Suddenly, the commercialization of autonomous driving seems to be on the horizon.
The market size of unmanned driving in 2030 is approaching 2 trillion?
Robotaxi, which is currently hotly discussed in the market, is the most difficult of the driverless commercial types.
The commercialization of L4 and above high-level autonomous driving mainly includes four types: ports/mining areas (dump trucks/container trucks), logistics and distribution last mile (delivery vehicles), trunk logistics (heavy trucks), and Robotaxi (passenger cars).
Among them, Robotaxi is a high-level autonomous driving that can be applied in designated urban scenarios without drivers, for 2C consumers. Considering the restrictions of policies and regulations, and the differences in the difficulty of high-level autonomous driving in different types and scenarios, it is expected that the large-scale application of Robotaxi will be the ultimate mode for the commercialization of autonomous driving.
Seizing the travel market with a lower travel cost advantage is the underlying driving force for the development of Robotaxi in various countries. Since the cost of the whole vehicle + the driver's salary are the two major items that can be reduced, Robotaxi can actually reduce the operating cost of online car-hailing/taxis, which is also a key factor for the further development of the industry and the realization of commercialization. After calculation and comparison, it is found that the operating cost advantage of Robotaxi is prominent, with an operating cost of only 0.81 yuan per kilometer, which is 58% less than that of traditional oil vehicles and 43% less than traditional trams.
Compared with other countries that are still in the road test/commercial trial stage, China and the United States have started fully unmanned Robotaxi charging operations in limited areas in many cities, and are in the world's leading 0-1 breakthrough stage.
Compared with the United States, China's Robotaxi commercialization started relatively late, in 2009 United States Google has launched the autonomous driving project, in 2013 China's Baidu and Germany's BMW cooperation to develop the first generation of autonomous driving models. However, the speed of commercial operation in China is relatively fast, and in 2022, when China's Baidu Apollo/Pony.ai won the pilot of unmanned manned demonstration applications in Beijing, United States Waymo and Cruise obtained Robotaxi commercial licenses.
In 2023, Cruise and Waymo, the leading autonomous driving technology companies in the United States, have successively obtained licenses to operate driverless taxis for all-weather commercial operation in San Francisco. Second-tier countries such as U.A.E. have rapidly entered the small-scale commercial operation test stage with a main driver safety officer from last year's road test stage, and the remaining second-tier countries represented by developed countries such as Korea and Western Europe are also continuing to promote their own Robotaxi commercialization process, and achieve corresponding promotion results in 2023 by carefully selecting regional or crowd coverage and scene coverage. Some third-tier countries, such as Saudi Arabia, have accelerated investment and commercialization in a more aggressive manner.
According to McKinsey's forecast, the value of orders for autonomous driving-based mobility services will reach about $260 billion by 2030 and about $940 billion by 2040. By 2030, mobility service providers will deploy 11% of autonomous vehicles and 2% of privately owned autonomous vehicles. By 2040, mobility service providers will account for up to 55% of PKMT, with only 11% of privately owned autonomous vehicles.
Source: McKinsey & Company
"Carrot Run" exploded, and the commercialization of unmanned driving is just around the corner
Domestic high-level management attaches great importance to the construction of vehicle-road collaboration, and the improvement of vehicle-road coordination has made the foundation for the commercialization of autonomous driving more and more solid. The construction and promotion of vehicle-road collaboration is inseparable from the support of intensive policies at the national level, and the government's active guidance for the development of Internet of vehicles and autonomous driving technology has enabled vehicle-road collaboration to quickly accumulate late-mover advantages in a short period of time. In urban transportation, vehicle-road collaboration technology can cooperate with intelligent traffic signal control, intelligent parking and other systems to achieve intersection conflict warning, special vehicle priority, regional peer optimization, autonomous valet parking, etc., and road section perception equipment can provide a broader vision for autonomous vehicles.
Source: Roland Berger
In 2022, Baidu launched the sixth-generation unmanned vehicle ApolloRT6, and the cost was further reduced to 250,000, which is only 1/10 of the industry. Assuming that an RT6 has been in service for 5 years, the cost of 250,000 yuan is about 4,166 yuan per month, and the daily operating cost is only 139 yuan. The vehicle does not need to be modified, and large-scale mass production is directly realized, making the cost of autonomous vehicles controllable.
The RT6 is mass-produced by JMC, and the whole vehicle architecture is led by Baidu. The manufacturer of the ApolloRT6 is Jiangling New Energy, the power battery manufacturer is Honeycomb Energy Technology Co., Ltd., which has a Great Wall background, and the motor supplier is Fodi Power, a subsidiary of BYD, with a maximum power of 110kW. RT6 adopts Baidu's self-developed Apollo Galaxy platform, and the computing power of the sensor platform reaches 1200TOPS.
The National Intelligent Connected Vehicle (Wuhan) Test Demonstration Zone was established in 2019. As of the end of 2023, the city's cumulative open test road mileage has exceeded 3,378.73 kilometers (one-way mileage), covering 12 administrative districts of Wuhan, covering an area of about 3,000 square kilometers, reaching a population of more than 7.7 million, and ranking first in the country in terms of open mileage and number of open areas.
DUE TO THE BROAD SCOPE OF OPEN TESTING IN THE CITY AND THE LONG-TERM IN-DEPTH COOPERATION WITH ROBOTAXI PROJECTS SUCH AS RADISH RUN, AND THE INCREASE IN THE NUMBER OF ROBOTAXI IN 2024, ALTHOUGH THE OVERALL PROPORTION OF THE NUMBER OF DELIVERIES IS STILL LIMITED, THE PHENOMENON OF "EMERGENCE" HAS BEEN FORMED AT THE SENSORY LEVEL, AND WITH THE HELP OF DEVELOPED SELF-MEDIA PLATFORMS, IT HAS FORMED A WAVE OF GOOD MARKET EDUCATION FOR THE WHOLE MARKET.
In terms of price, "Carrot Run" has shown great advantages. Depending on the distance traveled, the Carrot Run offers very attractive prices. For example, for a 10-kilometer trip, the price of the carrot run is between 4 yuan and 16 yuan, which is between 18 yuan and 30 yuan for traditional online car-hailing, which can save passengers nearly half of the travel cost.
Recently, the number of fully unmanned orders in Wuhan has grown rapidly, with a peak of more than 20 single-day bicycles, a cumulative service volume of more than 6 million, and about 826,000 rides in the first quarter, a year-on-year increase of 25%. In addition, Wuhan citizens' satisfaction with the travel service of fully driverless vehicles is generally high, and the user satisfaction evaluation of the Radish Express APP reaches 4.9 points, of which 5 points are full of praise, accounting for 94.19%.
The head of Baidu's autonomous driving business department said that at the beginning of 2024, due to the substantial improvement of time and space coverage and operational efficiency, the revenue of Radish Express increased by 9 times, and the scale effect began to appear; With the 1,000 sixth-generation unmanned vehicles put into use one after another, the revenue growth rate will be faster, and the goal is to break even in Wuhan by the end of 2024 and fully enter the profitability period in 2025, becoming the world's first commercially profitable autonomous driving travel service platform.
On May 16, at Baidu's 2024 Q1 earnings call, Baidu founder Robin Li disclosed that as of April 19, the cumulative number of service orders for "Radish Run" exceeded 6 million; In the first quarter, Wuhan's fully driverless orders accounted for more than 55% of the "Carrot Run" service orders, and continued to rise to 70% in April, and are expected to rise rapidly to 100% in the next few quarters.
IN ADDITION, MANY CITIES HAVE INCREASED THE PROMOTION OF ROBOTAXI, AND HIGH-LEVEL AUTONOMOUS DRIVING HAS ENTERED AN ORDERLY LANDING PERIOD.
IN ADDITION TO THE LEADING PROMOTION IN WUHAN, MANY CITIES HAVE OPENED THE ROAD OF COMMERCIALIZATION AND PROMOTION OF GENERALIZED ROBOTAXI IN AN ORDERLY MANNER. In July, the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Economy and Information Technology proposed to support the use of autonomous vehicles in urban public electric vehicle passenger transport, online car-hailing, car rental and other urban travel services in the "Beijing Autonomous Vehicle Regulations (Draft for Comments)"; The Shanghai Municipal Commission of Economy and Information Technology, the Shanghai Municipal Transportation Commission and the Shanghai Public Security Bureau jointly issued a notice on the "Demonstration Application of Driverless Intelligent Connected Vehicles in Shanghai", and a number of enterprises have obtained the first batch of enterprises to obtain the demonstration application license of driverless intelligent networked vehicles in Shanghai.
Beijing plans to support the use of self-driving cars in urban public tram passenger transport, online car-hailing, car rental and other urban mobility services. Beijing Yizhuang and Baidu have carried out intelligent transformation of more than 300 intersections, and after the layout of global signal control, the average time to pass through the intersection has been shortened by 28% through intelligent scheduling of traffic lights. With the support of large-scale model technology, thousands of intersections can be coordinated to dispatch traffic lights and change lights, improving traffic efficiency by 15%-30%.
UNLIKE WUHAN, WHICH EXPANDED THE SCOPE OF URBAN TESTING THROUGH THE LICENSE PLATE OF THE TEST DEMONSTRATION ZONE TO FORM A CITY-WIDE ROBOTAXI OPERATION, BEIJING AND SHANGHAI ARE BOTH PILOT CONSORTIUM CITIES FOR INTELLIGENT NETWORKED VEHICLE ACCESS AND ROAD PASSAGE JOINTLY APPROVED BY THE MINISTRY OF INDUSTRY AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND OTHER FOUR MINISTRIES AND COMMISSIONS ON JUNE 4, 2024, AND HAVE MORE CONVENIENT PILOT CONDITIONS. In addition to Beijing and Shanghai, the above-mentioned pilot consortium cities also include Shenzhen, Chongqing, Guangzhou, Danzhou, Zhengzhou, Hainan and other cities. In the future, the development of autonomous driving in relevant cities and enterprises is expected to further accelerate.
What are the companies in the industrial chain?
First of all, it is also related enterprises in the field of intelligent driving, among which Thunderda's main products include intelligent driving domain control and chip algorithm solutions, and the intelligent driving business has achieved 1.84 billion revenue in 23 years, accounting for 35.1% of the total revenue. The main products of Jingwei Hengrun include intelligent driving systems, intelligent driving domain controllers, on-board high-performance computing platforms, millimeter-wave radars and other intelligent driving products, and the intelligent driving business has achieved 3.43 billion revenue in 23 years, accounting for 73.6% of the total revenue.
NavInfo's main products include a cost-effective domain controller based on Horizon J2/J3 chips, and the intelligent driving business has achieved a revenue of 380 million yuan in 23 years, accounting for 12.1% of the total revenue. TransInfo's main products include intelligent transportation system products and solutions, V2X intelligent network products, autonomous driving test sites, roadside hardware and software products, vehicle-road collaboration and other intelligent driving businesses. Wanji Technology has intelligent driving services such as on-board lidar, vehicle-road collaboration data, V2X full-stack series products, and vehicle-road-cloud integration intelligent driving solutions.
At the same time, the agency predicts that the hardware/chip design upgrade of Robotaxi may drive the upgrade of central computing/multi-domain integration + electronic and electrical architecture, and Desay SV, a domain controller supplier with multi-domain integration capabilities, and Huguang Co., Ltd., a leading domestic wiring harness independent standard, are expected to benefit.
The Robotaxi body size or decrease, the interior space or increase, so that the body interior has the possibility of further optimization, among them, the seat is the highest value of the car interior parts, there are seat structure design upgrades and other characteristics, the domestic independent seat leader is Jifeng shares.
If the Robotaxi vehicle powertrain is upgraded and optimized, it will drive the Bethel and Nexteer steer-by-wire related to brake-by-wire.
In terms of Robotaxi operators, there are mainly autonomous driving technology companies including Waymo, Baidu Apollo, WeRide, Pony.ai, etc.; OEMs including Tesla and Xpeng Motors; GAC and its OEMs such as Ruqi Mobility + Pony.ai/WeRide and its mobility platform + autonomous driving technology companies; GAC Aion + Didi is an OEM + travel platform.
Sources: Jiazi Lightyear, Head Leopard Research Institute, etc