Xiangyang Huawei Property Telephone

Text || Bear

20 19 is a year of industry sinking. When the demographic dividend and land dividend of first-tier cities are exhausted, many industries have embarked on the road of sinking third-and fourth-tier cities. The e-commerce industry has sunk, social media has sunk, and even the autonomous driving industry has embarked on a sinking road.

In fact, the sinking trend of the autonomous driving industry has long been reflected. After a domestic self-driving startup company moved its headquarters out of the first-tier cities, it bluntly said: "Outside the first-tier cities, the self-driving industry has a broad development space, including more suitable road test conditions and more favorable license policies ..."

This remark revealed that high land prices and strict landing rules in first-tier cities are constraining the vitality of the development of the autonomous driving industry.

In order to break this situation, in April of 20 18, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Public Security and the Ministry of Transport jointly issued the "Management Specification for Intelligent Networked Vehicle Road Testing (Trial)" to encourage all provinces and cities in China to build intelligent networked/self-driving vehicle demonstration zones.

In the past two years, nearly 30 intelligent networked automobile demonstration zones have begun to land in cities across the country, excluding first-tier cities and new first-tier cities, such as Cangzhou, Baoding, Wuxi, Xiangyang and other small towns (this article refers to cities outside the first-tier and quasi-first-tier) that have also begun to follow the trend of autonomous driving.

▲ China 13 Small Town Autopilot Layout

According to incomplete statistics of cars and things, there are as many as 13 towns with autonomous driving industry like this. These cities have provided more favorable policies, cheaper driving test licenses and more efficient application processes for the autonomous driving industry, attracting many players in the autonomous driving industry.

At present, five types of players, such as ICT companies, Internet companies, autonomous driving companies, automobile manufacturers and logistics companies, have flooded into the town's autonomous driving test area.

Self-driving in small cities has formed a trend that a single spark can start a prairie fire. The support of urban policies and the enthusiasm of enterprises will promote the self-driving industry to spread from the first-tier cities with concentrated industrial advantages to the marginal cities, and walk out of a road of "rural encircling cities".

1. Is the autonomous driving industry sinking? 13 small towns set up intelligent networked automobile demonstration zones.

2065438+April 2008, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Public Security and the Ministry of Transport jointly issued the policy of "Intelligent Networked Vehicle Road Test Management Specification (Trial)", pointing out that the relevant competent departments of the provincial and municipal governments can organize and carry out intelligent networked vehicle road tests according to the local actual situation and the detailed rules for the implementation of the specification.

Prior to this, only a few first-tier (quasi-first-tier) cities in China, such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, started the demonstration zone of intelligent networking/self-driving cars, and conducted small-scale road tests in the demonstration zone.

The promulgation of the above documents provides guidance for more cities to develop the autonomous driving industry, and also gives the autonomous driving industry the opportunity to migrate from first-tier cities to second-tier cities or even third-tier cities and enjoy more favorable landing conditions.

Shortly after the release of the document, some cities took the lead in embracing this wave of autonomous driving because of their excellent industrial base.

Among them, Baoding, Pingtan, Xiangyang, Cangzhou and other cities with developed automobile manufacturing industry and certain artificial intelligence industry foundation are the most typical.

It is understood that Baoding is not only the headquarters of Great Wall Motor, but also an important flank of xiong'an new area. In Baoding, hundreds of artificial intelligence-related enterprises have landed.

▲ Baoding signed a contract with Baidu.

At the same time, in February 2065438+2009, Baoding also signed a contract with Baidu, and the two sides planned to promote the construction of intelligent transportation in Baoding, and Baidu also landed in the artificial intelligent cloud computing center in Baoding.

On the one hand, Great Wall Motor, which has an urgent need for autopilot testing, and on the other hand, Baidu, which wants to put its own autopilot solution in Baoding. The two sides hit it off. 1At the end of October, 20 18 165438, the Mancheng Workstation of Baoding Autopilot Road Detection Service Center was officially unveiled in Mancheng Economic Development Zone, Hebei Province.

Huaxia Star Technology Service Co., Ltd. undertook the construction project of the experimental area. At the same time, the management committee of Mancheng Development Zone also provides a service site for it and is responsible for the construction of communication base stations.

In Cangzhou, the automobile industrial bases of Beijing Hyundai and BAIC Group (North China) are located here, and Cangzhou Yuntu Technology is also an important partner of Baidu Apollo, which shows that Cangzhou also has an industrial base of automobile manufacturing and artificial intelligence industry.

2065438+At the end of September, 2009, Cangzhou Development and Reform Commission, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, Ministry of Transport and Ministry of Public Security jointly issued "Cangzhou Intelligent Networked Vehicle Road Test Management Measures (Trial)", and Cangzhou officially became an intelligent networked vehicle demonstration zone city.

It is reported that Cangzhou has opened an autopilot test road network with a total length of 1 14 km in Cangzhou Economic Development Zone, and issued the first batch of 30 autopilot test licenses to Baidu, and released Baidu autopilot test vehicles for testing at the end of 20 19 10.

▲ Baidu's L4 driverless taxi

However, not all cities that build intelligent networked automobile demonstration zones have dual industrial bases of automobile manufacturing and artificial intelligence industry. Liuzhou Intelligent Networking Demonstration Zone, located in the southwest of China, was jointly built by SAIC-GM-Wuling and the local government.

From July 2065438 to July 2009, the application of SAIC-GM-Wuling was officially approved by Liuzhou Municipal Government, and the office of Liuzhou Intelligent Networked Automobile Road Test Management Joint Working Group held a meeting to set up a road test committee, and adopted the Articles of Association of Liuzhou Intelligent Networked Automobile Road Test Expert Committee (Trial).

So far, Liuzhou has built an intelligent networked automobile demonstration zone integrating 5G communication technology, V2X, driverless and remote driving technology, and SAIC-GM-Wuling has obtained the first test license in the demonstration zone.

▲ Liuzhou Intelligent Networked Automobile Test Road

It is worth mentioning that even some cities have laid out autonomous driving as an important urban planning. For example, Deqing has opened more than 900 kilometers of urban and rural roads in the county, and issued driving test licenses to many automobile manufacturers and self-driving enterprises such as Geely, Weilai, Zero Run, CRRC era and Ma Xiao Star.

Deqing county plans to take autonomous driving as the underlying capacity of urban smart transportation, and build a municipal-level autonomous driving demonstration zone in smart travel in 2020, which means that self-driving cars will be able to get on the road throughout Deqing county.

In addition to Baoding, Cangzhou, Liuzhou and Deqing, nine cities, including Xiangyang, Zhaoqing, Changzhou and Wuxi, have also built autonomous driving pilot zones based on local industrial bases, providing conditions for the autonomous driving industry to land in small towns.

Judging from the popularity of building intelligent networked automobile demonstration zones in various "small towns", the fire of autonomous driving has finally boiled up from cities such as Beishangguangshen and Shenzhen, and gradually spread to the whole country. The extensive development of the autonomous driving industry is not only conducive to the commercialization of the industry itself, but also promotes the smart transportation and smart city strategy of the city.

Second, focus on the automatic driving test area? The two advantages of small towns have initially appeared.

According to the observation of the current autonomous driving layout in 13 small towns, these cities usually lack strong local autonomous driving enterprises and academic teams specializing in autonomous driving technology due to the lack of industrial clusters supporting autonomous driving, and the overall lack of research and development capabilities of autonomous driving technology.

However, these cities have grasped the differences between themselves and the first-tier cities very accurately, followed up the policy first and pilot areas quickly, gave full play to the advantages of road test and technology integration, and focused on the autonomous driving test area.

Take Deqing, where the autonomous driving industry is very hot at present, as an example. From June 2065438 to June 2009, the county issued a demonstration application scheme of "Global City-level Autopilot and Smart Travel", and issued open road test licenses to cooperative companies such as Geely, Weilai, Ma Xiao Zhixing and Kuwa Robot.

On June 20 19, the autonomous driving test area in this area was demarcated and officially opened for use. The open test roads include the main urban area 152 road, with a length of about 152.37 km. There are 77 roads in other towns, accounting for 65.4 kilometers; There are 380 rural highways with a total mileage of 73 1.5 1 km.

▲ Deqing Autopilot Open Test Road Electronic Map

It is no exaggeration to say that the self-driving road test area in Deqing County is the largest test area in China at present.

Even in Beijing, where the domestic autonomous driving industry is developing rapidly, the number of open autonomous driving test roads is 15 1, with a total mileage of 503.68 kilometers, which is not as good as Deqing.

Of course, Deqing is only a special case at present, and the mileage of self-driving test roads in most small towns is between tens and hundreds of kilometers. However, if the "Deqing model" can be successful, many "Deqing" will emerge all over the country to follow suit. By then, the test mileage of self-driving roads in small cities is likely to exceed that in big cities.

The roads with longer total mileage are richer autopilot test scenarios and more diversified autopilot road test data for self-driving cars.

In this environment, the autonomous driving algorithm will be able to obtain richer data sets, find the "extreme environment" that usually does not appear and optimize it, thus becoming more mature.

Moreover, in terms of technical integration of autonomous driving test roads, the autonomous driving test areas in small cities are obviously different from those in big cities such as Beijing, Guangzhou and Shenzhen.

Because the autopilot test areas in big cities such as Beijing are built in batches, the technical maturity is different in different periods, and the content that can be tested in each test area is obviously different.

For example, Yizhuang Base and Haidian Base, which belong to the National Intelligent Vehicle and Intelligent Transportation Demonstration Zone (Beijing-Hebei), pay attention to V2X and intelligent transportation on the one hand, and the closed test area of autonomous driving on the other.

Fangshan 5G Autopilot Demonstration Zone, which cooperates with communication companies, pays more attention to the application of 5G communication technology in intelligent driving.

In this way, if enterprises want to test the performance of autonomous vehicles in V2X, 5G communication and autonomous driving algorithm, they need to switch between different test areas.

However, small cities such as Changzhou, Xiangyang and Liuzhou tend to integrate 5G communication, V2X technology and autopilot algorithm testing when building autopilot test areas, so that an autopilot test area can meet the needs of various smart car tests.

It is understood that Liuzhou has reached a cooperation with SAIC to complete the full coverage of the 5G communication and vehicle-road coordination functions of Liuzhou Intelligent Network (unmanned) vehicle test road, which will cover a wider range in 2020.

▲ Liuzhou autopilot test road

Within these road ranges, the vehicle-road cooperation supported by 5G communication can help vehicles realize unmanned pedestrian detection and obstacle avoidance, abnormal vehicle warning, rapid approach of rear vehicles, road event warning, over-the-horizon warning, traffic light information push, intersection vehicle collision warning, lane change warning, speed limit sign information, accident-prone road section warning, emergency braking of front vehicles, motorcycle appearance and other realistic scenes, and help vehicles realize various "extreme scene" automatic driving functions.

These "rising stars" obviously pay more attention to the degree of technical integration in the test area, which can provide great convenience for autonomous driving enterprises.

Imagine, on the one hand, a first-tier city needs 2-3 hours to arrive at the examination area at a time, and it needs to keep moving around the examination area; On the other side, it is a small town that can be tested "downstairs" with relatively complete infrastructure. From the perspective of autonomous driving test alone, the latter is indeed more attractive to autonomous driving companies.

This is the unique advantage of developing autonomous driving in small towns.

The influx of three or five types of companies? Twenty companies have taken root in small towns and engaged in unmanned vehicles.

The policy goes first, the pilot area is open, and the autonomous driving industry chain company is also filing.

According to incomplete statistics of vehicles and materials, at least 20 autonomous driving industry chain companies in five categories have carried out autonomous driving road tests in "small towns" outside first-tier cities.

▲20 autonomous driving industry chain companies landed in small towns.

From the above table, these five types of companies belong to five fields: ICT, Internet, autonomous driving enterprises, automobile manufacturers and logistics enterprises, which actually correspond to different autonomous driving layouts.

It is understood that Huawei is the only ICT company that has sunk into the town's autonomous driving business. Of course, according to the current progress of Huawei's automobile business, it is inevitable that the self-driving test vehicle will not be deployed.

Huawei actually participated in the infrastructure construction of the autopilot test area. At present, Huawei has reached cooperation with Dongfeng Motor Corporation and Xiangyang Municipal Government, using its technological advantages in cloud computing, big data, Internet of Things, 5G, AI, etc. to empower Xiangyang autopilot test section.

▲ Dongfeng Motor, Huawei and Xiangyang signed a contract.

To put it another way, autonomous driving is only part of its layout, and Huawei is aiming at smart city projects including autonomous driving.

Baidu, a giant from the internet industry, has a different style of play. Baidu, which owns the Apollo project, pays more attention to autonomous driving while laying out smart cities. It not only drove its self-driving test vehicle into the test area of the town, but also provided technical solutions for other partners so that they could land and test together.

This style of play is not difficult to understand. After all, Baidu has a limited number of self-driving cars. If there is a car factory to help it test its own solution, its autonomous driving solution can be improved faster.

After joining Baidu, it is likely that you will supply your own autonomous driving solutions to the outside world by means of cooperation or sale, and support your current partners with autonomous driving solutions, which will undoubtedly accumulate business experience in advance.

Among the self-driving enterprises, there are actually very few enterprises that really sink into small towns. At present, there are only two companies, AutoX and Heduo Technology.

▲ Heduo Technology was tested in Wuxi Expressway closed test area.

In fact, this phenomenon is easy to understand. At present, autonomous driving enterprises are still in a state of insufficient self-hematopoietic capacity and need strong capital for continuous blood transfusion. These capitals are often investment banks or local funds that attach great importance to the autonomous driving industry. These capitals are concentrated in first-and second-tier cities, and the investment model determines that these capitals are extremely difficult to sink.

Therefore, there are very few autonomous driving companies rooted in small towns. Even AutoX and Heduo Technology mentioned in the table are not in Zhaoqing or Wuxi.

Car manufacturers are very different. As mentioned in the first part of the article, some of these small cities have the foundation of automobile manufacturing.

The demand for developing autonomous driving in small towns is also largely born by local car companies. For example, Baoding is the demand of the autonomous driving industry promoted by the Great Wall, and Liuzhou is due to the initiative of SAIC-GM-Wuling.

Under the wave of automobile intelligence, automobile enterprises choose to embrace autonomous driving, but its traditional manufacturing model makes it difficult for its autonomous driving business to develop and grow in first-tier cities without automobile factories.

Therefore, car companies develop autonomous driving and choose to carry out road test of autonomous vehicles locally or nearby, which not only saves costs, but also can adjust vehicles in time according to their own vehicle manufacturing experience.

Logistics companies Debon Logistics and ZTO Express both choose to cooperate with autonomous driving enterprises, among which Debon Express and Feibu Technology have reached a cooperation, while ZTO Express and AutoX have reached a cooperation to develop trunk logistics and unmanned distribution services for one kilometer.

The complicated road conditions in the town will help logistics enterprises to test the urban trunk line logistics and the "last mile" unmanned distribution scene which is closest to the actual situation, and lay a solid foundation for providing unmanned distribution services in the later period.

Although the five types of companies play differently, in the final analysis, there is a demand for autonomous driving tests in small cities.

Huawei is an ICT company, and hopes to verify the feasibility of its ICT solution in the transportation field through pilot projects in small cities, so as to promote it later.

Internet company Baidu hopes to further expand the scale of its self-driving business and reach closer cooperation with partners outside first-tier cities.

The automobile factory adopts the principle of nearby development to save costs and improve efficiency.

Self-driving enterprises and logistics enterprises hope to obtain more different road test data through testing in small towns, so as to improve the running ability of self-driving solutions in extreme environments.

4. There are nearly 300 domestic autopilot test licenses? This town is in its infancy.

First-and second-tier cities lead the development of autonomous driving industry, and "small towns" keep up with the trend, making autonomous driving gradually popular in China.

At this stage, the domestic autonomous driving industry has blossomed in an all-round way, and nearly 30 cities across the country have issued about 300 licenses for autonomous driving road test.

However, most of these 300 or so self-driving road test license plates still belong to developed first-tier cities. According to the data of Beijing Municipal Transportation Commission, only one city in Beijing has issued 77 license plates for self-driving road test, accounting for about 1/4 of the number of license plates for self-driving road test in China.

▲ Information of Beijing Municipal Transportation Commission

Shanghai and Guangzhou have also carved up about 30 driving test licenses. Among the rising stars in the autonomous driving industry in quasi-first-tier cities, Chongqing, Wuhan, Hangzhou and Suzhou have also issued more than ten driving test licenses. ...

It can be seen that among the more than 300 licenses, there are only dozens of autonomous driving licenses issued by small towns.

Among them, Cangzhou Auto-driving Test Zone, as the flank of xiong'an new area, took the lead in issuing 30 auto-driving test licenses to Baidu, and the vehicles participating in the road test were mainly L4 driverless taxis cooperated by Baidu and Hongqi.

Deqing, which is quite active, has issued seven driving test licenses and two intelligent networked car licenses. Seven licenses have been issued to Geely, Weilai, Zero Run, CRRC Times, Ma Xiao Zhixing, He Kun Intelligent and Cool Wow Robot, which are mainly used for the road test of L4 self-driving passenger cars.

Debon Logistics and ZTO Express have obtained two intelligent networked automobile test licenses. The two companies cooperated with Feibu Technology and AutoX to develop L3/L4 self-driving logistics vehicles.

Pingtan Experimental Zone issued six driving test licenses to Baidu and Jinlong Bus. The three cars that Baidu participated in the test were all self-driving passenger cars, and Jinlong Bus was a driverless bus. It is worth mentioning that Jinlong Bus also adopted Baidu's autopilot solution.

The autopilot tests in Changzhou and Xiangyang mainly focus on the autopilot projects of commercial vehicles. Dongfeng commercial vehicle and Yutong bus landed in Xiangyang Autopilot Test Zone, Jinlong station wagon and Zhijia technology driverless truck landed in Changzhou Autopilot Test Zone.

The autopilot test areas in Wuxi and Liuzhou mainly serve automobile manufacturers. Wuxi issued licenses for autonomous driving tests to SAIC and Audi, and Liuzhou issued licenses to SAIC-GM-Wuling, but the exact number was not disclosed.

Counting down, there are 13 small towns with autonomous driving industry, and less than 100 autonomous driving test licenses have been issued, which has not yet formed a large-scale landing situation. The autonomous driving industry in small towns is still in its infancy.

5. Self-driving "the countryside surrounds the city"? Four meanings behind the layout of small towns

When the wind of autonomous driving just blew from first-tier cities to small towns, some people questioned whether cities lacking relevant talents and capital were suitable for developing autonomous driving.

The current situation has obviously answered this question, and many small towns have begun to participate in the development wave of the autonomous driving industry in their own way.

Since there is a lack of talents and funds, we should start from the lowest autonomous driving test area, supplemented by policies, to provide the most suitable landing conditions for autonomous driving companies and attract talents and funds.

The effect of this style of play is remarkable. 13 small towns have built autonomous driving test areas, and big players in the autonomous driving industry such as Baidu and Huawei and innovative forces in the autonomous driving field such as AutoX and Heduo Technology have begun to land in small towns.

Although the self-driving industry in small towns is still in its infancy, it is already a competition in Qian Fan. Therefore, it is reasonable to believe that the autonomous driving industry in small towns will usher in a bright future.

The self-driving industry, which stretches the time axis and rises from a small town, will play an important role in four levels: enterprise, industry, city and country.

From the enterprise level, the road conditions and road information in small cities are more complex and diverse, which is beneficial for enterprises to constantly adjust the autopilot solutions for extreme working conditions during the testing process.

From the industrial level, it is better to blossom more than to develop slowly from first-tier cities. If the autonomous driving industry in small cities can also achieve good development, then small cities can form a linkage effect with first-tier cities such as Beijing, Guangzhou and Shenzhen to help autonomous driving spread faster.

From the perspective of the city, autonomous driving is undoubtedly the key link of smart cities in the future. Giving priority to public road testing is conducive to the subsequent automatic driving on urban roads and the intelligent transformation of urban streets. These are all processes to accelerate the transformation of smart cities.

From a national perspective, the development of autonomous driving in small cities is conducive to stimulating the flow of talents and funds and narrowing the gap between small cities and first-tier cities. At the same time, transforming the road network suitable for autonomous driving is also the strategic direction of national development.

Conclusion: The layout of self-driving in small towns has ignited a "single spark".

13 small cities have built intelligent networked automobile test areas, and companies such as Baidu, Huawei and AutoX have been introduced to conduct self-driving road tests. Behind this series of actions, the self-driving layout of small cities ignited a "spark" and gradually evolved into a "prairie fire".

This phenomenon shows that first-tier cities will no longer be able to enjoy this round of technical dividends brought by autonomous driving, and small cities will also be able to share a piece of it. Although the trends of their respective layouts are different, they can all be said to have participated in the changes brought about by autonomous driving.

The development of autonomous driving in small cities has brought new opportunities to the industry. Not only are the policies more favorable and the tests more convenient, but small cities will soon establish new industrial clusters around autonomous driving. The New Era Securities Research Institute predicts that the scale of the autonomous driving market will reach 20 billion yuan in 2020-202 1 year, and will climb to10 billion yuan in 2025. Such a billion-dollar market will breed new industrial giants.

However, behind the dividend, the industry needs to remain calm. At present, the promotion and deployment of policies and infrastructure in cities that develop autonomous driving in China still cannot keep up with the expectations of the industry. In the specific management of government departments, the division of powers and responsibilities is not clear enough, and the maturity of road infrastructure needs to be verified. Only when these conditions are ripe can self-driving cars be put on the road on a large scale, and a city's self-driving industry can be truly mature.

This article comes from car home, the author of the car manufacturer, and does not represent car home's position.