In October 2020, GAC New Energy, as a traditional car company, and NIO, as a new powerhouse in car manufacturing, respectively ushered in an unprecedented OTA upgrade.
After the upgrade, the vehicles both received high-precision positioning services, officially making high-precision positioning services a standard service for realizing smart driving, and also making smart connected cars formally integrated into the Internet of Everything era.
GAC New Energy's Aion LX ushered in the third batch of cities (covering a total of 50 cities) with intelligent driving functions supported by high-precision positioning through the OTA upgrade.
Based on the high-precision positioning service provided by Qianxun Spatial Intelligence, Aion LX can realize intelligent driving without intervention on highways and urban expressways covered by high-precision maps.
NIO has officially launched NIO OS 2.7.0, which is the first time a new car maker uses a high precision map to enable the NIO Pilot function to autonomously enter and exit highways and city expressway ramps covered by the high precision map.
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This OTA upgrade between GAC New Energy and NIO makes the industry further think about the role of high precision maps in intelligent driving, as well as in intelligent transportation systems and smart cities.
In the process, NIO and GAC's stock price, also rose sharply, NIO market capitalization was once close to $ 40 billion.
In the era of Internet of Everything, the bridge between the real world and the digital world interaction is precisely high-precision maps coupled with high-precision positioning.
At present, the vast majority of people are using mobile phones or car navigation, are 5-10 meter level accuracy, which can only tell vehicles or pedestrians which road is located.
However, this is not enough for L2-L5 level intelligent driving cars, because robot drivers do not have the environmental awareness and judgment ability of human drivers, and accidents often occur within millimeters.
Therefore, intelligent vehicles need sensors such as LIDAR, cameras and millimeter waves to help robot drivers increase their environmental awareness, domain controllers to enable robot drivers to make planning decisions, and high-precision positioning to help robot drivers know where they are and where they are going.
For drivers (both human and robot drivers), the more accurate the positioning will be, the safer it will be, hence the need for centimeter and even millimeter accuracy in smart driving cars.
The "software-defined car" is the only way to be intelligent and networked in the future. Whether it is the GAC Aion LX or NIO ES8, they all choose OTA for rapid firmware upgrade and iteration.
In these models with L2+ level intelligent driving functions, GAC New Energy and NIO have made high precision positioning service a standard feature of intelligent connected cars, which shows the future trend of technology.
As a new component in the smart grid-connected car industry, high-precision positioning service can only provide lane level navigation service for car owners if it has passed ISO 26262 for functional safety and ASIL A-D for electronic functional safety certification of the R&D process, thus making driving safer for human drivers and robot drivers.
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Especially with the AR-HUD, lane level navigation will be more intuitive and can be combined with intelligent driving functions to provide safety warnings to human drivers.
When the human driver fails to react in time, the intelligent driving robot driver will automatically take over the vehicle and perform emergency braking or lane change, thus avoiding accidents and even traffic violations. The prospect of such an application is very promising.
The GAC New Energy Eion Aion LX applies Qianxun Spatial Intelligence's high-precision positioning service, which is the result of five years of struggle behind Qianxun Spatial Intelligence.
According to Nian Jinfei, general manager of Qianxun Spatial Intelligence's Intelligent Driving Division, six mass-produced models will be equipped with Qianxun Spatial Intelligence's high-precision positioning service this year, and the commercialization of high-precision positioning service has finally ushered in the large-scale application in the smart car field.
The development of the high-precision positioning industry also reflects the attraction of large-scale applications.
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Capital is also paying attention to this market, and Qianxun Spatial Intelligence, which completed $1 billion in financing in October 2019 and has a valuation of over $13 billion, is currently the highest valued company in the industry.
The fact that capital is willing to vote for it with a huge amount of money is also an acknowledgement that Qianxun Spatial Intelligence has its own core competencies at the core team, service, algorithm, and product level.
Based on cloud computing + satellite positioning technology innovation, Qianxun Spatial Intelligence is the first in China to provide centimeter-level positioning services.
In addition to the service, it can also combine the information received by various sensors and provide a set of intelligent algorithms using big data and cloud computing to achieve spatial and temporal intelligence for various terminal devices.
From a commercialization point of view, Qianxun Spatial Intelligence is also a company at the forefront, as evidenced by the fact that mass-produced models such as the GAC Aion LX are equipped with its high-precision positioning service.
It is too difficult to become an automotive supplier, but Qianxun Spatial Intelligence is supporting six production models in 2020, and more models will be equipped with its high-precision positioning service in the future.
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High-precision location services are not just used in the smart grid-connected car industry, but are a necessity for the entire AIoT era.
At present, all over the country are actively constructing new infrastructure projects such as closed test site of intelligent networked vehicles, demonstration area of open road, intelligent high speed, etc., which also begin to gradually apply high-precision positioning technology.
China's first "super highway" - Zhejiang Hang Shao Yong smart highway, as a set of automated driving lanes as a special high-speed, also applies high-precision positioning + high-precision map, as well as roadway coordination perception equipment and other technologies.
High-precision positioning services, from serving smart grid-connected cars, to serving smart grid-connected cars closed test site, open road demonstration area, and even the highway, this is high-precision positioning in the continuous expansion of their service industry, from serving smart cars to serving intelligent transportation and even smart city.
But, as a software algorithm-centric technology, how can it realize its commercial value?
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Nian Jinfei, general manager of Qianxun Spatial Intelligence's Intelligent Driving Division, who has cultivated the high-precision positioning market for many years, believes that it is necessary to provide different market-oriented business models for different types of services and expand the business horizontally and vertically based on high-precision positioning services.
Horizontal expansion means expanding applications in different industries, from smart cars to intelligent transportation to other industries, and making low-cost industry-level applications by productizing services.
Vertical expansion is to dig deep into the value of the industry, from algorithms to chips and modules, to provide integrated software and hardware solutions, and to provide middle office management services, to do industry digital asset management, for example, to help highways, ports and other asset-heavy industries, more efficient management of their assets.
In the era of the Internet of Everything, the application of high-precision positioning is much more than in smart cars, or intelligent transportation, smart city field.
Drones flying in the sky, self-driving cars running on the ground, unmanned farming machines farming in the fields, unmanned ships sailing in the water, and even consumer electronics markets such as mobile phones that humans don't keep their hands on every day will all be applied to high-precision positioning services.
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