The R&D of autonomous driving technology has been at rock bottom worldwide in the past few years; except for the U.S. and China, all crucial auto countries such as Germany, Japan and Korea have been left behind in the race. The source of autonomous driving technology is big data, and it plays a significant part in how the two great powers, the U.S. and China, have managed to generate and maintain momentum for R&D. A wave of elimination will be inevitable in the next three years, but automakers that pull through and create a small-scale profit model will likely see a bumper crop in 2030!

The cities that began actively conducting the pilot runs of Robotaxis or autonomous driving technologies around the world are San Francisco, Phoenix, and China’s Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing, Shenzhen, etc., Even though other major countries, such as Germany, UK, Japan, etc., also actively enact related regulations to conduct the pilot runs of L3 vehicles, but they are still far away from the ultimate technology application of Robotaxis on urban roads. It’s still obviously a duel between the two greats – China and USA in autonomous driving technology currently, and the aggressive planning of the Shanghai City government might be the demonstration city of the intellectualization of global urban transportation after a few years.

Baidu’s Apollo Day just marched into its second year. Despite its short history, Baidu’s ample autonomous driving tech experience of many years has put the company on the world stage. The expanded service of Baidu’s Robotaxi next year will be the focus of autonomous driving industries worldwide. If everything goes well, it could mean significant progress in the technology’s realization and commercialization.

The progress of the R&D of autonomous driving technology obviously encountered technological bottlenecks in the past 3 years since the pandemic. Either Tesla or Ford, their timetable of the commercialization of the autonomous driving vehicles had been delayed repeatedly that made the public and the investors began losing their patience and confidence. L2 will remain as the mainstream in the market within at least 5 years ahead, but the R&D works of L4/L5 will keep going as major IT companies or carmakers know that anyone survived this battle can change the game and dominate the direction of the car market.

The four megatrends in the automotive industry, CASE (connectivity, autonomy, sharing, and electrification), have taken shape and entered the "Warring States" period within the past decade, thanks to the focused efforts of global automakers. Tapping into AI technology, connectivity, autonomous driving, smart cockpit, as well as intelligent design and production have made fundamental changes to the automotive industry. The world is unlikely to see a new car model lacking AI-related technology after 2030.

The two major technology camps - L2 and L4 autonomous driving, are nowadays in the process of going on different operation model… The former one is mature and widely deployed in many new models introduced by carmakers; however, the latter one, in the situation that it’s under the run-in phase of technology, transportation laws, insurance regulations, and the consumers’ acceptance, can only conduct pilot-runs in designated areas of just a few cities (e.g., Beijing, San Francisco). As the leader of Chinese startup brands, XPeng’s development of L2 technology is far ahead of others worldwide, which had raised L2 application scenarios up to a new level that it’s worthy of expectation to further expand to other major carmakers in the future.

Qualcomm and Nvidia will play an extremely important role in the future automotive industry, and they may even become the standard setters of technology and co-decision-makers of new business operations for carmakers (e.g., OTA software update downloads, intelligent cockpit information services, and self-driving car sharing business). Will carmakers be able to dominate everything in the future automotive world like they have been?