Targeting Tesla's FSD with Intelligent Driving

Author: Wang Lei

Editor: Qin Zhangyong

It's not easy being a car company CEO, crying in front of so many people.

Last night, after the press conference, when asked about JiYue's controversial design and sales, CEO Xia Yiping couldn't hold back tears and choked up during the interview.

He explained that difficult but correct things are inherently counterintuitive, and it's these so-called counterintuitive designs that drive societal progress.

Regarding sales, Xia Yiping admitted that he had been under immense pressure due to poor initial sales.

"As you know, we sold over 200 cars in January and over 100 in February. It's been tough for me."

In reality, JiYue's first model, JiYue 01, has only been on the market for 10 months. Compared to competitors like NIO, Xpeng, and Li Auto, JiYue's overall momentum is relatively weak. How can this newcomer break through in such a competitive market?

01 "Billions invested in intelligent driving equals road killers"

Before the emotional outburst, Xia Yiping made some bold statements during the press conference.

Statements like "Billions invested in intelligent driving equals road killers," "The strongest intelligent driving on the planet," and "Only pure vision can achieve universal intelligent driving" were made.

The core of the press conference was intelligent driving. Xia Yiping believes 2024 will be a year of explosive growth for intelligent driving, which has become a crucial factor for consumers when purchasing vehicles priced above 180,000 yuan.

As such, R&D capabilities in intelligent driving have become an important indicator of a car company's hard power.

While 20 billion yuan was once considered the funding threshold for car manufacturing, Xia Yiping now believes 50 billion yuan is the minimum for developing competent intelligent driving systems.

"If anyone says they can develop good intelligent driving systems with just a few billion yuan, their products will undoubtedly become road killers."

He cited Huawei's intelligent driving as an example, suggesting they had invested hundreds of billions of yuan, implicitly acknowledging Huawei's achievements in the field.

Xia Yiping emphasized the need for unstinting investment in semiconductor chips and large-scale intelligent driving models. His confidence stems from JiYue's primary backer, Baidu, which has over a decade of R&D experience in AI and autonomous driving, investing over 150 billion yuan.

Based on this, JiYue officially released its V2.0 software during the press conference, covering over 947 new features and optimizations across end-to-end large-scale intelligent driving, intelligent cockpits, and intelligent vehicle networking modules.

Yes, JiYue has adopted end-to-end large-scale models, but unlike competitors, JiYue's intelligent driving solution is "pure vision + end-to-end large-scale models" rather than "lidar + high-precision maps + rule-based algorithms."

Xia Yiping explained that the pure vision approach allows for faster iteration – the system can merge multiple small models into one large model, releasing redundant parameters to the vision model. This results in more information and data diversity within the same scenario, making it more suitable for large-scale model training.

JiYue has upgraded its previous PPA intelligent driving system to Apollo Self Driving (ASD), marking the entry into the era of end-to-end large-scale models for pure vision-based high-level intelligent driving. JiYue is the only Chinese and one of only two global players in this field.

"Many believe pure vision is less safe than lidar-based intelligent driving, but I want to say JiYue's pure vision perception capabilities have surpassed mainstream lidar systems."

During the press conference, Xia Yiping referred to lidar + high-precision map solutions as belonging to the "classical era of intelligent driving," while future solutions will move towards "pure vision + end-to-end" approaches.

Furthermore, JiYue has become the world's first automotive brand to apply Baidu Apollo ADFM, an L4 autonomous driving large-scale model.

Regarding pricing, the buyout price for the ASD high-level intelligent driving package is 29,900 yuan, with a limited-time discount of 4,999 yuan. Monthly subscriptions are available for 599 yuan per month. Existing PPA buyers can upgrade at a discounted price difference.

02 Aiming to Compete with Tesla's FSD

From the naming of ASD, it's clear JiYue is targeting Tesla's FSD. Xia Yiping claims, "JiYue's ASD is currently the only intelligent driving solution globally that can compete with Tesla's FSD."

However, unlike Tesla's one-stage large-scale model, JiYue uses a two-stage model, which is more prevalent in China.

According to Wang Liang, Chief R&D Architect of Baidu Intelligent Driving, the difference between the two-stage and one-stage models lies in replacing the single model with separate perception and decision-making planning models. Both approaches can reduce code and rules while enhancing the driving experience through data absorption.

A one-stage end-to-end approach may seem to solve all problems with data, so why did JiYue choose a two-stage approach?

Wang Liang believes the means are not the end goal. "It's not about choosing the sexier option; we must consider safety, intelligence, and scalability."

Firstly, the black box system of the model can impact user experience, making it difficult to control system outputs and lacking transparency for engineers to debug decision-making logic.

Moreover, while a large-scale model's technical requirements are precise, it can also be frustrating for more complex, long-tail problems, not guaranteeing absolute safety.

Therefore, JiYue chose the two-stage approach. Simply put, the current technology hasn't yet met the requirements for a one-stage large-scale model.

First to be introduced is the perception end-to-end large-scale model, based on a single large vision network with detection, tracking, building, and scene understanding capabilities.

In scene understanding, the system's response time has doubled for scenarios like pedestrians crossing the road or sudden obstacles, reducing collision risks by 50%.

Regarding mapping capabilities, it can recognize 101 types of road elements, achieving 100% coverage. With the new mapping capabilities, ASD's driving range has tripled, with more accurate judgment of stationary vehicles' intentions, more human-like maneuvering, and a 40% increase in obstacle avoidance success rates.

There have also been significant improvements in safety and parking capabilities. The maximum braking speed for forward AEB has increased to 100 km/h, with a two-stage braking function added – first decelerating, then stopping completely.

ASD's APA automatic parking assist supports various complex parking scenarios, including dark or narrow spaces, doubling parking success rates. It also automatically folds the mirrors to prevent scratches during parking.

At the end of the press conference, a surprise announcement was made – the debut of JiYue's first sedan, JiYue 07, with a pre-sale price starting at 215,900 yuan and a scheduled launch on September 10th.

JiYue 07 will be the first to feature the new V2.0 software, with a slide in the presentation stating, "The strongest intelligent driving sedan on the planet."

03 Why the Poor Sales?

In the broader new energy vehicle industry, JiYue's presence remains relatively low. Its initial recognition came from its background, with two powerful backers – Geely and Baidu.

JiYue's predecessor was Jidu Auto, jointly established by Baidu and Geely in January 2021. Baidu held a 55% stake, responsible for end-to-end services, while Geely held 45%, supporting hardware development.

In its first year, JiYue unveiled its first concept car, ROBO-01, in June 2022, followed by the limited-edition ROBO-01 Moon Exploration model in October, priced at 399,800 yuan. The vehicle was frequently showcased at auto shows.

In August 2023, the company rebranded as JiYue Auto, with the product name changing to "JiYue 01."

JiYue 01 officially launched in October 2023 but struggled to sell more than a thousand units per month, selling 594, 774, 218, and 167 units from November to February 2024.

Even into 2024, JiYue's sales performance remained disappointing. From January to May, sales were 218, 147, 511, 362, and 1,001 units, respectively.

In June 2024, JiYue sold only 461 units, totaling 2,700 units for the first half of the year, averaging just 450 units per month.

With backing from Baidu and Geely, one would expect better performance. However, JiYue, born with a silver spoon, hasn't followed the expected script.

Meanwhile, JiYue has also garnered attention for some controversial statements. Previously, when Xiaomi released quarterly financial results revealing its automotive business, JiYue's PR head Xu Jiye criticized Xiaomi for selling cars at a loss, calling it predatory pricing and accusing Lei Jun of being the worst kind of businessman.

This sparked industry controversy, leading to Xu Jiye being internally reprimanded by Xia Yiping the same day.

Prior to this, Xia Yipeng's Douyin post also garnered attention, alluding to a carmaker as "pixel-perfect copying Porsche and McLaren, next up, Ferrari?".

While he didn't name names, many interpreted it as a jab at Xiaomi's SU7.

Despite the controversies, many in the industry believe JiYue's products are not lacking in quality. Its highly original design and intelligent features, backed by Baidu's intelligent driving technology, are impressive.

However, will these strengths be enough to win over customers?