its wire-controlled chassis products have achieved large-scale equipment, delivery and mass production of domestic independent brand passenger cars, such as Changan Automobile, Geely Automobile, etc., accounting for about 3% of the domestic market-by-wire chassis market share.

In addition, it also integrates functions such as brake assistance, body stability control, and high-level automatic driving control, with higher integration and better cost, which is an important guarantee for the safety of automatic driving.

At present, Likr Technology's IHB-LK® products have been designated by more than 10 host platform projects, and more than 30 models are under simultaneous development. The company has not only established cooperative research and development with BYD, but also successfully put into large-scale production in leading car companies such as Chery and Celis.

On this basis, Likr Technology is making a comprehensive layout of intelligent chassis, and plans to gradually realize the collaborative control of longitudinal, horizontal and vertical axes by the end of 2025, complete the integration of intelligent chassis domain control, and create an integrated intelligent chassis system solution with active control, self-adaptation and self-learning.

Judging from the recent actions of suppliers, in line with the trend of intelligence and integration, the drive-by-wire chassis has accelerated its evolution to a domain-centralized architecture.

On the one hand, under the architecture of "central integration + domain controller", the chassis domain controller, as the "cerebellum" of the car, can reasonably divide the labor of the chassis sub-executive control system to achieve the best dynamic control and stability of the vehicle. But behind the ideal integrated control of chassis motion, there are many challenges.

Specifically, the use of the collaborative control of the chassis domain controller, the integrated control of brake, steering, suspension and other drive-by-wire systems can achieve faster dynamic response, shorter pressure build-up ability, fine-grained precision brake-by-wire, steer-by-wire, electronic suspension precise parameter adjustment, etc., and continue to actively learn the laws of road conditions and environment, and continue to improve the comfort performance of the chassis.

However, the technical barriers of the chassis domain controller are high, not only involving the difficult integration of suspension, braking, steering and other modules, but also to solve the problem of software interoperability between components, and the functional safety needs to meet the highest level of ASIL-D, and there are not many mature mass production solutions.

Due to the first-mover advantage of international giants, they have already formed certain products in terms of chassis cooperative control, mainly including Bosch's integrated vehicle dynamic control system (IVC) and ZF's cubiX chassis integrated controller.

In terms of domestic suppliers, Globo has moved the lateral, longitudinal, and vertical three-axis functions and braking stability functions from the traditional actuator to the chassis domain controller, so as to quickly deploy different software functions through a modularly built software architecture, taking into account the flexibility and cost optimization of software-defined vehicles.

Not only that, iCDS can also be moved up by software and flexible function deployment, and the optimal downstream actuator can be selected by the customized volume to achieve the decoupling of software and hardware.

In addition, on the basis of linear control and integration, the wire-controlled chassis further emphasizes intelligence, and the pursuit of "intelligent chassis" is also promoting cross-domain integration.

It is true that the ultimate form of intelligent chassis is for autonomous driving, including the three-way integration of brake-by-wire, steer-by-wire, and drive-by-wire suspension, and the deep integration of the chassis domain and the intelligent driving domain will further increase the degree of chassis intelligence.

That is, based on the gradual replacement of mechanical or hydraulic devices by electronic devices, the linkage between the chassis domain and the intelligent driving domain and the body domain is realized; Intelligent chassis with active perception and decision-making capabilities to achieve autonomous control.

Nowadays, the chassis is cross-domain integration, and a major technical highlight is the synergy between the chassis and intelligent driving perception, creating systems including active preview, which are installed in mid-to-high-end models.

For example, the M9 is equipped with an integrated MFSS multi-modal fusion perception system, DATS3.0 dynamic adaptive torque system and xMotion intelligent body cooperative control system, which cooperate with each other to significantly improve the vehicle's handling and comfort.

In particular, the MFSS multi-modal fusion perception system realizes the prediction of road bumps through vehicle attitude perception (iVSE) and road surface preview (RSS), and prepares the chassis in advance to achieve the "magic carpet" effect.

Among them, RSS can predict and identify road surface features such as speed bumps, potholes, and slippery road surface, so as to achieve more ideal suspension decision control.

For example, through the preview to perceive the front speed bump in advance, and actively carry out MS-level damping control, it helps the car effectively reduce the vertical impact when passing over the speed bump, and combines the torque adaptive adjustment to reduce the impact of the obstacle.

In addition, NIO also added a new intelligent system updated on January 26 this year, opening up the intelligent chassis domain, intelligent driving domain and intelligent cockpit domain, combined with real-time vehicle sensor capabilities and cloud bump layers, which can predict road conditions in advance.

Specific to the driving process of the vehicle, combined with the "real-time perception" of the road surface information and the "a priori" information provided by the 4D road condition layer, the height of the air suspension and the stiffness of the CDC are actively adjusted to improve the ride and comfort.

As of March this year, this function covers ES8, ET7, ES7, EC7 models with air suspension + CDC dynamic suspension damping control, leading the development trend of intelligent chassis technology for high-end models.

This also means that as the electronic and electrical architecture of the whole vehicle continues to evolve to central integration, OEMs, chassis suppliers, and intelligent driving solution providers urgently need to explore new joint intelligent chassis models.

In the past, most of the chassis supply chain, whether it was braking, steering or suspension, came from international manufacturers, whose chassis controllers were deeply bound to actuators. The entry of domestic wire-controlled chassis players has completely subverted the development mode and control logic of traditional chassis and accelerated the commercialization of intelligent chassis.

Taking Tongyu Automobile as an example, the full range of chassis products launched include EHB, EPB, ABS, ESC, integrated electro-hydraulic braking system iEHB, EMB and other braking system products, electric power steering system EPS, steer-by-wire system SBW and other steering systems, as well as chassis domain controller CDCU.

In addition, driven by the above-mentioned cross-domain integration trend, in order to further improve the intelligent driving experience, intelligent driving suppliers are also expanding their own capabilities. Some ADAS solution providers have introduced wire-controlled chassis software algorithm development engineers to start the early development of software.

For example, the PhiMotion intelligent chassis solution launched by Jianzhi Robotics uses binocular preview to actively detect the 3D road spectrum information of the road surface in front of the vehicle, enabling fully active and semi-active suspension adjustment, matching the optimal parameter setting in real time, and significantly improving the comfort performance of the vehicle chassis.

According to public reports, PhiMotion 1.0 has been designated by more than 10 models of a leading OEM, and its flagship MPV model has completed all tests and is officially mass-produced.

At present, the technical route of the intelligent chassis has been basically determined, from the traditional mechanical chassis to the full wire-controlled chassis, and then to the integrated intelligent chassis. However, under the dominance of OEMs, the role positioning and service boundaries of all parties are still in the game, and cost reduction is also an unavoidable topic.

Most importantly, safety and reliability are always the bottom line of woven-by-wire technology. It is not easy for the entire industry to be safe and smart while being under the pressure of cost reduction.