Whether intelligent driving vehicles can be commercialized as soon as possible depends not only on the maturity of related technologies of automotive enterprises but also on whether relevant departments provide sufficient policy support.

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The rapid development of high-level intelligent driving technology is promoting the continuous improvement of supporting landing policies for related models.

A few days ago, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology's website disclosed the "Notification on the Orderly Implementation of Pilot Projects for the Access and Road Use of Intelligent Connected Vehicles" by four departments, announcing nine pilot consortiums for the first batch of intelligent connected vehicle access and road use, which can research, develop, produce, and conduct road tests of L3/L4 level autonomous driving vehicles.

The acceleration of the commercialization of high-level intelligent driving vehicles is a general trend, but after careful comparison and research, it can be found that most automotive enterprises are not striving to develop high-level intelligent driving technology for ordinary passenger vehicles, but are more inclined to follow Tesla's footsteps and launch Robotaxi.

Part.1

Increasing Consumer Acceptance

New energy automotive enterprises are "internally competing" in intelligent driving

With its first-mover advantage and abundant industrial resources, China's new energy automotive industry is developing rapidly, and downstream sales are continuously booming. Data disclosed by the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers shows that in 2023, China's new energy production and sales reached 9.587 million and 9.495 million vehicles respectively, with year-on-year growth rates of 35.8% and 37.9%, and a market share of 31.6%.

In previous years, the focus of competition in the new energy automotive market was mainly on batteries, electric drives, charging technology, and other aspects. With the gradual homogenization of such basic technologies, automotive enterprises have increasingly increased their investment in intelligence and connectivity. At the Horizon 2024 Intelligent Driving Technology Product Launch Conference, Wang Chuanfu, Chairman and CEO of BYD, said to the outside world, "The first half of the new energy era is electrification, and the second half is intelligence."

This is because intelligence and connectivity can immediately improve the user experience of new energy vehicles, and also because the market acceptance of related technologies is gradually increasing. The "2023 Digital Car Report" disclosed by PwC shows that Chinese consumers' acceptance of L4 and L5 level autonomous driving is much higher than that of Germany and the United States.

Image source: Wenjie

More intuitively reflected in the market, the sales of intelligent driving versions of most new energy vehicles are significantly higher than those of non-intelligent driving versions. For example, in the first 15 days of its launch, the 2024 version of Xpeng G9 Max sold over 12,000 units, accounting for over 80%; the proportion of Max versions in first-tier cities is even close to 90%. When the cumulative order of the new M7 from Wenjie exceeded 100,000 units, the proportion of intelligent driving version orders exceeded 60%, and the optional rate of urban intelligent driving packages reached 75%.

As non-intelligent driving models do not have outstanding safety advantages compared to others, in 2024, when Wenjie launched the new M5 and M7 Ultra models, they even stopped offering lower-priced non-intelligent driving versions and instead equipped all models with high-level intelligent driving as standard.