Sino-US driverless "carrot" defense battle is about to begin, Chinese players cannot afford to lose

Autonomous driving quietly enters our lives.

On October 11th, Tesla's autonomous taxi "CyberCab" was officially launched, without a steering wheel, without pedals, capable of inductive charging, costing between $0.3 to $0.4 per mile, with costs expected to be less than $30,000, and is expected to be officially launched in 2026.

Domestically, RoboTaxi released the sixth-generation autonomous vehicle Apollo RT6 in 2022, supporting two modes: with and without a steering wheel. The cost of the sixth-generation vehicle is estimated to be 200,000 RMB, and it has already started road testing and is about to be put into use.

Since the beginning of this year, competing in the Robotaxi field has become a trend, with various tech giants laying out autonomous taxi services, represented by RoboTaxi, Tesla Robotaxi, and Google's Waymo, with recent news and actions.

On October 9th, there were reports that Baidu is about to release Apollo Autonomous Driving Open Platform 10.0, which will be equipped with Baidu's latest autonomous driving large model ADFM (Autonomous Driving Foundation Model). It is reported that Apollo ADFM is the world's first large model that can support L4 level autonomous driving applications, and is the core technological foundation for Apollo to achieve city-level autonomous driving.

This upgrade will significantly enhance the safety, intelligence, and ease of use of the autonomous driving open platform.

At the same time as the technological upgrade, RoboTaxi is about to "go global." According to foreign media reports, RoboTaxi, as a representative of Chinese Robotaxi, is actively laying out globally, having in-depth communication with multiple international companies, and planning to go global.

On the 13th of last month, Google's autonomous taxi company Waymo and Uber announced that they will cooperate to launch autonomous taxi services in early 2025.

In the blue ocean market of autonomous driving taxis, tech giants from China and the United States are actively participating, which also means prioritizing the development of related industrial chains, defining the power of the race track, and the ability to export technological products to other countries.

The China-US autonomous driving "Robo" battle has begun, and as a local Chinese "Robo," there is no room for losing.

The China-US autonomous driving "Robo" battle begins

Tesla, Google, and Baidu's actions in the RoboTaxi field coincidentally all took place in October, with their sights set on the "no man's land" of autonomous driving.

On October 2nd, Waymo, the autonomous taxi service under Google's parent company Alphabet, announced that it will soon open its autonomous taxi service in Austin, Texas, to the public. It is reported that this service will first be provided to specific users through the Waymo One application and will transition to the Uber application in early 2025.

A week after Baidu's autonomous taxi service RoboTaxi announced its global layout and upcoming international expansion, Tesla also released its Robotaxi service, named "Cybercab" As the representative of Chinese "local radish", Luobo Kuai Pao is racing against the "foreign radish" represented by Google and Tesla, forming a competitive landscape of the "three giants" in the field of unmanned driving between China and the United States.

The encounter and competition between the three major Chinese and American technology giants in the golden October is by no means a coincidence. According to a research report by Minsheng Securities, both domestic and foreign technology giants are racing to enter the field, and autonomous driving has entered a rapid development phase from 1 to N. China and the United States have always been the two most influential forces in the global unmanned driving arena.

The battle for influence has always been a technological competition among tech giants, especially in the Robotaxi field.

Tesla's Robotaxi has attracted much attention, with Musk announcing the Robotaxi launch event as early as September 26th, calling it one of the most important moments for Tesla since Model 3.

At the Tesla event on October 11th, not only was the unmanned driving taxi cybercab without a steering wheel and pedals unveiled, but also the unmanned driving minibus RoboVan, which will achieve a form where "the car can't be driven". The core behind these two new products is Tesla's FSD system.

As an end-to-end intelligent driving system, the FSD system requires a large amount of high-quality data from experienced drivers.

As an OEM, Tesla has the advantage of high sales volume, and currently the cumulative mileage of FSD has exceeded 1.6 billion miles, far surpassing the cumulative mileage of any other manufacturer's users. According to the plan, FSD V13 will also be launched in October, with the necessary takeover mileage increasing by 6 times.

In early 2024, Musk stated on X (formerly Twitter) that computing power constrained the iteration of FSD functions. Starting from March, Tesla has been accelerating the expansion of AI computing power, planning to reach an equivalent of nearly 90,000 H100 chip-level computing power by 2024.

After the release of Tesla's Robotaxi, it will interact with FSD for mutual verification: on one hand, the data from Robotaxi will improve FSD's road capture database, assisting in the iteration of FSD algorithms; on the other hand, with Tesla's current technical accumulation and extensive verification in the FSD field, Tesla is expected to drive a new wave in the Robotaxi field.

Musk stated at the event that the safety capability of FSD should be 10 times that of a human driver.

On the other hand, Google's autonomous taxi service Waymo has been developing rapidly. In March, it expanded its service area on the San Francisco Peninsula, approved for full expansion to the entire San Francisco area in June, and is set to open services in Austin, Texas in October. Currently, Waymo's paid travel frequency in the United States has exceeded 100,000 times per week, doubling within 5 months.

Unlike Tesla, Waymo's focus in technology is on hardware. Therefore, in terms of strategic cooperation, on October 4th, Waymo announced a preliminary road test with Hyundai Motor from the end of 2025 for IONIQ 5 vehicles equipped with Waymo technology, aiming to allow "Waymo One" users to use these vehicles within a few years Google's emphasis on Waymo is most vividly reflected in its funding. Although Waymo has been established for 15 years, it has raised over $10 billion in the past five years since becoming independent. During Alphabet's second-quarter earnings call, Chief Financial Officer Ruth Porat stated that they will continue to increase their investment in Waymo, with the latest $5 billion (approximately RMB 36.316 billion) to be received in installments over the next few years.

Currently, the only company in China that has achieved normalized testing is Luobo Kuaipao. Despite entering the autonomous driving industry late in China, Luobo Kuaipao has taken a different approach in technology selection, actively promoting the "single vehicle intelligence + vehicle-road coordination" solution.

Nevertheless, advanced integrated circuit technology and leading high-end chip design have always been the strengths of American tech giants, laying a solid foundation for the development of high-performance automotive chips. With the release of Tesla Cybercab, Luobo Kuaipao, which has been closely following the "Luobo Battle" in autonomous driving, cannot afford to fall behind at this critical stage.

Behind the Rise of Autonomous Driving Concepts

Google expanding, Tesla releasing, Baidu going global, the frequent expansion actions of the "big three" often signify a boom in the Robotaxi industry.

On October 8th, the secondary market's autonomous driving sector showed strong performance, with Chinese A-share companies Zhonghaida, Tianmai Technology, Jingweihengrun, and Xingwang Yuda all hitting the daily limit. Taking "Luobo Kuaipao" as an example, its concept stocks all rose that day. Companies such as Jingweihengrun, Huace Navigation, Ruikeda, and Haoen Auto Electric successively announced cooperation with Luobo Kuaipao, becoming suppliers.

The market's expectations are likely to drive the industry chain, providing capital for the "local radishes" to compete with American tech giants. In the process of implementing the Robotaxi solution, technological empowerment and policy promotion will be key drivers for the development of domestic Robotaxi.

Previously, Roland Berger Consulting mentioned five core elements: government regulation, technology, cost, operation and service, and market acceptance.

With technological empowerment, the safety capabilities of Robotaxi have been further enhanced. With the support of Baidu's self-developed large-scale automatic driving model ADFM, Luobo Kuaipao's safety is more than 10 times higher than that of human drivers: it can achieve more precise detection capabilities for extremely rare scenarios, better cope with complex and changing urban road scenarios such as lane closures and irregular obstacles, and improve safety handling capabilities in strong interactive scenarios such as ghost heads and narrow road encounters.

At the same time, Baidu Apollo has purchased $5 million in insurance for each unmanned vehicle and passenger, but data from the past two years shows that the actual accident rate of vehicles is only 1/14 of that of human drivers. The improvement in safety capabilities has also led to market acceptance.

Once the market opens up, mass production and implementation can lead to a clear cost reduction path, forming a virtuous cycle of operation.

The total operating cost of Robotaxi throughout its lifecycle can be divided into vehicle manufacturing costs, safety operation costs, and operational capacity costs. Vehicle manufacturing costs are the core reason for the current high unit service costs, as mainstream Robotaxi models currently rely on perception technology solutions with high-precision maps and multiple sets of lidars According to data from Ruqi Travel, only LiDAR accounts for more than 50% of the hardware cost. Taking Luobo Kuai Pao as an example, the sixth-generation unmanned vehicle Yichi has 38 sensors, 4 LiDARs, and its high computing power main redundant dual computing unit power reaches 1200Tops.

After landing, the cost reduction effect on the hardware side will be very significant starting from May this year. The sixth-generation unmanned vehicle Yichi 06 is priced at only 204,600 yuan, a 60% decrease compared to the cost of the fifth-generation unmanned vehicle.

At the same time, the exploration of operational cost reduction comes from the increase in the proportion of automated operations. Luobo Kuai Pao has built an unmanned vehicle automatic operation network, which can achieve full automation of the unmanned vehicle lifecycle, including cloud-based one-click command issuance for automatic vehicle wake-up, vehicle self-inspection, automatic dispatching of operational areas, automatic parking, etc., all without human intervention. Even after automated battery swapping, the entire battery swapping process only takes 3 minutes, increasing the operational time of Robotaxis and further increasing customer orders.

Policy promotion is another driver, and since 2021, passenger-carrying tests have been successively opened in some cities, including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Chongqing, Wuhan, Chengdu, Changsha, Hefei, Yangquan, and Wuzhen. Currently, Luobo Kuai Pao platform has accumulated orders exceeding 7 million.

According to Frost & Sullivan's forecast, Robotaxis will achieve large-scale landing around 2026, and by 2030, Robotaxis will be widely adopted globally, with the Robotaxi market in China and globally expected to reach 488.8 billion/834.9 billion yuan respectively.

Lü Benfu, Vice President of the China Association for Science and Technology Innovation and Development Strategy, and professor at the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, believes that the current period is a window of opportunity for the global development of intelligent connected vehicles, and opportunities are fleeting. Enterprises must actively embrace intelligent connected vehicles without hesitation in order to avoid falling behind in the future's most critical frontier technology areas. Embracing intelligent connected vehicles is embracing new productive forces!

The competition in blue ocean markets always requires seizing the lead and establishing relevant industrial chains first in order to define the track and export technological products to other countries.

Why does "Tu Luobo" represent Luobo Kuai Pao in leading the way?

Why is "Tu Luobo" taking the lead?

Autonomous driving is one of the manifestations of artificial intelligence in the physical world.

Although China started its autonomous driving research relatively late, it is showing signs of rapid development. In terms of market, industrial support, policy support, etc., China provides the soil for the development of Robotaxis.

The premise is that China's automotive market is large enough to support various segmented scenarios. According to data from the Ministry of Public Security, as of June 2024, the total number of motor vehicles in the country reached 440 million, with 345 million being automobiles. In such a huge market, it is easy to find scenarios suitable for autonomous driving.

Industrial support is also a prerequisite for the development of autonomous driving. We are at the forefront of new infrastructure construction such as 5G, satellite internet, data centers, intelligent transportation, etc. According to data from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, as of October 2023, China has accumulated 3.215 million 5G base stations, and over 8,500 sets of roadside communication units for the national vehicle networking Compared to the same period last year, it has increased by more than 2,000 units. In terms of road transformation, resolutely implement the 5G LTE-V2X technology standard. According to a research report by Cinda Securities, the construction of V2X is accelerating, effectively supplementing the shortcomings of single vehicle perception and communication. Compared to single vehicle intelligent routes, the integration of vehicle-road-cloud is conducive to improving perception and overall coordination in complex and ever-changing urban road networks, reducing the probability of misjudgment and accidents.

Policy support has also brought good news to autonomous driving. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and relevant ministries have successively issued policy documents such as the "Guidelines for the Construction of National Vehicle Networking Industry Standard System (Intelligent Connected Vehicles)", "Guidelines for the Construction of National Vehicle Networking Industry Standard System (General Requirements)", "Action Plan for the Development of Vehicle Networking (Intelligent Connected Vehicles) Industry", and "Smart Car Innovation Development Strategy", planning the construction of the standard system for autonomous driving from multiple aspects.

As a sub-scene of autonomous driving, Robotaxi's landing plan to seize the market is also a good time for technology giants to showcase their technology. In other words, Robotaxi represents autonomous driving, and behind this is the competition of artificial intelligence. OpenAI still holds a leading position in the AI industry, and Chinese players cannot fall behind.

In the past few years, the maturity of the technology represented by Chinese players like RoboSense has gradually matured, bringing their own chips to the table. Although domestic RoboSense has been running fast, China's unmanned driving now faces the dual pressure from the American giants - Waymo and Tesla.

In the window of opportunity for autonomous driving, RoboSense and other Chinese players must not relax. While competing with foreign players for market share, the marginal effect of technological iteration and upgrade reduces costs, further competing for market share and influence, and seizing the high ground of technological independent innovation!