Where does the difficulty lie in the intelligence of fuel vehicles?

After this year's Spring Festival holiday, new energy brands such as Changan, BYD, and Lantu all emphasized the "popularization of intelligent driving", and intelligent driving has become one of the main chips in the current auto market. However, it is not difficult for us to find that at present, the models that have achieved high-level intelligent driving that can be driven nationwide are all new energy vehicles, and most of them are pure electric vehicle models.

"Intelligence is the second half of the automotive industry", but it does not mean that fuel vehicles cannot enter the field.

Recently, many joint venture brands with fuel vehicles as their basic sales disk also announced an increase in investment in the field of intelligent driving. Among them, FAW-Volkswagen announced a three-step intelligent driving route for fuel vehicles. The first step is to popularize core high-level intelligent driving functions for fuel vehicles covering 95% of highway sections and 90% of urban sections nationwide; the second step is to bring end-to-end large models onto vehicles, with high-level intelligent driving covering 100% of highway sections and 95% of urban sections nationwide; the final step is to achieve full coverage of high-level intelligent driving by 2026.

Image source: FAW-Volkswagen official website

In addition, SAIC Audi A5L, equipped with the EA888 Evo5 engine, announced the deep integration of Huawei's high-level intelligent driving solution, becoming the first fuel vehicle equipped with Huawei's intelligent driving technology.

After more than a hundred years of training, fuel vehicle technology has reached a mature level. Faced with the surging demand for intelligent driving, the response of fuel vehicles is far inferior to that of new energy vehicles that have been developed for a few years. It is only recently launched fuel vehicles that dare to play the intelligent driving card. What is the reason behind this?

Are traditional fuel vehicles doomed to have no chance with high-level intelligent driving?

On the surface, the biggest difference between traditional fuel vehicles and new energy vehicles lies in the different power output, energy replenishment costs, and charging experience brought about by different powertrains. However, besides that, high intelligence is also an area that traditional fuel vehicles find difficult to reach.

To explain this point, we need to start with the foundations of traditional fuel vehicles and new energy vehicles.

As early as the 2018 China Electric Vehicle 100 People Forum, Wan Gang, the Minister of Science and Technology of China, proposed that "the most suitable carrier for intelligence is new energy vehicles".

To achieve high intelligence in vehicles, a wealth of intelligent devices are indispensable, and these devices require a large amount of electrical support. However, traditional fuel vehicles are basically equipped with only a small-capacity battery pack, which cannot support the long-term operation of intelligent devices. This is the fundamental reason why it is difficult for fuel vehicles to achieve high intelligence.

The current electrified architecture of new energy vehicles can ensure high-intensity and long-term operation of equipment. Most intelligent devices can be directly connected to the vehicle system, almost completely eliminating the problem of high signal delay. Moreover, the electrical architecture is simpler and more flexible than traditional fuel platforms, leaving relatively sufficient space for intelligent devices, thereby achieving more efficient collaborative work.

Of course, not all new energy vehicles can achieve high intelligence, such as new energy vehicle models based on traditional fuel platforms, also known as "oil-to-electricity" products.

Image source: BMW Brilliance official website

The driving force for "oil-to-electricity" models is mainly policy, rather than for a more intelligent driving experience. Taking the BMW i3 as an example, it comes from the same BMW CLAR oil-electric shared platform as the BMW 3 Series. Even though the platform is claimed to be "oil-electric shared", there is a high hump in the middle of the rear floor, and the trunk capacity is reduced from 500L of the BMW 3 Series to 410L, with extremely low space utilization. It can be seen that this platform is mainly developed for fuel vehicles.

Looking at Honda's e:NS1 and e:NP1, these two cars can be considered Honda's first new energy masterpieces in the domestic market. In the field of intelligence, they can realize practical functions such as intelligent voice dialogue and navigation. However, as a product priced around 200,000 yuan, it does not carry the newly emerging lidar, which is indeed difficult to convince consumers to place an order.

Image source: Guangqi Honda official website

"Oil-to-electricity" models find it difficult to achieve the layout of intelligent driving hardware, which limits the depth and breadth of intelligence. Therefore, the intelligent performance of the entire vehicle is no different from that of the fuel version.

Therefore, the most important thing for fuel vehicles to achieve high intelligence is to change from the bottom up.

Fuel vehicles will not all die, but those that do not keep pace with the times will surely die

As a German brand with a large following in the domestic market, the Volkswagen Group was indeed aware of the importance of intelligence very early on. It has long launched a new generation of Magotan and Passat Pro equipped with a triple-screen and jointly developed the IQ. Pilot intelligent driving assistance system with DJI Auto, which can realize functions such as intelligent lever lane changing, intelligent following, and intelligent parking. It can also recognize special obstacles such as triangular cones and overhanging trucks. The newly launched Tanyue L also has similar intelligent performance.

Although urban intelligent driving has not yet been achieved, Volkswagen has raised the intelligence level of traditional fuel vehicles to a new height. These new cars are still based on the MQBevo platform, but on this basis, they have introduced a new electronic and electrical architecture called 37W baseline.

Image source: FAW-Volkswagen official website

According to the official statement, after the introduction of this architecture, the broadband of CAN communication has been upgraded from 500K to 2M, the data transmission speed has been increased by 4 times, and the transmission paths have been increased by 2.5 times. It also supports 284 new extended functions such as lane-level navigation, AR navigation, and automatic parking IPA. At the same time, it can ensure subsequent OTA upgrades for vehicles.

Similarly, the SAIC Audi A5L, which is based on the luxury fuel vehicle platform PPC, directly adopts the new E³ 1.2 electronic and electrical architecture, completely abandoning the traditional architecture solution. It not only supports the fusion of multiple sensors but also can control five areas: power and handling, intelligent assistance, infotainment, comfort, and safety.

It is also after the introduction of the electronic and electrical architecture that SAIC Audi A5L is able to realize the possibility of deep involvement in Huawei's high-level intelligent driving solution. However, it should be noted that the cooperation between SAIC Audi A5L and Huawei is only a "customized" functional modification based on Huawei ADS 2.0.

Image source: SAIC Audi official website

According to what Dianchetong knows, Huawei ADS 2.0 adopts manually written rules, while the current most powerful Huawei Qiankun intelligent driving ADS 3.0 is an end-to-end intelligent driving solution. Even with more "customized" functions added, SAIC Audi A5L has not actually gotten rid of the underlying logic of the system of manually written rules. The intelligent driving experience is naturally significantly different from that of automakers in the first tier of intelligent driving.

Looking at the domestic market, the Volkswagen Group should be the most radical automaker in the field of intelligent fuel vehicles. However, compared with mainstream new energy vehicles that can achieve high-speed and urban navigation functions, the intelligent performance of the latest fuel vehicles under the Volkswagen Group is still far from reaching the level of the first tier. It can only be said that it is close to the intelligent experience of brands in the first tier.

Fuel vehicles have indeed not yet withdrawn from the stage of history so quickly, but when intelligence is the main selling point, for users who have a demand for intelligence, fuel vehicles will not be the first choice. At this stage, even though the Volkswagen Group is striving to break through the technical bottleneck of intelligence on fuel vehicles, it is more difficult to achieve the latest intelligent experience than new energy vehicles.

The wave of intelligence is surging, and there is not much time left for fuel vehicles

Dianchetong believes that when intelligent fuel vehicles achieve a wide range of coverage, the possibility of a large impact on the new energy vehicle market is very high.

Indeed, limited by the underlying architecture, consumers who have a demand for intelligence will not choose fuel vehicles as their first choice, but the final choice of a car is the result of comprehensive consideration of many aspects.

Since last year, the monthly penetration rate of new energy vehicles has exceeded 50% for multiple times, and fuel vehicles have gradually become the choice of a minority. However, in January of this year, the penetration rate of new energy fell to 41%, falling to about the level of a year ago. The reason is that most joint venture automakers provided significant terminal discounts before the Spring Festival holiday, which greatly stimulated sales growth.

In other words, domestic consumers still highly recognize the quality of popular joint venture vehicles and will not hesitate to buy them as long as the price is right.

Although fuel vehicles generally do not carry high-level intelligent driving, and the upper limit of high-level intelligent driving will not be too high, thanks to their high market recognition, simply reducing the price is enough to make a large number of users willing to pay for it. However, "trading volume for price" is not conducive to the long-term development of the brand. Coupled with the fact that there is not much prospect for the development of new energy roads, the introduction of intelligence may be another path for joint venture brands in the domestic market.

At this stage, with the gradual increase in demand for intelligence, if fuel vehicles retain the latest intelligent technology while retaining the price advantage, although the intelligent experience is not as good as mainstream new energy vehicles, it is not difficult to attract users to pay for it.

(Cover image source: SAIC Audi official website)

Source: Lei Technology