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2025-01-19 Update From: SLTechnology News&Howtos shulou NAV: SLTechnology News&Howtos > IT Information >
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Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--
2022 has just passed. In the two months at the end of the year, according to incomplete statistics, there were 27 financing incidents related to autopilot in China. The autopilot track seems to be heating up all of a sudden. After all, there were only 67 financing incidents in the domestic self-driving sector between January and October before 2022.
However, from a year-round point of view, the 2022 autopilot track is not hot. Sohu's data on incomplete financing in the field of self-driving in 2022 show that the amount of financing in this field is only more than 20 billion yuan in 2022, down nearly 80 per cent from 93.2 billion yuan in 2021.
In mid-2022, there was also a series of bankruptcy layoffs at self-driving companies around the world. JohnLawler, Ford's chief financial officer, has previously said publicly: "there is still a long way to go to build a fully self-driving car that is profitable on a large scale."
The field of self-driving is not so much getting hot as speeding up the reshuffle. The L4, which is not clear about the business model, has become cold, and the L2, which has been commercialized, has become hot. For the upcoming L2 autopilot "mass production era", all types of autopilot players need to return to the commercial nature, the amount of production to settle down.
According to the level 6 classification of self-driving released by the International Society of Automotive Engineering in 2014, the industry tends to skip L3 and upgrade directly from L2 to L4: for many self-driving companies in the future, devolving L4 and above to L2 may be an emergency measure to achieve positive cash flow in the short term. However, although this approach is technically reusable, the performance-to-price ratio is really not high. L2 autopilot, the player threshold is not high, homogenization competition is more serious, can not open the gap, the volume will be more and more serious.
1ONE, L4 cold once upon a time, autopilot is one of the hottest tuyere in the domestic capital market, attracting a large number of investment institutions. In 2021, a total of 112 financing incidents occurred in the field of self-driving in China, and the total amount of financing was disclosed to reach 38.7 billion yuan. However, this hot phenomenon has changed significantly in 2022.
From January to October 2022, 67 financing incidents occurred in the field of self-driving in China, and the total amount of financing was disclosed to reach 14.3 billion yuan. Compared with the same period in 2021, financing events and the amount of financing decreased by about 32% and 61%, respectively. Even if financing increases in the last two months, it is not too much to describe the performance of the autopilot track in 2022 as "cold".
Not only is the primary market not as expected, but in the secondary market, the performance of self-driving companies is even more "tragic". Globally, the average share price of more than a dozen listed self-driving companies fell by more than 80 per cent in 2022, with self-driving truck developer Embark, lidar technology company VelodyneLidar and QuanEnergy all falling more than 95 per cent. Crunchbase, a famous American data analysis company, said bluntly that at present, self-driving unicorns are all running downhill.
Since listing, "autopilot first share" Tucson has fallen about 95% in the future screenshot of the snowball "cold wave", and many autopilot companies that do not have sufficient hematopoietic ability have disappeared.
For example, ArgoAI, the self-driving star start-up behind the two world auto giants Ford of the United States and Volkswagen of Germany, once had a market capitalization of $7 billion and more than 2000 employees at its peak. However, because of the slow progress of the autopilot project and the failure of substantial technology landing at the expense of a lot of money, even Ford and Volkswagen could not survive and had to announce a shutdown on October 27, 2022. 2.6 billion dollars in cumulative financing went up in smoke.
In October 2022, Ibeo, a leading lidar company in the field of self-driving, also announced that it had to file for bankruptcy because it was unable to obtain further growth financing. According to media reports, the cash in Ibeo's account is only enough to pay all employees' salaries until the end of November. Ibeo has been established for 25 years, is a veteran lidar enterprise, can be called the ancestor of the industry, Valeo's first generation of automotive lidar ScaLa to achieve mass boarding, the technical support behind is Ibeo.
Both the primary and secondary markets of autopilot have cooled, prompting capital to be more cautious about the investment and financing of the track. When hedge fund TCI directly called on Google parent Alphabet to cut costs on long-term investments such as its self-driving car company Waymo in 2022, Waymo's valuation fell to $30 billion from a peak of $175 billion.
At present, it seems that this appeal is appropriate. According to foreign media reports during the 2023 Spring Festival holiday, Waymo has quietly laid off some employees, of which the unmanned truck project is the hardest hit. This adds a new cold shoulder to the autopilot track in 2023.
Screenshot of the report on Waymo layoffs about the reasons for the dense financing incidents in the field of self-driving at the end of 2022, Chen Shujie, a former investor and current vice president of Xichi Technology, also thinks that it may be a coincidence from the perspective of personal experience and enterprises, and is not worth observing. He believes that these financing starts at different points in time, during which the cycle is very long, but these financing events happen to be completed in this period of time.
2TWO, L2 hot self-driving track all the way, in essence, is in the process of constantly trying and correcting errors. Investment institutions have invested a lot of money in the track and come up with some concepts, but many of them have been falsified, followed by a sharp drop in valuations, broken listings and plummeting market values, which has made capital, especially the capital that makes quick money, impatient. At present, investment institutions have changed the attitude of being bullish on L4 autopilot.
McKinsey, a global management consultancy, predicted three years ago that annual global revenue related to self-driving cars in urban areas could reach $1.6 trillion by 2030, but now believes that despite phased advances in technology, but self-driving is still a long way from being commercialized on a real scale.
Hu Wei, investment director of Hengxin Huaye, also said: "I think for L4, to achieve a real sense of self-driving or self-driving, there is still a long period, or even a long way off, or we may never see self-driving." ImperiumDrive CEO KooshaKaveh pointed out directly that even in a few decades, 100% self-driving cars will not appear.
With regard to the reasons why L4 autopilot is difficult to achieve, Li Yinlin, managing director of Locke Capital Investment and Research Department, believes that it lies in the complex urban road conditions and unclear powers and responsibilities, and countries around the world are unwilling to have irresponsible accidents within the scope of their governance. Yu Qian, founder of Light Boat Zhihang, said that it is a question whether it is worth the high investment for the last 1% or even 0.1% of the total self-driving.
The pessimism in the capital markets does not mean that the whole industry of autopilot will collapse. The current autopilot track has given up too far, no longer looking up at the stars and the sea, but bowed its head back to reality and become more "pragmatic". From the perspective of financing trend, the capital market mainly focuses on commercial L2 projects.
This is because these projects, such as mass-production ADAS, that is, the front-end mass-production front-end driving assistance system, have been able to give consumers a certain sense of user experience and initially get through the business logic.
From January to September 2022, the domestic ADAS pre-installed permeability reached 48.7%, an increase of 9.0% over 2021, of which the L2 ADAS pre-installed permeability reached 27.7%, an increase of 8.3% over 2021, and L2 ADAS accounted for 57% of the pre-loaded driving assistance system.
From the perspective of investment and financing, according to Galaxy Automotive statistics, in 2022, more than 70% of the 22 self-driving solutions company financing focused on passenger cars came from the ADAS field.
Specific to enterprises, in 2022, a number of mass-production ADAS enterprises, including MINIEYE, Acer, Heduo Technology, Intelligent driving Technology, Longitudinal Vision Technology, Maomo Zhixing, Magic Intelligence, Zhixing Technology, Anzhi Automobile, Fretak, etc., all received new investment, and three of them disclosed two financing. Most of the financing received by these enterprises is in the hundreds of millions of yuan, and the highest is the E round of financing disclosed by Zhonghu Technology in March 2022, with a total amount of more than 1 billion yuan.
Desperately looking for business opportunities and landing scenes has become the main tone of the self-driving industry in 2022. It can be expected that the process will be more lively in 2023.
3THREE, commercialized current autopilot enterprises, especially L4 autopilot enterprises, are basically in a state of loss, and it is difficult to make blood on their own. If they fail to log on to the secondary market for financing, it will be very difficult to survive. Their future development will depend on their financing ability, and if they fail to raise capital, they may gradually become a stepping stone to the development of other enterprises.
In the face of today's financing difficulties, some companies that specialize in L4 have switched to L2 autopilot, which has begun to be commercialized. The observation of RenevoCapital, a financial investment consulting firm, also confirms this phenomenon. RenevoCapital said that since 2022, more self-driving companies have adopted a pragmatic approach, working with vehicle manufacturers to focus on mass-production self-driving solutions and generate cash from this business, rather than directly targeting disruptive self-driving solutions.
In the domestic market, most self-driving companies start the mode of "climbing Mount Everest and laying eggs along the way", that is, developing L2 and L4 technology at the same time, betting on both sides. For example, Little Horse Zhixing is laying out three front-desk business sectors: self-driving service, self-driving truck and passenger car-assisted driving business at the same time, and said that with the increasing demand of end users for high-level auxiliary driving technology, the market begins to break out, and the passenger car-assisted driving business will become one of the core driving forces for Xiaoma Zhixing's future development.
From focusing on L4 to turning to L2, it seems to reduce the dimension of the attack, but it is actually very difficult. Although L4 autopilot has some algorithmic advantages, from the point of view of software architecture, hardware and cost, it and ADAS-assisted driving are completely different concepts and are two species, so it cannot be reduced from L4 and directly referenced to ADAS, and the architecture needs to be rebuilt.
Moreover, the homogenization competition in the field of L2 autopilot is very fierce, because the threshold of the players on the track is not high, and there is no gap between them, so it is very likely that the focus of the competition will be on lowering costs in the future. However, on the other hand, it will also inspire a hundred schools of thought to contend.
So, is there no future for self-driving companies that specialize in L4, apart from turning to L2?
Che Bai think tank believes that the current capital market judgment of L4 autopilot is too pessimistic, L4 still has great potential and advantages, but this requires strong financial resources and persistent willpower.
The person in charge of Ma Zhixing judged in 2022 that in 2016, some people thought that full autopilot could be made in two or three years, but Ma Zhixing thought it was impossible. Now, some people think that he may not be able to do it 20 years later. Ma Zhixing also thinks it is impossible. As long as the technology, regulations and users are mature enough, it can really promote full autopilot.
GM also remains bullish on L4 autopilot and says it requires long-term and sustained investment to succeed in business. A spokesman for the company said that every carmaker needs a self-driving strategy, just as they all need an electric vehicle strategy.
With regard to the timing of L4 autopilot, various agencies are currently pointing to the next three to five years.
Xiao Ma Zhixing believes that advanced autopilot such as the L4 will usher in a period of rapid development of applications in three to five years. Chen Zhihua, vice president of Shang Tang Technology car Road Collaborative Commerce, also believes that there may be a tipping point for L4 self-driving within 5 years. GeneMunster, managing partner of LoupVentures, a venture capital firm that specialises in technology research, also says the fully autopilot track could be five years away from a commercial inflection point.
An important basis for making such a judgment is the chip development of the "central hub" of self-driving technology. At present, Nvidia, Horizon, Qualcomm, Mobileye and other chip vendors are rapidly iterating higher-level autopilot chips, and some chip vendors have made development plans for three to five years. Once a technological breakthrough, run through business logic, I believe that countries, especially China, the regulatory management of high-level autopilot will quickly follow up, will not become an obstacle.
With regard to the future market size of the L4 self-driving market, according to the forecast of Li Xuan, vice president of Wenyuan Zhixing, by 2030, the global self-driving market will develop into a huge market of trillion US dollars and 1 trillion RMB. Of these, 88% of the market will be created by L4 self-driving, of which the Chinese market will account for 37.65%.
[full text reference]
[1] Intelligent driving Industry report 2022, findings report
[2] "the penetration rate of self-driving vehicles is more than half, but there are no" Pentagon warriors "in the industrial chain.
[3] "IPO bone discount, unicorn failure, autopilot" flameout "? "Entrepreneurship State
[4] "Autopilot: ice and Fire", 36 Krypton
[5] "the market doesn't believe in autopilot, but they still do." LatePost later.
This article comes from the official account of Wechat: che Bai think Tank (ID:EV100_Plus). Author: Chen Zhongshan.
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