Li Auto challenges Tesla

Author | Wang Xiaojuan

Editor | Zhou Zhiyu

Undoubtedly, advanced intelligent driving has become the forefront of competition among various car manufacturers.

Last year, car companies were crazily competing in terms of the number of "cities opened" and AEB braking distances. This year, everyone is competing to see who can be the first to achieve a true "end-to-end" intelligent driving model on vehicles. Recently, the one who has pulled ahead is Li Auto, which has just crossed the milestone of delivering over a million vehicles.

Lang Xianpeng, Vice President of Intelligent Driving at Li Auto, recently revealed that Li Auto aspires to become a global leader in artificial intelligence by 2030. In terms of the takeover rate of intelligent driving, the plan is to gradually achieve passive takeover frequencies of less than once every 500 kilometers, 1000 kilometers, and 2500 kilometers by the end of 2025 to 2026. This also means that Li Auto's intelligent driving can achieve driving safety 10 times better than humans.

Since the beginning of this year, this new force known for "refrigerators, color TVs, and large sofas" has been frantically catching up in intelligent driving, aiming to enter the top tier of intelligent driving and compete on par with Tesla, Huawei, and others.

At the strategic meeting in the fall of last year, Li Xiang, Chairman of Li Auto, announced that "by 2024, we will become the absolute leader in intelligent driving." At the same time, Li Auto has been aggressively recruiting talents in the field of intelligent driving, especially those who have jumped from Huawei's car business unit, with an annual salary that can double directly.

Due to the aggressive push, from the NPN plan to no graphics, Li Auto only took 4 months to complete the switch. Li Auto's "end-to-end + VLM" solution was also completed in about a little over a year with three generations of iterations.

After catching up frantically, Li Auto released a brand-new autonomous driving technology architecture based on end-to-end models, VLM visual language models, and world models in July, claiming to be the first domestic car company to implement the one model solution. Subsequently, during the Chengdu Auto Show at the end of August, Li Auto announced the recruitment of a large group of people to experience the new generation of Li Auto intelligent driving based on end-to-end and VLM visual language models.

While focusing on intelligent driving software, Li Auto has also felt the trend of integration of software and hardware in the intelligent driving industry. Huawei itself has strong hardware capabilities, Nio announced its own intelligent driving chip last year, and in August of this year, XPeng also announced the successful mass production of its intelligent driving chip.

Li Auto is also stepping up its efforts in this area. Recently, Li Auto plans to establish a chip research and development office in Hong Kong and is recruiting strategic talents related to chips and training clusters in Hong Kong. Among these chip research preparations, there are also chips that serve intelligent driving scenarios.

However, for users, technological iterations can only be perceived through specific functions. With the addition of end-to-end + visual language large model (VLM), the driving experience of Li Auto's intelligent driving has been further enhanced.

Firstly, there is an improvement in functionality brought by end-to-end.

For example, in underground parking scenarios, the system can navigate to the destination parking space without the need for additional navigation settings; if the car is parked on the roadside, the system can also start directly by double-clicking the lever on the roadside, without the need to start within the lane.

The iteration of the visual language large model makes the capabilities of this system more comprehensive.

The system can recognize speed bumps on the road, provide advance voice + in-car EID reminders, and slow down to pass through; it can also recognize tidal lanes, as well as status signs for passable and non-passable lanes, and choose the correct lane for passage In reality, there are countless driving scenarios, and at this time, the generalization ability represented by end-to-end truly demonstrates strong vitality.

Today, among the factors considered by consumers when purchasing a car, the importance of intelligent driving performance has also become a key consideration. In the case of Li Auto, after the NOA push, test drives doubled in two months. Among models priced above 300,000 RMB, the AD Max (advanced intelligent driving version) accounts for 70%, with the L9 AD Max model even exceeding 90%.

This indicates that intelligent driving is expected to become Li Auto's next competitive advantage, especially as the high-end market shows a stronger willingness to pay for intelligent driving features, which can also drive the optimization of its sales structure.

In the first few years when new forces began deliveries, Li Auto was not at the forefront of the sales charts. However, with the delivery of the L series, Li Auto quickly crossed one milestone after another, and now it has become the first among new forces to achieve a million deliveries. In the competition of intelligent driving, the story of a comeback is once again being written, with Li Auto starting late but finishing early.

However, the automotive industry is long and complex, and Li Auto still faces many challenges on its way to becoming a giant.

Next year, Li Auto will also join the pure electric camp. Having suffered losses with the pure electric MPV MEGA before, whether Li Auto can handle pure electric SUVs will depend on the market's acceptance at that time