Recently, UBS China Automotive Research Director Gong Min highlighted in an interview with Shanghai Securities Journal that the autonomous driving industry in China has made significant progress in both technological advancement and market penetration. According to industry associations and third-party data, the market penetration rate for L2 and above levels in the new energy passenger vehicle sector has surpassed 50%. Gong Min stated, "Chinese intelligent connected vehicle companies are actively involved and leading the industry in various niche areas, whether it's lidar or software algorithms."
Gong Min further explained the concept of "end-to-end" learning, which originates from deep learning. This concept refers to the complete process of an AI model from inputting raw data to outputting final results. In the field of autonomous driving, this means the model can directly learn driving behaviors from raw visual data and generate vehicle control instructions. He noted that this method enables faster algorithm optimization and coverage of extreme scenarios compared to existing rule-based algorithms.
When discussing different technological approaches, Gong Min said, "With the continuous optimization of software algorithms, the effectiveness of autonomous driving systems that rely primarily on visual information will improve. Lidar, as an important supplementary information source, provides additional safety redundancy for visual-based solutions, which is especially crucial when algorithms are not yet fully developed."
On the policy front, in July this year, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and four other departments released the list of cities selected for the "vehicle-road-cloud integration" application pilot program. Twenty cities, including Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, and Wuhan, were designated as the first batch of pilot cities. Currently, these cities, along with Hangzhou, have launched public road testing of driverless vehicles, allowing autonomous vehicles to engage in commercial operations such as robotaxi services in designated areas and time slots.
Gong Min added, "At the national level, China has a favorable policy environment that encourages technological development. At the same time, we should also pay attention to market forces and believe in the role of competition and cooperation among different companies in various niche areas." He also noted that with technological advancements and decreasing costs, the application scenarios for autonomous driving are expanding continuously. Looking ahead, the autonomous driving industry remains in a positive and upward development phase.
