Chihiro is not afraid of competition.

Produced by: Red Star (ID: redplanx)

Head picture: Chihiro CEO Chen Jinpei picture

On the forum, Baozi said that she had received an invitation from Chihiro and asked how our company was doing. Can you give me some advice? Since steamed buns are needed, let's talk about this company.

1. Mass production

In the field of automobile high-precision positioning, Chihiro's comprehensive strength is undoubtedly leading. Where is the leading position? The products are mature, the supporting facilities are perfect, the service is guaranteed, and it has been verified by the market. Specifically, in the intelligent networking industry, there are three words.

Mass production!

But when you say these three words on the new technology track, in the authentic words of Uncle Chaoyang, it is awesome.

In the intelligent network industry, Chihiro's customers are everywhere and open to every market segment of the industry. Chihiro FindAUTO product system was mass-produced as early as 20 19.

Passenger car:

——20 16, SAIC roewe adopted Chihiro "lane-level" high-precision positioning algorithm. (Zebra car operating system is a factor of Ali subsidiary. Of course, some early SAIC models are not centimeter-level, but sub-meter-level ).

——2065 438+09 The positioning accuracy of GAC Aian V, the first model equipped with FindAUTO service, reached centimeter level. Another model, Aian LX, can realize 0- 120km/h "hands-on" automatic driving on national highways and urban expressways covered by high-precision maps.

—— On 2019, all FAW Hongqi cars were equipped with Chihiro accelerated positioning service, and the first positioning time was shortened from 30 seconds to 3 seconds, which also improved the positioning accuracy and sensitivity to some extent.

Tier 1 of Guangzhou Automobile, Weilai, Tucki, Mainland China and Bosch are also customers.

Commercial vehicles:

——20 19 participated in the scheme of automatic driving unmanned trucks in Yangshan port, enabling unmanned heavy trucks to realize functions such as accurate parking, intelligent collision avoidance and automatic trajectory correction.

——202 1 enables the buses of zhengzhou yutong bus line 1 to stop at the station accurately and give priority to traffic lights. By the way, there is also an important function, timing, which is also the simplest application-checking the deck car.

In the aspect of vehicle-road coordination, the vehicle-road coordination technology has realized automatic driving with hands and feet still in the most dangerous expressway in the world-expressway, Yaxi, Sichuan.

2. Commercial map

After a brief inventory of Chihiro's commercial map, let's talk about the positioning of autonomous driving. Please skip reading.

When it comes to four sets of automatic driving, perception, planning, decision-making and control, children will also recite them. There seems to be nothing to locate, but the location is actually wrapped by perception. When it comes to geography, people think of high-precision maps, and the positioning is pitiful. In short, it is difficult to stand in the front row.

In fact, high-precision positioning is very important for assisted driving, and the functions of automatic cruise and collision warning of L2.5 expressway are inseparable from it. The automatic driving of L3 and above is "just needed", because the control of the vehicle needs to be partially or even completely handed over to the system, and the positioning accuracy of the vehicle must reach sub-meter or even centimeter level to achieve the highest possible safety.

A group of new treasures think that high-precision maps and high-precision positioning are the same thing, which is understandable: positioning needs to cooperate with maps to provide an absolute position reference for vehicles; The accuracy of high-precision map needs high-precision positioning to correct its trajectory. Taking Chihiro as an example, Gaode collects and updates the map, even if it uses 8 million collection vehicles, the trajectory will be inaccurate, and Chihiro needs to provide trajectory correction services for it.

But professionals know that the difference between high-precision maps and high-precision positioning is great: high-precision maps are heavy assets in the process of collection and production, and only OTA needs to be updated; High-precision positioning requires satellites, base stations, networks and cloud platforms. At the terminal, there are various hardware devices for receiving signals. The whole process is mainly based on asset manufacturing, and the software and hardware are always accompanied.

The following six methods and two technical routes for high-precision positioning have officially entered. Some people say that the six methods are like eight immortals crossing the sea, each showing his magical powers. I don't think this metaphor is appropriate. Everyone in the Eight Immortals can fight alone, but the current positioning is more like a disabled performance group:), each actor has unique skills, but all of them have defects, so they can't play the leading role in a one-on-one battle. Only by holding a group can we sing a well-positioned play.

The first actor, lidar, has high ranging accuracy, but short detection distance and high cost, so he is nearsighted.

The second vision sensor can identify objects well, but it needs high light and strong light to reflect light, and its performance will be greatly reduced, amblyopia+night blindness;

The third millimeter wave radar can achieve better ranging accuracy in obstacle detection, but the detection angle is small and the performance cost is high.

The fourth kind of ultrasonic radar can detect obstacles at close range, but it still has defects in positioning;

When these perception tools play the positioning function, they all match the environmental characteristics, which are familiar to old friends in the industry, and then the actors on stage belong to the high-precision combination positioning supplier queue.

Fifth, satellite signal positioning has the advantage of providing absolute position information for vehicles and high positioning accuracy. Mainly based on the global satellite navigation system (GNSS), four famous families. There are many satellites in the sky now. If this signal is not good, change it quickly.

However, due to the existence of satellite error, orbit error, ionosphere and troposphere error, the positioning accuracy of pure GNSS is only meters, which can not meet the requirements of high-level automatic driving for centimeter-level positioning. At this time, RTK (carrier phase difference technology) appeared. Combined with GNSS, it is not a dream to go from sub-meter level to centimeter level. The scientific name of this technology is RTK-GNSS technology.

But the problem is coming again. When we get to the tunnel in bridge opening, where high-rise buildings are dense and trees are covered, there is no signal! ! Without the network, it is impossible to receive the differential data of the reference station RTK.

The sixth actor is the fifth disc-IMU (Inertial Measurement Unit). The position, acceleration and rotation (angle and angular velocity) are obtained by gyroscope, accelerometer, magnetometer and pressure sensor. After Newton's formula, it can be located.

This guy's advantage is obvious. He can be independent without any external signal. Torpedo, a weapon that shuttles through the deep sea, relies on it to locate.

However, the shortcomings are more obvious. Industry insiders told Red Star that the inertial navigation of the currently widely used technical level began to diverge after 2 minutes, leading to errors. If it passes through a 5-minute tunnel, the accuracy cannot be guaranteed. What should I do at this time?

Since everyone is holding hands to set the position, of course-back to the vehicle's laser vision and other means, the prior data of Slam or high-precision map.

After the introduction of the positioning team members, the above combination is the mainstream positioning route in China today-laser+vision+millimeter wave ultrasound +GNSS+IMU.

There are mainstream and non-mainstream, that is Tesla, and the positioning scheme is visual +GNSS+IMU route.

There are also many arguments about which of the two positioning routes is better or worse. The former is multi-dimensional in ability and comprehensive in technology, and can be mutually verified and redundant, but the opposite of the coin is that there are many algorithms, the probability of bugs is also large, the logic is complex, and the integration difficulty is increased. The latter strategy is based on firepower attack, which can get rid of the dependence on high-precision map merchants in the future.

The comparison between GM Super Cruise and Tesla's Autopilot is also taken as an example by the positioning industry. 20 18 was the top Liutianbao company in the positioning industry, and its star product Tianbao RTX was also used in Cadillac.

The technology adopted by Tianbao RTX is called PPP-RTK, which is a popular technical route at present. Mature abroad, immature at home.

What is the principle of PPP? (So many nouns), all are satellite positioning, RTK is differential, PPP is developed from non-differential positioning technology, the closer the base station built by RTK is to you, the more accurate the positioning is, but when it comes to a place like the ocean desert plateau, I ask you how hard it takes to build a base station. When can I recover the cost? Operation and maintenance have to continue to throw people and money.

At this time, it is the performance time of PPP. PPP can provide static millimeter-to-centimeter and dynamic centimeter-to-decimeter positioning services through about 65,438+000 reference stations distributed around the world. Compared with China Mobile's base station, it is much easier to build 4000+, Chihiro 2800 and six points 2000+.

However, if you are in love, PPP is slow: it takes nearly 30 minutes to initialize precise positioning. And every time we meet, we have to chase it again: the reinitialization time after the signal is out of lock is almost as long as the first initialization time. I drove to the last bus in the morning, and I went. This painting is too beautiful to imagine.

Just now we said that PPP-RTK is promising, but it is not mature in China, and Chihiro is still the first. 20 19-2020, appointed by BMW China, 202 1, made a high-profile appearance at Shanghai Auto Show. It can be predicted that the technology will mature faster in the future with the promotion of commercial projects.

Other players, such as Geely's Time-Space Fishway and Liu Fen, are also studying, but they are not mature enough to reach the level of commercialization, and it will take some time to catch up with Chihiro.

3. The road to exploration

After reading the long science popularization and paving the way, everyone will definitely ask, why is this company so awesome? Rome was not built in a day. To answer this question, we have to start from history.

From the first day of its establishment, Chihiro has shouldered the mission of carrying forward Beidou.

In 20 14, Beidou, which carried the dreams of several generations at that time, was still in intense brewing (the expected date of delivery had been estimated), and the planners of the blueprint had already begun to lay out the layout for its growth. Because there is no base station, the launch is successful and no one needs it.

At that time, China Ordnance Group, as the overall unit authorized by the state for the development and industrial application of Beidou ground-based augmentation system, finally decided to join hands with Alibaba, which has a dominant position in the software fields such as cloud computing and big data, and * * * was responsible for the construction of the national Beidou ground-based augmentation system "State Grid" to make Beidou stronger and bigger in the civilian market.

Therefore, the company has two advantages from the first day, the resources and backing of state-owned enterprises and the vitality and ability of private enterprises. Some people ask, why must we mix ownership? It must be for the national defense security of strategic industries. Before Beidou, if domestic users used satellite-aided positioning services, they were basically based on GPS or GLONASS data from foreign servers, so a large number of China location data could not be left in China.

Naturally, the company has two forces from day one. In terms of personnel, Chen Jinpei, a veteran of Ali for ten years and responsible for the industrialization development of cloud computing in Alibaba and even China, was appointed as CEO.

The company was established 20 15, and the number of base stations reached 2000+ in just one year, and the Beidou ground-based reinforcement system was officially put into operation. In the geographic information industry, it is like a dark horse.

When it comes to innovation, Chen Jinpei summed up two points. First, he established a nationwide network. The reason for this is that there was no RTK technology and CORS network at that time, but it was limited to the professional surveying and mapping industry. The surveying and mapping system in each province is fragmented. If a developer develops across provinces and cities, he must apply for different accounts. Chihiro first broke this boundary and unified the national main network, so that an account can travel all over the world.

The second is the innovation of broadcasting means. In the past, everyone said that location services were broadcast by satellite signals, and Chihiro was the first to provide location broadcasting services on a large scale through the Internet, among which Alibaba Cloud platform and cloud computing played a lot of roles.

This kind of innovation undoubtedly meets the market demand. In addition to traditional surveying and mapping, agricultural drones, port and airport safety supervision, transportation and smart phones in the consumer market all embraced this technology, and orders poured in. From its establishment to 20 19, the compound annual growth rate of the company's revenue exceeded 300%. On October 20 19, 10, Chihiro completed a round of financing of 10 billion yuan, and the company's valuation exceeded 13 billion yuan.

In the next two years, business income ushered in rapid growth, and the reasons for the growth were obvious. First, the volume is small and the growth space is large. The second is far ahead. At this time, there is only one such company in the market, and the rest are stragglers. The number of base stations is up to 400+, which can't keep up with the needs of large-scale customers.

This is the big background, back to the automobile industry.

Internet genes enter the manufacturing industry and turn technology into products. As long as the hardware is involved, the engineering problems have to be overcome step by step. All the people who started from the algorithm to do autonomous driving have a deep understanding of this, and Chihiro has also experienced such a groping stage.

High-precision positioning originated from surveying and mapping industry. As we all know, the products used in surveying and mapping are huge, and there are no ready-made products and components when they are installed on vehicles or integrated into vehicle hardware, let alone passed vehicle regulations.

So the first problem is the choice of components. The requirements of chip performance access, the accuracy of double-difference narrow wave, how to adapt quickly and the algorithm after mass production; IMU signal access requirements, etc., take the simplest antenna as an example, a small antenna, there are countless tricks.

After selecting components and entering the stage of system integration, the design of vehicle electronic architecture may introduce some accuracy problems such as data delay and availability of differential software.

After integration, through the whole process of system adaptation, optimization, test and verification, after-sales operation, how to realize industrial production, each stage contains specific problems.

I am deeply touched, but now ordinary standards, norms and processes are the standard answers to the questions accumulated step by step. These seemingly boring, but at the beginning, they were all real problems, which once made a group of people fidget, think hard and run around. After solving it, it became history, that is, a few dry rules lost their flesh and blood like skeletons. But to understand the mechanism of an industry, we have to go back to these historical details.

4. Not afraid of competition

At this point, we all know that the industry is a sunrise industry and the company is the head. It looks promising. Do you have to get in?

However, Goose, in the rivers and lakes of migrant workers, this company is famous for its two great feats, so let you retire! Step back. Step back. One is the peak of non-competition agreement, and the other is the employee option repurchase problem left over so far. As a result, a number of "thousands of blacks" have emerged on the network platform, rushing around various platforms, and all kinds of unfair grievances, so that many people choose to go to Ali Company first, and then realize curve re-employment.

For startups, it is normal to have such and such problems. Just like reading Hamlet, there are a thousand Hamlets in the eyes of a thousand readers. The emergence of this problem is not only related to its own management problems, but also has a great relationship with the company's business.

The industry in which the company is located belongs to the industrial chain of satellite system, which originated from satellite. The four satellite systems, namely, American GPS, European Galileo, Russian GLONASS and China Beidou, belong to the space segment and are dominated by China countries.

The ground part, the main control station, the injection station, the monitoring station and the foundation reinforcement system, Chihiro involves the foundation reinforcement system and is a moat, because the qualification has not been fully liberalized.

Users subdivide the industrial chain, upstream parts, midstream product system concentration, and downstream navigation and positioning operation services. Chihiro dabbled in upstream chip research and development (tried); Midstream vehicle positioning, mobile navigation, surveying and mapping instruments and other terminal module equipment integration; Downstream transformation services operate the entire chain.

In the high-precision positioning business, Chihiro encountered six points and China Mobile.

The most basic of RTK is the construction of station network system. If the station network system needs to serve the requirements of intelligent networked vehicles, in fact, its most important thing is the coverage of the national road network. Chihiro is now able to achieve more than 99.9% coverage of national and provincial roads. The competitors are not bad, 98% of them are China Mobile's 4000+ base stations, which are also around 99%, so there is no absolute advantage.

And China Mobile's service fee is directly cut to half of Chihiro's, singing "Love you is not expensive" to attract many customers. At six o'clock, it is more subdivided and focuses on the big market of automobiles.

Whether it is the product blueprint or all aspects of system construction, the latecomers China Mobile and Liubu are highly coincident with Chihiro. Reference network, cloud computing, transmission network, and then the development of core algorithms such as RTK, PPP-RTK, GNSS, INS, and OEM pre-installation processes, such as integrity monitoring, information security, functional security, quality system, operation and maintenance guarantee, etc. It can be said that it is a life-cycle melee.

Chen Jinpei has made a deduction in his mind. In a media interview in 2020, he once said, "2B is not only easy to cultivate competitors, but also the ceiling will come soon".

People have to feel the innovator's dilemma. For enterprises, starting a business is not easy to succeed, but it is more difficult to keep it and needs constant innovation. In the words of Zhou Yunjie, former rotating president of Haier, it is endless light. ...

So at that time, the driver of this ship thought the most question was, where is the moat? Is it deep enough? The question he is most worried about is-will there be new technologies that subvert Chihiro?

If there is no subversive new technology to reduce the dimension, the most important thing is to ensure the safety of the existing technology. In this way, we can understand the sentence "why do you want to do closed-loop cloud images, just for technical safety" And why launch a non-competition agreement so far away from the original spectrum, and take option repurchase as a way to keep your wallet first? At this point, it can be logically self-consistent.

2B' s market is divided. What about the c-end?

Although there is cooperation with Xiaomi Huawei, the installed capacity of mobile phones is relatively large, but there are not many users who really open sophisticated services and pay Chihiro. At this stage, the customer's demand is not considered to be centimeter-level.

And why can "thousands of blacks" form a sound volume in the vast Internet? That's because the recruitment base has increased, from 300+ in 20 19 to 800+ in 202 1. From the perspective of personnel composition, the proportion of high-level posts has increased significantly compared with the past, which may be the reason for market expansion.

The number of employees+high grade is higher than the increase of wages and expenses, but the market performance is not satisfactory. Coupled with the competition of competitors, so there are so many "black spots". Of course, where there are people, there are rivers and lakes, and rumors show that this matter is not groundless.

However, Chihiro's position as a high-precision positioning big brother is still difficult to shake in a short time, which depends on Chihiro's future market expansion and ability to cope with competition.

Finally, I wish Chihiro Jun a higher level.

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