If 2024 is a prosperous year for autonomous driving, then the focus of the spotlight must be on Guangzhou.
On November 27th, Xiaoma Zhixing, a leading autonomous driving company in Nansha, Guangzhou, went public. Previously, Wen Yuan Zhixing, also from Guangzhou, went public on the US stock market in late October, becoming the "world's first general autonomous driving stock". In July, Guangzhou Automobile Group's intelligent travel platform, such as Qixing, went public in Hong Kong... The intelligent driving industry in Guangzhou has "connected three cities", and good news has been frequent.
In fact, the automotive industry contributed half of Guangzhou's total industrial output value before 2017, and Guangzhou is also known as the "number one city for automobiles"; But as new energy vehicles gradually become a new "trend", the Guangzhou automotive industry is beginning to face "defensive" pressure. So, Guangzhou began to set the goal of "turning the tide" as building a "smart car city" with international influence, and started a battle of transformation together.
Guangzhou proposes to accelerate the cross-border integration of "automobile+", strengthen the interconnection between automobiles and energy, integration with smart transportation, and mutual promotion with low altitude industries, amplify the leading and driving role of vehicle enterprises in the industrial ecology, and further leverage the integrated development of more high growth industries such as new energy and low altitude economy.
Why is Guangzhou planning to become a 'smart car city'? What are the characteristics of policy rhythm and driving path? From an industry perspective, where has the commercialization of intelligent driving in Guangzhou reached? Southern Finance and Economics reporters found that Guangzhou's intelligent driving is more driven by state-owned assets and enterprises, especially the traditional automotive industry chain leader who is eager for change and accelerating the landing of autonomous driving. However, under the constraints of cost and supporting facilities, true commercialization still has a long way to go.
The first city of automobiles' last ditch battle '
There are slight differences in driving factors among the major mainstream cities competing for the "City of Smart Cars". For example, the autonomous driving industry in Beijing has a clear policy driven color, while Shenzhen relies more on private enterprises to drive it. For Guangzhou, the autonomous driving industry has been under pressure from the beginning to promote the upgrading of the traditional automotive industry, with the government and state-owned enterprises playing important driving roles.
In 2017, Guangzhou's automobile production reached 3.108 million units, but the domestic automobile industry has shown signs of transformation. Guangzhou was the first to be approved as one of the first national pilot demonstration cities, with a focus on developing intelligent and new energy vehicles. It was precisely in this year that Xiaoma Zhixing and Wenyuan Zhixing landed in Guangzhou one after another.
The following year, due to industrial restructuring and restrictions on purchasing and driving, China's automobile production and sales declined for the first time in 28 years, and Guangzhou's automobile industry was also affected to varying degrees. It can be said that from the beginning of autonomous driving, it was accompanied by the pains of transformation in the traditional automotive industry.
However, in recent years, the new energy vehicle industry in Guangzhou has always had a "one move difference". Data shows that in 2023, the production of new energy vehicles in Guangzhou will only account for 20% of the total automobile production, which is 11.4 percentage points lower than the national average. As the first automobile city in China, Guangzhou ranks only 7th in terms of new energy vehicle production.
Therefore, "intelligence and networking" are destined to become a turning point that Guangzhou cannot miss.
The maturity of autonomous driving technology and the arrival of opportunities for marketization and scale will overturn the traditional development model of the automotive industry and provide tremendous assistance to the Guangzhou automotive industry, "said Wu Zhengming, Director of the Operations Center of the Guangzhou Intelligent Connected Vehicle Demonstration Zone and Executive Vice President of the Guangzhou Intelligent Connected Vehicle Electronics Industry Development Promotion Association.
The dispute over the technical route of automatic driving is still pending. One faction believes that the automobile industry chain will still be led by traditional OEMs in the future, and auto drive system will become its key supply chain module; The other faction believes that autonomous driving companies will dominate the entire industry, and car manufacturers may become their "contract factories". Wu Zhengming believes that no matter what, autonomous driving will definitely reverse the situation of Guangzhou's "strong integration and zero weakness" and low localization rate of core components in the era of fuel vehicles and new energy.
This is seen as a 'last ditch battle' for Guangzhou's automotive industry. Among them, the figures of state-owned assets and enterprises are everywhere.
Both Xiaoma Zhixing and Wenyuan Zhixing are backed by GAC Capital. The cooperative relationship between all parties is not only about investment, but also deeply involved in industrial synergy. In December 2021, GAC Group and Wenyuan Zhixing reached a strategic cooperation, and both sides plan to lay out a Robotaxi fleet of tens of thousands of vehicles in the next few years.
At the end of last year, Guangzhou Automobile Group, together with Guangzhou Industrial Investment and Bank of China, established the Guangzhou Xinqi Zhilian Equity Investment Fund with a target size of 30 billion yuan. Including the two mentioned above, Guangzhou Automobile Group has invested in nearly 20 upstream and downstream technology companies for intelligent driving, of which 6 have successfully gone public.
Ruqi Travel, which successfully landed on the Hong Kong stock market with the Robotaxi concept in July this year, also has a strong background in state-owned assets. It was jointly founded by Guangzhou Automobile Group and Tencent. In its shareholder list, Guangzhou Public Transport Group, Guangzhou Industrial Investment, and others are prominently listed. Wenyuan Zhixing and Xiaoma Zhixing also participated as cornerstone investors in its Hong Kong stock prospectus.
In fact, compared to the list of China's automobile major cities and autonomous driving pioneer cities, Guangzhou has the highest degree of overlap among them.
(Four major first tier cities' autonomous driving test road opening, issuance of test permits, etc., sorted out by Southern Finance and Economics full media reporters)
From policy 'trial and error' to industry 'diversity'
What attracts top autonomous driving companies to Guangzhou?
Xiaoma Zhixing and Wenyuan Zhixing both mentioned a key answer - a highly open and pioneering policy. As a high-risk industry, for smart cars to hit the road, policies must first be in place. If the policy is half a step ahead, the industry can be one step ahead.
Guangzhou allowed autonomous vehicles to be tested on designated public roads as early as the end of 2017, and issued the "Guiding Opinions on Road Testing of Intelligent Connected Vehicles" the following year. In 2019, Xiaoma Zhixing and Wenyuan Zhixing received the first batch of intelligent connected vehicle road test notices in Guangzhou.
In the same year, Guangzhou released the first batch of 33 open test road sections with a total mileage of 45.644 kilometers. In the following five years, these two numbers increased by 24 times and 34 times respectively. As of now, Guangzhou has opened 827 test roads totaling 1623.5 kilometers; A total of 415 intelligent connected vehicles from 15 testing subjects have obtained testing licenses, of which 22 are testing licenses for unmanned passenger transport.
In order to support "smart cars", Guangzhou has also been laying out "smart roads". Guangzhou is one of the first cities to obtain the exclusive frequency band usage qualification for the Internet of Vehicles. It has built 378.4 kilometers of smart roads and a city level unified data platform for the Internet of Vehicles. In July of this year, Guangzhou was selected as a pilot city for the "Vehicle Road Cloud Integration" application of intelligent connected vehicles.
In fact, the layout of autonomous driving in China's four major first tier cities started around the same time. Guangzhou's policy implementation has made rapid progress, and its autonomous driving test road mileage has now surpassed Beijing and Shenzhen, second only to Shanghai. Guangzhou is the first city in China to issue passenger testing licenses and the only L4 level intelligent connected vehicle to carry out commercial demonstration operations with official license plates.
For example, in May of this year, Wenyuan Zhixing obtained the first license for pure unmanned remote testing of L4 level autonomous freight vehicles under urban open road scenarios in Guangzhou, and is currently conducting "7 × 24" 24-hour cargo testing.
Enterprises still have greater expectations for the speed of policy opening.
What is the biggest challenge for the implementation of autonomous driving? Three years ago, my answer may have been the stability and reliability of technology, but today, I would consider it policy progress. "Han Xu, founder and CEO of Wenyuan Zhixing, told Southern Finance and Economics reporters that Guangzhou has indeed provided very leading policies, but with the continuous advancement of technology, we expect the speed of policy iteration to be faster.
In terms of vehicle certification, we hope that in the future, one certification can cover multiple vehicle models; in terms of admission, we hope that the operational scope can be continuously expanded, and autonomous vehicles can enter areas with denser pedestrian and vehicular traffic, and ultimately operate throughout the city. Han Xu believes that these issues are expected to be resolved in the short term.
Overall, Guangzhou is carefully balancing safety and efficiency: from road classification and management to mixed traffic pilot projects, to entering the main roads and high-speed testing roads in the central urban area, from allowing remote testing to unmanned passenger testing
In July of this year, the official website of Guangzhou People's Congress released the "Guangzhou Intelligent Connected Vehicle Innovation and Development Regulations (Draft Revised Draft · Soliciting Opinions Draft)" (referred to as the "Opinions Draft"). The draft opinion clearly proposes to support the innovative application of intelligent connected vehicles in highways, airports, ports, stations, and other trunk lines and transportation hubs, and to support their use in urban transportation services such as buses and taxis, as well as in logistics and express delivery scenarios other than dangerous goods transportation.
Guangzhou is transitioning from a policy "half step ahead" to a legislative protection phase. According to incomplete statistics, several cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Wuxi, Suzhou, Hangzhou, etc. have already promoted local legislation on autonomous driving, providing support for larger scale applications and scenarios of autonomous driving technology.
Benefiting from this, several leading automatic driving enterprises such as Xiaoma Zhixing, Wenyuan Zhixing, Apollo Go, Didi Woya, Antu Zhixing, as well as auto enterprises such as GAC Group, Xiaopeng Automobile, and operators such as Guangzhou Public Transport Group, have carried out road tests at different levels and L3 and L4 high-level test activities such as passenger, cargo, formation, and long-distance in Guangzhou. Guangzhou automatic driving service providers have presented a "hundred flowers bloom" development pattern.
Commercial road obstruction and long duration
Under the policy advantage, Guangzhou quickly gathered almost all enterprises in the autonomous driving industry chain, covering multiple product lines such as autonomous taxis, minibuses, trucks, and sanitation vehicles.
At the level of auto drive system integration, there have been Wenyuan Zhixing, Xiaoma Zhixing, Guangzhou Apollo, etc. In the field of innovative components, there are Gaoshen Zhitu, Hager Communication, Xingyu Technology, etc. On the travel platform, there are also Ruqi Travel, Lianyou Travel, Youpeng Travel, etc
The development path of autonomous driving is largely similar to previous new energy vehicles, from small-scale pilot projects in the bus field to landing in taxis, and finally landing in the public consumer market. Wu Zhengming believes that the next step for autonomous driving will be to continue to push for the commercialization of Robotaxi.
On the one hand, due to the fact that Robotaxi has not yet achieved mass production, the cost sharing of kits and research and development is relatively high, making it difficult to achieve a break even point based on the existing ride hailing fee standards; On the other hand, Robotaxi has higher requirements for service, energy replenishment, and rescue network density, which also increases costs.
In addition, the landing of autonomous driving also urgently requires more comprehensive and complex commercial support, such as quality inspection and testing, admission qualification appraisal, accident liability assessment and other third-party organizations. In this process, research institutes can also participate. According to a reporter from Southern Finance and Economics, the School of Artificial Intelligence at Guangzhou University is currently developing corresponding evaluation models for quality control and risk assessment of autonomous driving products.
According to the "Opinions on Promoting the Accelerated Development of the Automotive Industry (Draft for Public Solicitation of Opinions)" released in the middle of this year, Guangzhou expects to have 10000 vehicles for commercial operation of autonomous driving by 2027.
At present, this goal is still hindered and long, and the second half of the sprint towards the "City of Smart Cars" will test endurance and the soundness of basic supporting facilities even more. Despite the industry's call for the "singularity" of autonomous driving, Wu Zhengming gave a more conservative prediction: "The process of comprehensive commercialization and social replacement will not be short. Optimistically speaking, it will take 5 years, and pessimistically, there may still be 15 to 20 years left