Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

On the afternoon of March 15, the news that Hou Xiaodi, co-founder of Tucson Future, resigned from the board of directors of the company and bid farewell to Tucson's future completely triggered extensive discussion. Earlier, Tucson's future listing soon encountered a continuing investigation by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), followed by several senior management changes. Now, with Hou Xiaodi's complete withdrawal from the board of directors, how will senior changes affect Tucson's business development in China? Will subsequent team stability be affected? The outside world has been waiting for answers.

On the afternoon of March 15, Hao Jianan, CEO of Tucson China, and Wang Naiyan, CTO of Tucson China, who rarely appeared in public, accepted an interview with Sina Science and Technology and officially publicly responded to many questions of concern to the outside world. During the communication, Tucson China clearly stated that the company started technical self-research and team isolation as early as 2020, the management of the Chinese and American teams was relatively opposite, CFIUS investigation and Hou Xiaodi's departure had no essential impact on the business in China, and there was no loss of core executives and technical backbones in China Team Five in recent one year.

In addition, Tucson China firmly believes in the significance and social value of L4 autonomous driving technology to the logistics industry. According to it,"It is expected that in July this year, Tucson China will hold a science and technology conference to introduce the company's autonomous driving technology, algorithm, domain controller and other hard core technology capabilities."

▲ Hao Jianan, CEO of Tucson China,"CFIUS investigation and Hou Xiaodi's departure have no essential impact on China's business." In communication with Sina Technology, Hao Jianan, CEO of Tucson China, pointed out that in fact, as early as before the listing, due to the outbreak of the epidemic in 2020, communication between China and the United States decreased, and the road conditions and policies and regulations between China and the United States were different, which directly led to the implementation of the autonomous driving project of the two teams. The technical capabilities also began to differ. At the end of 2021, due to CFIUS regulatory requirements of the US government, Tucson will reduce technical communication between China and the United States in the future. Since then, all technologies in Tucson China have begun to be completely independently developed.

"Tucson's future technology between China and the United States, although homologous, but in fact in the priority and focus of research and development, in fact, a long time ago there have been differences. "Hao Jianan said. According to him, since these things are not happening on the Chinese side, basically this matter has "no substantial impact" on Tucson's business in China.

Hao Jianan further pointed out that before 2020, the technical cooperation and cooperation between the Chinese and American teams are still relatively close, but with the subsequent expansion of the scale of both teams, in order to improve the R & D efficiency and cost, the Chinese team quickly established the full-stack self-research capability.

At the management level, since the Tucson China team is an independent management structure, in addition to strategic planning at the beginning of the year and reporting to the board of directors when making budgets, decisions at the business execution level such as the implementation of autonomous driving technology and customer acquisition are completely completed by the Chinese team. Therefore, although many changes have taken place in Tucson since last year, for the Chinese side, the management team has not been affected. The personnel above the director level or technical backbone are generally stable and have not been lost.

"in fact, most multinational companies will do the same because there are many legal and regulatory restrictions, so an independent structure will be more suitable for enterprise development. "Hao Jianan said. According to its introduction, at present Tucson China has about 600 people, in Beijing, Shanghai, Hebei test base and other places have staff. In terms of specific business layout, Tucson China's business lines are mainly divided into three categories: as a hardware supplier to provide domain controllers and core components for OEMs; as a system supplier to provide assisted driving technology for OEMs; and as a solution supplier to provide cargo transportation services based on L4 level full automatic driving for the logistics industry.

Among them, the first two business models mainly serve automotive OEM and Tier 1 supplier customers, providing central domain control products and full-stack algorithms, dedicated to enabling customers to obtain their own autonomous driving solutions at extremely low cost. The L4 autonomous freight service is mainly profitable through point-to-point cargo transportation by forming an all-unmanned fleet or providing autonomous driving services to logistics companies.

"Continue to be optimistic about the L4 technology route and have confidence in the company's technology." For a long time, the autonomous driving industry has great differences on whether to adopt the gradual development route from L2 to L4 or the leap-forward development route of L4 fully driverless in one step. In communication with Sina Technology, Hao Jianan continues to be optimistic about the social value of L4 autonomous driving and its development prospects.

In fact, because L4-level autonomous driving technology requires that the system be completely unmanned when operating, unlike L2 + assisted driving, which can hand over the option to the driver in unfamiliar road conditions and driving scenarios, L4-level puts extremely high demands on the safety performance of autonomous driving. In Hao Jianan's view, companies with L4 automatic driving technology capability can provide L2, L3 and other automatic driving capabilities to OEM, Tire1 and other manufacturers through technology sinking or external release, so they also have more full commercial potential.

Wang Naiyan, CTO of Tucson China, introduced Sina Technology. As one of the earliest enterprises in China to carry out self-research on L4-level automatic driving technology, Tucson China has sufficient technical characteristics in the field of L4-level automatic driving.

BEV perception, for example, is one of the hottest technologies in autonomous driving right now. But we can't actually apply existing technology directly to Tucson because we need to have a longer range of perception, which makes the computational requirements of existing algorithms explode. Based on technologies such as Tucson self-developed perception algorithm, a road perception range of 800m*300m can be realized, and the required computing power is also fully controllable, and end-side deployment can be quickly realized through Tucson self-developed domain controller. In addition, Tucson China L4 technology has also completed the verification of all-unmanned trunk transportation, and more details will be shared at appropriate time points. "Wang Naiyan said.

▲ Tucson China CTO Wang Naiyan At present, as the electronic and electrical architecture of the whole vehicle is rapidly moving from a functionally independent distributed architecture to a functionally integrated domain control architecture and a more advanced centralized electronic and electrical architecture 3.0 stage. The evolution of architecture and the mass production of domain controllers, the core components of centralized electronic and electrical architecture, are becoming the key to capturing the next commanding heights of automotive market share. Almost the vast majority of powerful car companies are advancing their own electronic and electrical architecture evolution, and mass production of models will be concentrated in 2023-2024.

As an autonomous driving enterprise with the same self-research and mass production capability of domain controller, according to Wang Naiyan, unlike most domain controllers developed based on Nvidia modules on the market at present, Tucson China developed domain controller products based on Nvidia Orin system-level chips, which can provide more fine-grained scene technology customization capability and have more competitive advantage in terms of price.

"Because the module is made in advance, there are very few parts that can be customized. According to Wang Naiyan, the power supply of Chinese trucks is basically 24V at present, which may be different from the 12V battery access technology provided by NVIDIA modules to passenger cars. If OEM and other manufacturers adopt modules to improve their own technical systems, there may be mismatches or safety hazards.

"In fact, if autonomous driving companies can really develop domain controllers based on SoC chips, I'm afraid it's mainly Tucson. "Wang Naiyan is confident in Tucson's autonomous driving technology. According to him, it is expected that in July this year, Tucson China will hold a "Tech Day" technology conference to focus on introducing Tucson China's autonomous driving technology, algorithms and other hard core technology capabilities.

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