From the day of the 2018 Beijing Auto Show is getting closer, in the two years of the event, there will be many new models equipped with automatic driving technology will be exhibited, such as Beijing Automotive New Energy's LITE, cloud π7, automatic driving became a Hot technology section.
Now let's take a look at the characteristics of foreign technology companies focusing on the development of autonomous driving technology.
1. Billion-dollar "big business"
By observing the above table, Xiao Bian found that foreign auto-pilot technology companies had fewer rounds of financing and all stopped at the B round. This coincides with domestic technology companies engaged in research and development of autonomous driving technology. This also proves from the side: Regardless of domestic and foreign, automatic driving technology is still in a preliminary stage of development.
Even so, there are still many companies (such as Cruise, Argo, Otto, NuTonomy, etc.) that have been heavily acquired by well-known international veteran car companies, and the acquisition amount is more than 100 million US dollars. In the turbulent wave of auto-piloting, although emerging technology companies have emerged in an endless stream and competition is fierce, veteran car companies appear to have a more serious sense of crisis: if they do not make a transition, they will be “stabbed on the beachâ€. With its rich experience and abundant financial resources, veteran car companies have rapidly transformed their time to research and development of new technologies and have chosen to acquire emerging companies that occupy the forefront of the technology chain.
For these start-ups, car manufacturing is a long and complicated process. It is not enough to have talent and technology. To achieve mass production, you have to rely on veteran car companies. Cruise's CEOVogt said after joining GM for a year: “I deeply understand the difficulties of mass production of vehicles. You must not only solve the problems on the production line, but also discover hidden potential safety issues. Companies like General Motors are The new car is very careful before it is delivered to the user."
2, the United States as the main body, the two wings of England and Japan
In addition to the rounds of financing, foreign autonomous driving technology companies have one point in common with the country, that is, their distribution areas have shown a tendency to “get togetherâ€. Among them, the United States has become the focus of the creation of these start-up companies, with as many as nine. In addition to Argo and NuTonomy in Pittsburgh and Cambridge, seven other companies have their headquarters in San Francisco.
The reason, Xiao Bian thinks, on the one hand, San Francisco has many world-famous institutions of higher learning, such as Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley, and it is one of the most important science, education and cultural centers in the world. A good education environment has nurtured many talents. For example, the founder of Zoox, Jesse Levinson, graduated from the Stanford University driverless car project.
On the other hand, the Silicon Valley, the most important high-tech R&D base in the world, is also located here, where the world’s more outstanding technical talents are brought together. And in terms of autonomous driving alone, California not only has the most complete auto-driving industrial chain in the world, but also ranks among the top in the world in terms of policy. In April this year, the California Public Utilities Regulatory Agency issued a new proposal: California will allow automatic driving of cars to and from passengers without the need for human drivers. At present, China has only opened five cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chongqing, and Shenzhen for autopilot drive tests. This shows that California has strong support for the automatic driving business.
In addition, in addition to the United States, there are two other companies that were born in the United Kingdom and Japan. The reasons are probably inseparable from the fact that both Britain and Japan are traditional car powerhouses and have huge economic and human resources.
3, the "three high" founder
When it comes to talent, you have to pay attention to the background experience of the above-mentioned company founder. By querying their resumes, Xiao Bian found that they all belong to the “three highs†type, ie, highly educated, high-tech, and high starting point. In the auto-pilot industry, Stanford University and MIT can be called the Whampoa Military Academy in the United States. For many years, it has delivered a lot of talent for the industry. The founders of Zoox and Cruise, for example, graduated from these two schools. On the technical side, not only is George Hotz, the world’s first hacked hack who cracked the iPhone, but also companies such as Element14, Icera and Neul, which were successively acquired by chip giant Broadcom, NVIDIA, and China’s communications giant Huawei. The "genius entrepreneur" StanBoland, with a total purchase of more than $ 1 billion.
Even more remarkable is that half of the founders of the above 11 companies have served on Google and have participated in Google’s self-driving team project. Since 2005, Google has been developing driverless technology and is the world's most advanced company in driverless technology. In contrast, Baidu can be said to be the leader in the autopilot industry in China. The founders of many autopilot technology companies in China have also served in the autopilot division of Baidu, such as Peng Jun, the founder of Xiaoma Zhixing, and Jingchi Technology. Founder Wang Jin. It can be said that the project experience owned by Google and Baidu has become a springboard for practitioners to establish autonomous driving companies on their own.
4, leading domestic
Although there are many similarities, foreign autonomous driving technology companies are still in a leading position compared with domestic ones.
First of all, although the amount of financing for domestic autonomous driving technology companies is relatively large, they are all in the order of tens of millions of US dollars. However, looking at similar foreign companies, the amount of their financing is even more astounding. In foreign countries, the financing of billions of dollars seems to have become the norm. After all, this is a money-laden business, but it is also a huge return to the future business.
Secondly, in the R&D level of autopilot, the L4 level is different from that of China's autonomous driving technology companies. L4 and L5 levels are evenly divided among foreign technology companies. And their main business is focused on the "transportation" aspect, paying more attention to vehicle sharing. Today, self-driving taxis have become a common consensus in the industry because they are more commercialized than privately driven private cars.
Judging from the current progress, most of the foreign autonomous driving technology companies plan to have their products launched around 2020, and Cruise has even implemented vehicle sharing services for San Francisco employees. At present, China’s autonomous driving science and technology companies have all stopped at the road test stage. It will take some time to further promote self-driving cars in the city. From this, it can be seen that there are indeed gaps in capital and technology between China and the rest of the world, and the long march of autonomous driving in China is still a long one.
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