[Autohome?New Energy]?Super broadcast, with information every week. There are three topics worthy of our attention this week. The first is the new progress in the incident of Tesla Autopilot crashing into a garbage truck. The focus of netizens is what Tesla calls "Full Self-Driving. We have also invited lawyers to provide professional answers on whether there is false advertising in the optional package "FSD)"; the second topic is that this week Weilai received a credit line of 10.4 billion yuan from six banks. It was once jokingly said that it would not survive 2020. Is Weilai stable this time? ;The third topic is that Li Auto has recently submitted a prospectus to the US SEC. What impact will it have on future development? Next, please listen to our interpretation. On the afternoon of June 24, 2020, on the eastbound direction of Nanping Expressway in Shenzhen City, an accident occurred in which a garbage truck illegally merged and collided with a Model 3 in the target lane. The owner of Model 3 reported that before the scratch occurred, the vehicle was in Autopilot assisted driving state. When the dirt truck merged with the line, the vehicle did not brake but accelerated. Therefore, the car owner believed that the Tesla "Full Autonomous Driving Capability" option package he purchased at a high price of tens of thousands of yuan had hidden dangers and endangered his life safety. After negotiating with the authorities and failing to meet his demands, he chose to defend his rights.

『The moment of the accident recorded by the recorder (picture from Zhihu)』 This week, we contacted Tesla officials, who said that in this accident, after retrieving background data, It was found that the car owner was not holding the steering wheel or depressing the brake pedal when the accident occurred, and therefore did not have the responsibility to supervise the safety of the vehicle when the vehicle was in Autopilot mode. (Event News Portal) Although the car owner was comforted afterwards, the car owner was not forgiven. However, this response made many netizens question it. A netizen named Changing Destiny 2011 said: "Then don't call it the fully autonomous driving capability option package. You are like the several big pieces of beef on the picture of Master Kong's Braised Beef Noodles." , the result is a line of small words, "This picture is for reference only." This comment received a high number of likes. Another netizen directly pointed out that this was a "word game and a bit suspected of publicity and fraud." In response to the questions raised by netizens, Autohome specifically sought out lawyer Zhan Shaohua from Beijing Jingshi Law Firm for consultation. The other party told us: Tesla has already reminded us of the imperfection of "fully autonomous driving capabilities" before product delivery, and when the vehicle starts Autopilot, it will also monitor whether the driver is holding the steering wheel. To remind the driver to always observe the surrounding road conditions and be ready to take over at any time. Therefore, legally speaking, it does not constitute fraud. However, using "fully autonomous driving capabilities" as a promotional point has created a certain degree of confusion for buyers, and may involve false propaganda.

"The moment of the accident recorded by the recorder (picture from Zhihu)" Let us return to this incident. From the exposed accident video, we can see that before the accident, Model 3 and the dump truck were traveling in parallel in the same direction. When the dump truck found that the road ahead was blocked, it forced a lane change. Later, it was discovered that Model 3 did not give way, so it took braking measures, but It was too late, and the Model 3 still hit the left wheel of the dump truck. The industry analyst said that the probability of forced lane changes in the United States is very low, so the Autopilot system may not have experience in handling similar incidents, which leads to the failure to regard vehicles that forcefully change lanes as a threat and avoid them. This problem also highlights that Tesla Autopilot is still lacking in localization adaptation in China. There is no effective response to road conditions with Chinese characteristics such as traffic jams and forced merging. Fortunately, Tesla is already setting up a Chinese engineering team to provide more localized solutions. So at this time, perhaps everyone still has a doubt in their minds, that is, is it possible to achieve the "full autonomous driving capability" claimed by Tesla? And when will it be achieved? In Tesla's fully autonomous driving capability option package, there are currently six functions. They are automatic parking, assisted lane change, automatic assisted navigation driving, smart summon, recognition of traffic lights and stop signs and making decisions. Reflection and autonomous assisted driving on city streets. Among them, the first four functions have been pushed to consumers by Tesla, but they are still in the testing stage. Tesla also annotated the status of vehicle functions in the vehicle system. The official stated clearly that the functions are still in the testing stage. In the beta version, a human driver needs to take over at any time to use these features. At the opening ceremony of the 2020 World Artificial Intelligence Conference held this week, Tesla CEO Musk said at the meeting: “I am very confident about L5 autonomous driving in the future. Tesla is expected to complete L5 autonomous driving within one year. Basic functions. At present, there are no fundamental problems in achieving L5 autonomous driving, but there are many details that need to be resolved.” According to Tesla, all its current models have the hardware to achieve full autonomous driving. , and the most difficult problem that needs to be overcome now is how to train the software to deal with complex scenarios in real life, so that the vehicle knows how to control it in the corresponding scenario.

Musk said that it is expected that within a year, its models will be able to achieve L5 level autonomous driving. However, from the perspective of some car owners, since car companies claim that they have "fully autonomous driving capabilities" and set high prices, car owners should receive services that match the name. Rather than during use, many "low-level" problems arise, such as the insufficient response to forced congestion mentioned in this article. Therefore, we do not agree with car companies’ pre-publicity for technologies that have not yet been realized, which can easily lead to misleading. At the same time, we also found that even though car companies emphasized that current assisted driving functions require full driver monitoring, there are still very few car owners who ignore the rules and even deceive the driver monitoring system to relax their awareness of road dangers. Here, we call on all car owners to monitor the road conditions around the vehicle at all times and keep their hands away from the steering wheel as much as possible when using assisted driving technology. Another major topic that everyone is paying attention to this week is NIO, which was once jokingly said that it would not survive 2020. It has recently released a series of good news. Among them, the most important one is undoubtedly the credit line signed with 6 banks up to 10.4 billion yuan. At the signing ceremony, NIO CEO Li Bin, “the most miserable person in 2019”, beamed with joy. According to the strategic agreement, the six banks signed this time will provide comprehensive credit facilities of RMB 10.4 billion to NIO China to support the operation and development of NIO China's business. NIO China will carry out extensive cooperation with various banks in business areas such as corporate account system construction, supply chain finance, and automobile finance. At this time, netizens who don’t know the truth may still be confused. Last year, there were many articles saying that Weilai was burning too much money, that its lifetime free battery replacement service was unsustainable, and that it lost money every time one of its models was sold, etc. . The editor believes that this can be analyzed mainly from two levels. The first is internal factors. Although on the surface, we find that Weilai has indeed burned a lot of money in the past, but a lot of this money was used for research and development, supply chain and sales system establishment. It may be difficult to see a return on these investments in the short term, but in the long run, they can bring technical barriers, cost advantages and sales expansion to themselves. Laying a solid internal foundation is one aspect, and the other aspect is external factors. In the 2020 national subsidy policy issued in April this year, it is clear that battery-swap models are not subject to the requirement that the selling price of new energy passenger vehicles must be below 300,000 yuan (including 300,000 yuan) before subsidies. Although the price of NIO's models is higher than 300,000, they support battery swapping, so they can all enjoy subsidies. This also shows that the state clearly supports new energy models that can replace batteries. With the support of the state, it is natural for them to be favored by investors. In fact, Weilai does not intend to continue to engage in loss-making business. Li Bin has long proposed the BaaS (Battery as a Service; Battery as a Service) concept, which turns the battery into a paid service to users through battery replacement. It’s just that NIO is currently in the stage of corporate expansion, so expanding the number of users is a top priority. Currently, NIO can attract a large number of new customers through lifetime free battery replacement. Starting from July 10, NIO will charge a battery replacement fee for all non-NIO owners and all operating vehicles. The battery replacement fee consists of = battery replacement degree * (electricity fee + service fee). At this point, NIO’s battery swap model has at least taken a step towards service sustainability. We believe that as NIO's delivery volume gradually increases, the first car owner's lifetime free battery replacement policy may also be adjusted, thereby increasing the profitability of the battery replacement system. Although NIO's profit model has gradually become clearer and sales of its models have continued to rise, we must also see the challenges NIO faces under its current opportunities. For example, as far as we know, the Hefei Municipal Government has some gambling agreements with its investment in NIO, such as the need to achieve certain sales targets and tax payments. If NIO fails to achieve the mentioned targets, the investment will be recovered. , and also pay high interest. Therefore, Weilai’s future is still full of dangers. This week we also received a piece of major news, that is, another new car-making force, Li Auto, officially submitted a prospectus to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and will raise funds through the Nasdaq market for the first time, with the stock code LI. At this point, the long-rumored IPO rumors of Li Auto have finally settled. Why did Li Auto choose this time to IPO? The industry generally believes that it may be related to the fact that the current U.S. capital market is more optimistic about smart electric vehicles. We found that Tesla’s stock price has reached US$1,544.65, with a total market value of US$286.3 billion (approximately 2 trillion yuan), ranking far ahead in market value. Second, Toyota; in addition, NIO’s stock price has also continued to rise in this half year. In addition, judging from the company's current operating conditions, Li Auto's net loss in the first quarter of this year narrowed significantly compared with the past few years, thanks to the delivery of its model Li ONE. In terms of sales, Ideal ONE's sales in the first half of the year also have a considerable advantage compared to new energy models of the same level. After completing Series D financing on July 1, Li Auto’s cash flow exceeded US$1 billion. These show that the current operating status of Li Auto is relatively good, which is also conducive to the smooth progress of the IPO.

So how much investment does it take to develop autonomous driving technology? We might as well look at the investment of some well-known autonomous driving companies in this technology. For example, Cruise, the autonomous driving company acquired by General Motors, burned more than 700 million US dollars for the parent company in 2018, while another more famous autonomous driving company Driving company Waymo is rumored to be burning through more than $1 billion every year. The current financing scale of Li Auto is insufficient for the development of autonomous driving technology, and IPO is an excellent channel to obtain more financing. According to reports, Li Auto plans to implement the NOA function (assisted driving based on map navigation) from 2021 to 2022. By 2023, the company will launch a new model X01 with standard hardware supporting L4 level autonomous driving capabilities. It is expected to start in 2024 Through OTA, its models will have L4 level autonomous driving capabilities. Last week, we were still worried about the operating conditions of new car-making forces such as Byton Motors and Bordrin Motors. A week later, good news came from both NIO and Li Auto. Not surprisingly, Li Auto will become the second new Chinese car-making force to land on the U.S. stock market after Weilai. It is worth mentioning that there is recent news that Xpeng Motors is also planning an IPO. These news make us realize that in the current new energy vehicle market, the head effect is emerging, and resources are also tilted towards these leading car companies. As for the future, the competitive pressure in the new energy vehicle market is likely to increase instead of decreasing, because powerful traditional car companies such as Volkswagen, BMW, and Ford have already entered the battlefield. For domestic car companies, especially for new car-making forces, the good times may be far from coming.

(Picture/Text? Autohome? Hu Yongbin)