Elon Musk pays tribute to "Made-in-China Radish"?

Our world is moving towards a more intense Matthew effect, with global economic power increasingly concentrated in a few major countries, and competition between these major countries becoming more intense, especially in advanced technology fields such as artificial intelligence.

With the continuous deepening of the new round of technological revolution and industrial transformation, technological innovation has become a key lever for major countries to seek endogenous economic development momentum and industrial competitive advantages, with countries increasing their investment in research and development of new technologies and industrial layout.

As the most typical application of large-scale model reconstruction of the physical world, autonomous driving has become an important direction for major countries to layout the future.

Across the ocean, Tesla today announced the launch of its autonomous taxi, named "Cybercab", Tesla's autonomous vehicle has no steering wheel, no pedals, and costs less than $30,000.

"This product will make Tesla a $10 trillion company," Musk once said, "People will still be talking about this moment a hundred years from now."

Meanwhile, Carrot Run has already released the sixth generation of autonomous vehicles in 2022, with two modes to choose from - with or without a steering wheel, also costing less than $30,000. Unlike Tesla's autonomous vehicle expected to be launched in 2026, Carrot Run's sixth generation autonomous vehicle has already begun testing.

Alphabet, Google's parent company, also stated in its second-quarter earnings conference call that it will invest another $5 billion in its autonomous driving subsidiary Waymo in the coming years to build the world's leading autonomous driving technology company.

The current autonomous driving technology is in a stage where China and the United States are leading the world, while most other countries are in the stage of "participation is key".

China has firmly held its position in the global first echelon of autonomous driving.

In China, the most core player in autonomous driving is Baidu, whose subsidiary Carrot Run has already achieved a milestone of 7 million kilometers nationwide.

Interestingly, the various innovations of Cybercab seem to have already been laid out by Carrot Run, so some netizens jokingly refer to this as a tribute to "domestic Carrot". Like Cybercab, which has no steering wheel, no pedals, no rearview mirror, and no need for a driver, Carrot Run released the sixth generation of autonomous vehicles two years ago, supporting both steering wheel and non-steering wheel modes.

Musk stated that the expected cost of Cybercab will be less than $30,000, but Carrot Run's sixth generation autonomous vehicle, the Yichi 06, already has a cost below $30,000, which is enough to show that Carrot Run is more mature in terms of application landing.

Especially since Cybercab will not be launched in the market for another 2 years, Carrot Run has ample time to further enhance its products and technology.

In May, Baidu released the world's first Apollo ADFM, a large-scale autonomous driving model that supports L4 level autonomous driving applications, at Apollo Day, which can balance the safety and generalization of technology, achieving safety levels more than 10 times higher than human drivers and covering complex urban-level scenarios globally Luobo Kuai Pao even wants to seize the opportunity and further penetrate into the Cybercab territory. According to media reports, Luobo Kuai Pao is actively expanding globally, has had in-depth discussions with multiple international companies, and plans to enter overseas markets.

Industrial competition is fierce and full of various strategic maneuvers. For example, the United States has repeatedly put the brakes on the development of China's autonomous driving industry, citing data security reasons to restrict the entry of Chinese autonomous driving technology. Against this backdrop, the driving distance of Chinese autonomous vehicles in California road tests in the United States in 2023 decreased by about 70%.

In the context of unprecedented changes, autonomous driving is a "battle that no one can afford to lose" for any party, and we will inevitably see a more intense competitive situation.

A battleground.

As early as 2004, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of the United States Department of Defense held the first Autonomous Vehicle Challenge in the Mojave Desert in California. All participating vehicles failed shortly after the starting point, leading to the competition being jokingly referred to as the "DARPA Desert Grand Collapse."

However, the story of autonomous vehicles did not stop there, and the subsequent challenges also achieved significant results. Subsequently, many technology companies such as Google and automakers began to develop autonomous driving technology, ushering in a revolution in the automotive industry.

The road to large-scale operation of autonomous driving is much longer than expected. One important reason is that traditional technical solutions struggle to handle complex scenarios. "Autonomous driving has not fully achieved its goals in the past twenty years. In addition to reasons such as sensor hardware and computing power lagging behind, another reason may be that the methods are not keeping up. The most likely implementation method is to use data-driven, AI large-scale model training and deployment to achieve true autonomous driving," shared by Gu Weihao, CEO of Momenta.

In 2017, the Transformer architecture was born at Google, capable of training more powerful models. In the same year, Musk poached Kaparthy from OpenAI to refactor the autonomous driving code, handing over the perception part to large models through Transformer+BEV (bird's-eye view).

Around the same time, Baidu decided to refactor its autonomous driving technology with large models—starting in 2017 with full-system modelization, shifting to data-driven; in 2021, Baidu Apollo gradually integrated multiple small model tasks in the system, expanded the model scale, explored autonomous driving large model technology, and subsequently fully deployed large models on vehicles.

As an autonomous driving technology that integrates artificial intelligence, communication, semiconductors, automobiles, and other technologies, it involves a long industrial chain and enormous value creation space, becoming a battleground for cross-border competition and cooperation between the automotive and technology industries of various countries.

Taxis are the core application of autonomous driving.

According to Zhishi Consulting data, the global autonomous driving market is expected to reach $1,724 billion by 2030, with the Chinese market expected to reach $634 billion "In the past two years, a new round of technological revolution and industrial transformation is reshaping the global innovation landscape and restructuring the global economic structure. As a representative of new productive forces, autonomous driving has become a key area of global competition." Xu Lijuan, director of the Market Research Institute of Beijing Jiaotong University, stated, "As a typical application scenario of artificial intelligence empowering the automotive industry, autonomous driving involves the development of related industries such as chips, operating systems, Internet of Things, urban infrastructure, and detection certification, which is an important track for the integration of digital economy and real economy."

Global Autonomous Driving "Big Three"

The unmanned taxi market is a blue ocean and a huge cake that has not yet been divided. As the two countries with the largest number of global autonomous driving companies, China and the United States, whoever can first run a complete commercial loop and establish a related industrial chain will have the ability to define the track and export technological products to other countries.

Looking at China's active policy actions in commercializing unmanned taxis, it is clear that China has a strong intention in this regard. Currently, the only company capable of undertaking this task is basically Baidu.

In May, foreign media EV Magazine selected a global ranking of autonomous driving technology companies, mainly evaluating the technical maturity, research and development progress, and product capabilities of L4 level autonomous driving systems. Among the companies listed in the "Leaders" quadrant, there are 3 American companies, and Baidu is the only Chinese company selected in this quadrant.

With Tesla's release of the autonomous driving taxi Robotaxi, as a representative of Chinese companies, RoboSense is directly competing with Google and Tesla. The competition pattern of the "Big Three" in autonomous driving between China and the United States has taken shape.

In terms of autonomous driving technology development, the United States has a first-mover advantage. The United States has advanced integrated circuit technology and has always maintained a leading position in the field of high-end chip design, laying a good foundation for the development of high-performance vehicle chips. Whether it is the "Waymo faction" or the "Tesla faction," they tend to prefer "single-vehicle intelligence" solutions, with the core capabilities being artificial intelligence algorithms and decision chips.

Chinese companies have found another differentiated path, with China's advantage lying in complete infrastructure. Therefore, companies like RoboSense are actively promoting the "single-vehicle intelligence + vehicle-road collaboration" solution, building an intelligent road network of "people, vehicles, roads, and cloud" through the mutual coordination of "smart vehicles" and "intelligent roads."

In terms of data accumulation, Tesla's FSD has accumulated over 1.6 billion miles of driving, and Waymo's autonomous taxi service in the United States has exceeded 100,000 paid trips per week. Currently, the only unmanned driving company in China that can achieve large-scale and normalized testing is RoboSense. As of June 2024, its actual road test and demonstration mileage for autonomous driving has exceeded 100 million kilometers Waymo Self-Driving Taxi

It can be inferred that there is still some gap in the field of autonomous driving between China and the United States, but it is not insurmountable. However, industry competition that involves close combat is often more brutal than we imagine.

In July 2023, four congressmen wrote to the U.S. Secretary of Transportation and Secretary of Commerce, requesting an investigation into the situation of Chinese autonomous driving technology in the United States and how to restrict it. The letter stated, "The technology used in autonomous driving cars, LiDAR, radar, cameras, artificial intelligence, and other advanced sensors and semiconductors can be used to collect data on the American people and infrastructure, which can be shared back to China."

Subsequently, many Chinese autonomous driving companies withdrew from the U.S. market.

As Vice President of the China Association for Science and Technology Innovation and Development Strategy and Professor at the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lv Benfu said, "Currently, it is the window period for the global development of intelligent connected vehicles, and opportunities are fleeting. Companies must actively embrace intelligent connected vehicles without hesitation in order to avoid falling behind in the most critical frontier technology field in the future."

Implementation.

What few people pay attention to is that in this competition, China has actually taken the most crucial step.

The autonomous driving industry has experienced a long period of downturn, with the core reason being that low revenue cannot cover high costs, leading to many companies failing in the face of market and consumer challenges. In this game of giants, companies lacking technology, capital, and the ability to implement applications ultimately find it difficult to succeed.

During Baidu's second quarter earnings call in 2024, Baidu's founder, chairman, and CEO, Robin Li, also revealed that its autonomous driving taxi business will achieve regional financial balance.

Specifically, the driving force behind profitability lies in cost reduction and demand enhancement.

The high cost of whole vehicle manufacturing is currently the core reason for the high unit service cost, but an effective cost reduction path seems to have been found. Observing the situation where the sixth generation autonomous vehicle Yiche 06 is priced at only 204,600 yuan, the cost has dropped below $30,000, a 60% decrease compared to the fifth generation autonomous vehicle.

The increase in demand comes from the continuous expansion of the scale and coverage of deployed vehicles, which greatly depends on the relevant authorities providing a positive, open, and inclusive policy environment for the autonomous driving industry, fully leveraging China's rich scene advantages to accelerate implementation.

Chen Yanyan, a professor at the Urban Transportation College of Beijing University of Technology, has also mentioned, "Currently, most cities in China that are developing autonomous driving are conducting small-scale commercial trial operations in limited areas and times. The pace of local legislation should be accelerated to strongly support autonomous driving companies in expanding operational areas and help achieve large-scale implementation."

After all, historical experience has proven that as long as we can keep up with the actual situation in the United States in terms of technology, we can achieve a surpass in total output value and profits based on market advantages and scale advantages, while massive capital can also support industry development, ultimately completing the surpass in technology.

Facing competition from Tesla's Robotaxi, Chinese forces like Yiche 06 still have the potential to continue releasing energy Final Thoughts

The escalating battle of technological innovation between emerging economies and traditional powers is becoming more intense.

Developed countries like the United States, leveraging their inherent advantages, continue to accelerate their progress while maintaining a leading position in technological innovation. However, they still face various challenges in commercialization. In contrast, China, with its infrastructure, market advantages, and policy support, continuously introduces cutting-edge models to the market, leveraging scale advantages to iterate innovation and achieve a "latecomer advantage."

Various issues may arise during the development of emerging industries, but the ultimate results are always impressive. This is evident in numerous successful cases across various internet and technology sectors.

With this trend continuing, China's technology industry will ultimately chart a completely new path to success. Just as outlined in the State Council's "New Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan" released in 2017, by 2030, China's artificial intelligence theory, technology, and applications will overall reach a world-leading level, establishing itself as a major global innovation center for artificial intelligence