In 2025, the opening of the car market is "king fried"!

 

Changan Automobile started overnight, and released the "Beidou Tianshu 2.0" plan on the evening of February 9. Zhu Huarong, chairman of Changan Automobile, said bluntly: "From this year, Changan will no longer develop new products that are not digital intelligent."

 

On February 10, BYD issued a nationwide intelligent driving strategy, announcing that its entire range of models will be equipped with high-level intelligent driving assistance system "God's eye", which will "roll" intelligent driving into the 70,000 yuan level.

 

Two big car giants have thrown a heavy "nuclear bomb", 2025 is the "roll" a little different. So, is the era of intelligent driving really coming?

 

Take aim at smart car companies "immortal fight"

 

Since Tesla announced the price cut in 2022, the price war has begun to spread the car market, and "fight the price" has become the absolute theme of the price war for more than two years. However, the wave of electrification is constantly changing the direction of the price war.

 

In 2023, under the strategy of "the same price of oil and electricity", BYD has entered the hinterland of fuel vehicles, and the plug-in models represented by the Qin PLUS DM-i 2023 champion edition have continuously impacted various market segments. Then, BYD put forward the slogan of "electricity is lower than oil" and "plug-in hybrid is lower than fuel vehicle price", which also fully reflects BYD's scale effect and competitive advantage of the whole industrial chain.

 

By 2025, BYD shocked the industry again and proposed "intelligent driving of the whole people". Liu Bo, strategic director of 础石, pointed out that from "the same price of oil and electricity" to "lower oil than electricity" to "intelligent driving equality", no matter what technical route is the theme of the development of the industry, BYD is the best price route. "Intelligent driving equality" is actually another way of price war.

 

Price war not a word, just blindly upgrade. Gu Jianmin, chief technology officer of Valeo China, said with emotion that "the whole people's intelligent driving" is a typical "adding price without raising price". In the past, intelligent driving functions have to spend money to choose, and now it has become a cost-free standard, which is actually a price war that has been fought for two years, and has been rapidly upgraded in another form.

 

For the newly upgraded price war, the major car companies can be described as "happy".

 

First look at BYD, the "God's Eye" technology matrix covers A, B, C three sets of technical solutions, especially the newly released "God's Eye C", the first applied to 21 models, covering a wide range of prices from 70,000 yuan to 200,000 yuan. This means that even the most affordable models, such as seagull, can provide advanced intelligent driving services that originally needed to pay tens of thousands of extra dollars to obtain, truly achieving "intelligent driving equality."

 

Changan Automobile announced that the new cars in the next three years will be fully equipped with intelligent driving interfaces, and realize the "sinking" of high-class intelligent driving to more cost-effective models. Taking the deep blue car as an example, its "intelligent driving affirmative action" is also achieved by "increasing quantity without increasing price". For example: the 3 AD PRO models of Deep Blue S07, the price of the extended range version is unchanged, the pure electric version is reduced by 5,000 yuan, and the AD PRO version under the same configuration is 10,000 yuan lower than the Huawei Qiankun ADS SE version, and the two schemes are distinguished at the price level.

 

As early as the earnings call in November last year, Xiaopeng Chairman He Xiaopeng proposed that Xiaopeng has taken the lead in realizing the software and hardware of high-level intelligent driving in the world, and provided the experience of standard L3 automatic driving at the cost of L2 automatic driving. In the beginning of 2025, Xiaopeng Automobile has further broken the price barrier of advanced intelligent driving with its attractive 5-year 0 interest 0 down payment financial policy.

 

On February 11, Yu Chengdong, chairman of Huawei Terminal BG and chairman of intelligent car Solution BU, posted on social media that intelligent driving, making do with good use and safety, is a completely different realm, Huawei Hongmeng Zhixing is the leader of the generation, and the core black technology of the Zunjie will be revealed this month. Geely Auto also announced that it will release a heavy AI intelligent strategy in early March to bring a subversive intelligent experience to users. This makes the outside world full of expectations for the latest intelligent driving strategy of the above two companies.

 

From "0 to 1" to "1 to many"

 

"Intelligent driving equality" is true, but "adding price", how to cover the cost? This has become a question on many people's minds.

 

Dr. Zhang Kangkang of the Automotive Department of Tsinghua University analyzed that the reason why the head car companies dare to propose "intelligent driving equality" is that China's intelligent driving industry chain and talent supply have been quite mature. Before and after 2021, intelligent driving is not a car company willing to invest in can produce results, need the industry's top talent and exquisite organization and management to produce results, called "genius game". Today, with the rapid development of artificial intelligence technology, the intelligent driving industry chain is becoming more and more mature, a large number of talents are trained, the system cost is rapidly reduced, and the intelligent driving system has become like an engine, as long as the organization and management are properly managed and closely coordinated with suppliers, money can be purchased.

 

When the wind dies, the water comes. At the BYD intelligent strategy conference, Wang Chuanfu, chairman of BYD, said that 2025 will become the first year of intelligent driving for the whole people, and the first thing to see if you want to buy a car this year is whether there is intelligent driving. Wang Chuanfu said that in the next two to three years, high-class intelligent driving will become as essential as seat belts and airbags. "At that point, cars without intelligent driving will be in the minority." 'he said.

 

True, with a huge sales base, BYD's every move is changing the direction of the car market. Gu Jianmin believes that the introduction of the whole people's intelligent driving strategy will undoubtedly bring great pressure to other car companies. A significant impact of this strategy is that it will implant users with the consumption concept that "intelligent driving is the standard and the basic configuration to ensure car safety". In the future, there will be no smart driving or smart driving fee models will make consumers question, which forces other car companies to follow this strategy.

 

With the advent of the era of intelligent driving, Liu Bo judged that by 2030, the penetration rate of intelligent driving will reach 60% to 70%. When intelligent driving has achieved a breakthrough of "0 to 1", then it will pursue "1 to more", and car companies need to continuously optimize the intelligent driving experience, improve the safety level, and cover as many long-tail scenes as possible. With the increase in the number of traffic accidents, it will also promote the improvement of laws and regulations, and car companies may also face ethical and moral tests, such as the most classic "trolley problem", "if the vehicle will hit the elderly to the left, and the vehicle will hit other vehicles to the right, how should the algorithm make decisions?"

 

Gu Jianmin believes that no intelligent driving system is 100% safe, and the responsibility for intelligent driving traffic accidents is a new subject. At present, Beijing and Shenzhen L3 autonomous driving regulations have been landed, but they have not yet landed nationwide, and I believe it will become a reality in the near future. Which car company dares to take the lead in taking responsibility? What is the first brand to mass-produce a L3 self-driving model? These are all very noteworthy.

 

As end-to-end large-model technology becomes the mainstream direction and industry standards are gradually established, various car companies will strive to achieve similar functions such as automatic parking, adaptive cruise, lane keeping, etc., so that the difference between intelligent driving functions is reduced between different brands. Zhang Kangkang believes that "all have intelligent driving, car companies in horizontal competition is equivalent to no intelligent driving." The subsequent competitive focus of car companies will focus on how to reflect the attributes of the vehicle itself, especially the differentiation of the intelligent cabin.

 

Multi-dimensional challenges of supply chain, cost and security
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t can be clear that the first year of intelligent driving has come, car companies and suppliers are involved in the intelligent driving war, and enterprises without standard intelligent driving need to work harder. Wang Chuanfu said that the popularity of intelligent driving is not only a problem of technology research and development, but also a problem of how to industrialize the technology.

 

It is true that the trend of "intelligent driving equality" has brought a series of new requirements and challenges to the supply chain and cost control of car companies.

 

First of all, with the popularity of intelligent driving functions, the demand for sensors (such as lidar, millimeter wave radar, cameras, etc.), chips and related electronic control units will increase significantly. Automakers need to build partnerships with more suppliers to ensure a stable supply of these critical components. At the same time, due to the different levels of vehicle demand for intelligent driving features, the supply chain needs to be more flexible, able to quickly adjust the type and quantity of parts supplied according to different orders.

 

Secondly, in order to achieve "intelligent driving equality", car companies need to invest a lot of resources in the research and development of intelligent driving technology, including algorithm optimization, functional testing, safety verification and so on. How to reasonably control the cost of research and development under the premise of ensuring the progress and quality of technology research and development is a big challenge. Automobile enterprises need to optimize the research and development process, strengthen cooperation with universities and scientific research institutions, realize resource sharing and complementary advantages, improve research and development efficiency, and reduce research and development costs.

 

Gu Jianmin bluntly said that the cost control brought by "intelligent driving equality" is a considerable challenge, and how to share the cost with upstream and downstream enterprises in the supply chain is a test of the wisdom of car companies.

 

Five years ago, Wang Chuanfu proposed that "safety is the biggest luxury of an electric car," and now he added this slogan: "Intelligent driving is the strongest guardian of safe travel." However, price cuts that are not based on technological progress and scale effects may lead to the degradation of the software and hardware of the intelligent driving system, which further affects the stability and safety of the autonomous driving function.

 

Liu Bo also expressed his concern that in the era of "intelligent driving equality", car companies hope to improve the safety of vehicles through software algorithms. In other words, the cost of cars is shifting more to research and development, and some car companies' hardware is not only not getting better, but getting worse because of cost migration.

 

On the surface, the intelligent driving of car companies covers more scenarios through technological iteration, which seems to reduce the incidence of traffic accidents. However, no intelligent driving system is 100 percent safe, and car companies seem to be slowly ignoring hard capabilities such as collision resistance in extreme situations.

 

Smart driving does not necessarily live without smart driving must die

 

As Deng Chenghao, president of Deep Blue Automobile, said: "Intelligent driving is not a choice question, it is a must answer for future travel."

 

China Electric Vehicle 100 "Automobile Intelligent Development Report (2024) Intelligent Driving" report pointed out that high-class intelligent driving has passed the "early stage", high-speed NOA, urban NOA and other functions are being popularized in the mainstream price range of 100,000 to 200,000 yuan, and it is expected that by the end of 2025, the penetration rate of passenger car NOA will reach 20%. This is nearly double that of the first half of 2024.

 

In Liu Bo's view, intelligent driving will inevitably become the theme of competition among car companies this year, or the baseline of market elimination. "Last year's phase-out baseline was high-speed NOA, and this year's phase-out baseline is urban NOA." 'he said. Whether the car company is independent research and development or seeking cooperation with suppliers, if there is no ability to promote the city NOA quickly on the car, it can not avoid the fate of elimination. "You can't live with smart driving, but you can die without smart driving." Liu Bo said.

 

Recently, Dongfeng Motor and Changan Automobile restructuring news, in the automotive industry a stone to provoke thousands of waves, on the background is the military system within the ordnance Group and military equipment group merger, but from the perspective of the automotive industry, the essence of some car companies sales decline, the decline in market competitiveness of the result. Entering the era of comprehensive intelligent driving, car companies represented by BYD and Xiaopeng will further increase sales through affordable intelligence, which means that the merger of the two state-owned enterprises is only the beginning, and the fate of more car companies will change in the future.

 

Liu Bo further pointed out that starting with state-owned car companies, the survival of local state-owned enterprises will also face challenges, such as SAIC, which has been obsessed with the "soul", has obviously felt the pressure, and recently announced cooperation with Huawei, with Huawei's technology accumulation in the field of intelligent driving, to enhance the market competitiveness of products. "Joint venture brands are currently actively looking for smart driving partners, such as Huawei, Zhuoyu, Momenta, etc., but the speed of cooperation must be slower than that of independent brands, and it is relatively disadvantaged in the occupation of consumers' minds." Liu Bo said.

 

Of course, the amplification of the head car companies does not mean that other brands do not have the power to fight back. Zhang Kangkang analysis, for example, Huawei and Xiaopeng, which developed intelligent driving earlier, also have the advantage of technological differentiation. Byd City NOA currently plans to use Lidar, while Huawei Qiankun Smart Drive ADS SE can also achieve basic city NOA functions without lidar. Similarly, other car companies can also differentiate in terms of reliability, driving experience, and so on. For example, zero-run cars take a more "volume" low-cost intelligent driving strategy, and its upcoming new model of 150,000 yuan - B10 can have high-class intelligent driving with lidar.

 

Zhang Kangkang bluntly said that the start of "intelligent driving equality" means that 2025 will be the most competitive year in the history of the car market. If the car companies feel "difficult" at the beginning of the year, they should urgently seek changes, such as reducing business and reducing models. The acceleration of the elimination game is irreversible, and the sooner the change, the better.

 

Originally published by China Automotive News, February 18, 2025