DeepSeek is rapidly penetrating into all walks of life, leading a new wave of intelligent upgrading. In the automotive field, many car companies and suppliers have announced deep integration with DeepSeek, trying to take the lead in the transformation of the automotive industry with the help of this new intelligent engine. In the process of accelerating to the "smart electricity" era, the commercial vehicle industry has also shown a strong initiative. The application of AI large models such as DeepSeek will bring unprecedented development opportunities to the industry.

 

The intelligent driving system has been comprehensively upgraded

 

China's automobile industry has gone through the "first half" of electric competition, and is rapidly entering the "second half" with intelligent competition as the core. At this stage, intelligence is not only the focus of the passenger car field, the commercial vehicle industry is also actively making efforts. Looking back at 2024, the intelligent process of commercial vehicles has accelerated its evolution, and major commercial vehicle companies and autonomous driving service providers have launched intelligent driving models or system solutions. This series of measures marks that the field of intelligent driving of domestic commercial vehicles is entering a new situation.

 

The debut of DeepSeek will undoubtedly further accelerate the pace of intelligent transformation of commercial vehicles and add more variables and opportunities for future industry competition. In the view of industry experts, DeepSeek's application in the commercial vehicle field mainly focuses on two hot directions: one is the intelligent cockpit system dedicated to improving user experience, and the other is the intelligent assisted driving and advanced intelligent driving system designed to enhance driving safety and efficiency.

 

Specifically, the smart cockpit system is connected to DeepSeek, essentially using its natural language processing and multimodal perception capabilities to upgrade traditional voice control commands to a more natural human-computer interaction. At the same time, with the empowerment of DeepSeek's large model, the vehicle's reasoning ability and understanding ability are improved, so that it can provide personalized recommendations and active services according to the user's vague intentions and scenarios inside and outside the cabin. For example, after the "one cloud and two cabins" of Yutong bus is connected to the DeepSeek large model, the driver can use the intelligent cockpit and Anruitong system to achieve intelligent questions and answers, and even fuzzy instructions can be accurately understood, thus achieving a comprehensive upgrade of the human-computer interaction intelligent experience.
In terms of intelligent driving systems, the value of accessing DeepSeek is mainly reflected in reducing the technical threshold and cost, and accelerating the arrival of the era of "intelligent driving equality". DeepSeek's core strength is that its model uses "distillation" technology (condensing complex models into lightweight versions) combined with an open source strategy, while maintaining high performance, significantly reducing the need for computing power and deployment costs. This feature directly attacks the pain point of large-scale popularization and application of intelligent driving technology for commercial vehicles, that is, the technical long-tail problem and cost reduction problem.

 

On the one hand, DeepSeek realizes more accurate environment perception and intelligent decision-making through reinforcement learning and multi-modal perception optimization, which helps to improve the cognitive online and generalization ability of intelligent driving systems. For example, in closed operation scenarios such as port container transportation, vehicles achieve centimeter-level accurate docking through vision and liDAR data fusion; In trunk logistics transportation, the system dynamically adjusts the automatic driving level according to the driver's behavior data and real-time road condition information. On the other hand, the development of traditional intelligent driving systems relies on high computing power investment, while DeepSeek effectively reduces the computing power, time and data amount required for large model training by calling parameters on demand and applying innovative means such as "distillation" technology. This feature greatly reduces the computing power demand and cost of the reasoning chip at the end of the vehicle, thereby shortening the overall development cycle of the intelligent driving system and reducing the cost.

 

Help commercial vehicle operation to reduce costs and increase efficiency

 

Intelligence is the core driving force to promote the transformation of the automotive industry. Compared with the intelligent development of passenger cars, the intelligent promotion of commercial vehicles has more important practical significance, and its core purpose is to improve operational efficiency, economic benefits and vehicle safety. From this perspective, the access of DeepSeek has brought not only a simple technological revolution, but also a profound reconstruction of the entire industrial chain of commercial vehicles.

 

Logistics industry expert Kong Zhen analysis pointed out that in view of the nature of commercial vehicle production tools, the key to its intelligent transformation is whether it can effectively improve the transportation time and reduce operating costs. It can be said that the substantial improvement of economic benefits is the core driving force for the intelligent transformation of commercial vehicles. DeepSeek has the technical characteristics of "low cost and high performance", which is highly consistent with the actual operation needs of commercial vehicles, especially in the scenario where enterprises need to deploy intelligent driving systems on a large scale, and can show great application advantages.

 

For example, in the intelligent upgrade of vehicle energy saving and emission reduction, both fuel vehicles and new energy commercial vehicles can achieve intelligent and efficient management of the drive system under the empowerment of DeepSeek's large model. Taking new energy commercial vehicles as an example, DeepSeek's AI technology can be used to optimize battery management systems and improve energy efficiency. With intelligent algorithms, vehicles can more efficiently manage the battery charging and discharging process, thereby extending battery life and driving range. At the same time, the vehicle can dynamically adjust energy distribution strategies by combining road conditions and load data. In addition, through in-depth data analysis, DeepSeek can predict the health of batteries and perform maintenance ahead of time, helping operators further reduce operating costs.

 

In terms of operational path planning and intelligent scheduling, the intelligent scheduling system based on the DeepSeek large model can plan the optimal route of vehicle operation, match the supply of goods and return empty vehicles in real time, and greatly improve the efficiency and utilization of vehicle operation. In addition, with the continuous development of commercial vehicle connectivity, DeepSeek can also help achieve efficient connectivity between vehicles and vehicles (V2V) and vehicles and infrastructure (V2I). For example, the cooperation between Dongfeng Motor and DeepSeek is very representative. The "Kunpeng Intelligent Logistics System" jointly developed by the two sides realizes 0.2 second level collaborative response when 50 heavy trucks are driving in formation through vehicle and road coordination and swarm intelligence algorithm. In actual operations, container transfer efficiency is increased by 60% and energy consumption is reduced by 22%.

 

In addition, through real-time monitoring and analysis of vehicle operation data (such as engine working conditions, wheel end temperature, load status, etc.) and cargo status, combined with large model deep learning algorithms, potential vehicle failures can be predicted in advance, and manufacturers and service stations can be notified in time to prepare for maintenance, effectively avoiding outage risks and reducing operation and maintenance costs.

 

Overall, DeepSeek's access can systematically solve core problems such as high operational intensity and low profit margins in commercial vehicle operations, and help the road logistics industry reduce costs and increase efficiency.

 

The application of large models still has limitations
In the context of the increasingly fierce competition in the commercial vehicle market and the obvious trend of product homogenization, promoting the intelligent upgrade of products has become a key path for enterprises to break through.

 

However, although the AI large model represented by DeepSeek is advanced in multi-modal perception and natural language processing technology, it still faces challenges to fully adapt to commercial vehicle hardware and software systems.

 

In this regard, some industry experts pointed out that the conversion of the general large model into the vehicle special system is not simple access, but also needs to go through a series of complex processes such as knowledge distillation and scene adaptation. This is a great test of the car companies in the data closed-loop management, scene engineering construction and safety redundancy design and other aspects of the comprehensive ability. In addition, after accessing DeepSeek, it is also necessary to ensure the safe transmission and storage of user data, which undoubtedly increases the complexity and cost of technology implementation.

 

Logistics industry expert Kong Zhen further said: "The application of AI large models can indeed enhance the competitiveness of commercial vehicle enterprises, but it is not a 'panacea'. After accessing DeepSeek, commercial vehicle companies still need to pay close attention to user needs, work with logistics companies to jointly explore how to use AI technology to develop products that meet market needs, and seek effective ways to improve the efficiency of road logistics and transportation."

 

It can be predicted that after accessing DeepSeek, enterprises will show obvious differentiation due to different strategic positioning, data accumulation and depth of scene understanding. Companies that are slow to act may face the risk of being eliminated, while those that are good at large model iterations and can deeply understand the commercial vehicle industry and effectively create value for users will stand out in the fierce competition that follows.

 

Originally published by China Automotive News, February 28, 2025