At Tesla’s first investor day, Musk once again made a surprising statement: "Tesla cars are robots on wheels, and no one and no company can approach Tesla’s level in real-world AI." As soon as this was said, the two major topics of AI and robotics once again triggered industry discussions.
At the beginning of 2023, other new forces, such as ideals, also said that they should build systematic capabilities around AI robots. "Intelligent electric vehicles with autonomous driving will also become the earliest artificial intelligence robots."
From the perspective of the whole automobile industry, it is the concentration that first puts forward the advanced concept of "automobile robot". As early as the beginning of its establishment in 2021, Jidu took "automobile robot" as its product positioning, and automobile robot has also become another product masterpiece under the Geely SEA framework.
Objectively speaking, Musk’s statement made the world see the tremendous changes that AI technology has brought to the automobile industry, and also strengthened the development trend of "robot" of automobiles.
"Automobile robot" conforms to the future development trend, and "three self" is the basic attribute.
"No AI, no intelligence" has become the consensus of the automobile industry. In the past, fossil energy was the core power source of automobiles in the era of fuel vehicles 1.0, and electric vehicles 2.0 were driven by electricity. In the current era of smart cars 3.0, the underlying driving force came from AI technology.
Like Musk, Xia Yiping, CEO of Jidu, always emphasizes that AI technology is the "soul" when he mentions "car robot". Xia Yiping once said, "The era of smart car 3.0 is the era of automobile robots. The starting point of the era change is that the’ driving right’ of automobiles is transferred from human beings to AI, and AI drives the evolution of automobiles." Concentration also defines the basic attributes of "automobile robot", that is, "free movement, natural communication and self-growth", which has also become the product concept of concentration automobile robot.
Why do you want to divide it like this? This is actually due to the nature that automobile robots are both cars and robots. When a car has the brain of AI, it is no longer just a simple means of transportation, but a "robot" with self-thinking and powerful ability. Therefore, automobile robots must first be able to "move freely" and rely on high-order intelligent driving to drive to where they need to go; Secondly, we should have enough high-level intelligent interaction ability, constantly understand the new needs of users, and complete effective communication and action execution; Finally, it can continue to grow through the learning of big data, understand users more and more, and improve its ability boundary.
From this point of view, "automobile robot" does not have to look like a human body, but whether it has the "three-self" ability. Even if it becomes human, it still can’t escape this underlying logic. Just like Tesla’s humanoid robot, it must be able to walk on its own, communicate smoothly, and learn and evolve continuously.
In addition to the standard demonstration of concentration, have car companies gone out of another new path? At present, not yet.
Whether Tesla said "cars are robots on wheels" or "artificial intelligence robots" that he wanted to build, or even independent brands directly label their products with "car robots", in fact, they are all different expressions of the same logic.
From hardware-led to software-defined, automobile is actually a transfer from automobile attributes to robot attributes. The advancement of intelligence must not be achieved overnight, and it needs a long-term accumulation process. Although everyone is called a "robot", their abilities may differ by a hundred thousand miles.
Compared with Tesla and other followers, Jidu, as the pioneer of new species of automobile robots, has integrated AI genes into the product concept of "three self".
Geely SEA’s vast architecture is fully redundant in terms of space, electricity, intelligence, autonomous driving, safety and performance. Therefore, the centralized automobile robot also has a considerable degree of freedom, which can integrate higher-order intelligent capabilities and further improve the "three-self" level of automobile robots.
Specific to the function, the centralized high-level intelligent driving is empowered by Baidu Apollo’s L4-level automatic driving technology, and one of the core functions, point-to-point navigation assistance PPA, can meet the "free movement" in most daily use scenarios. High-level intelligent interaction is supported by off-line voice, touch, visual recognition and other multi-touch interactions to realize "natural communication" in any scene. Among them, the global off-line voice interaction recognition speed is 500ms, the response speed is within 700ms, and it can be used smoothly even when the network is disconnected. In addition, based on the underlying technical support accumulated by Baidu AI in the past 10 years, Jidu automobile robot can continuously learn and "grow up" according to user behavior habits and driving data.
Although the birth of automobile robot is defined by software, it is equally excellent in mechanical quality. As Jidu automobile robot is another masterpiece of Geely SEA’s vast architecture, it is "of the same ancestry" with Volvo, Polar Star and Lotus in terms of mechanical performance and safety guarantee, and the quality of the whole vehicle is directed at international luxury brands.
In addition, Geely’s manufacturing technology has also reached the international first-class level. For example, Geely Hangzhou Bay Smart Factory integrates advanced manufacturing technologies such as 5G, AI and industrial big data, and the four production workshops are highly automated. As the first batch of "future factories" in Zhejiang Province, Geely Hangzhou Bay Smart Factory has become a "new model" for China’s intellectual creation.
It is conceivable that the product quality of Jidu automobile robot created by Geely’s excellent craftsmanship is worthy of recognition.
In the real version of Iron Man and Jarvis, Jidu automobile robot will take the lead in applying the China version of ChatGPT.
If Jarvis, the smart and reliable AI housekeeper in Iron Man, depicts the ultimate form of artificial intelligence in the future for us. Then, with the gradual maturity of AI empowerment and core technologies, automotive robots are turning Jarvis in the movie into the reality of the automotive industry.
ChatGPT-like application of Baidu Wenxin is a turning point. It can be said that with ChatGPT, AI’s empowerment for the automotive industry has evolved.
As an AI conversation model, ChatGPT has a natural connection with cars, which has the potential imagination to subvert the voice assistant in the intelligent cockpit.
On February 14th this year, Jidu announced that it would integrate the comprehensive capabilities of Baidu Wenxin to create the world’s first large-scale artificial intelligence interactive experience for smart car scenes, so as to support automotive robots to achieve further progress in natural communication. As the first "crab-eating" brand, Jidu’s move has also brought unprecedented changes to smart cars.
The reason why Jiji was able to announce that it was the first to realize the first launch of ChatGPT-like technology is also because the pure-blood automobile robot of Geely SEA has already possessed high-level intelligent capability. A smarter smart car can access more powerful AI capabilities, which is a condition that traditional cars do not have. Simply put, a tractor can’t match a Boeing engine.
As we all know, Jidu is the first car company to introduce Qualcomm 8295 into the cockpit, and it is also the first to localize the AI algorithm, which can ensure the efficient response speed of cockpit interaction even in the scene of poor network environment or even disconnection.
At present, the voice interaction of most car companies can not be separated from the dependence on the network, and there is still a distance from "natural communication".
At present, the pre-embedding of hardware by Jidu automobile robot in advance, coupled with the empowerment of Wen Xin in a word, means that the product concept of "natural communication" will be pushed to a new height.
In the face of new technology, both traditional car companies and new forces are struggling to seize the opportunity to seize the commanding heights of the industry. With the continuous empowerment of AI technology, the application of intelligent interaction not only enhances the brand image and experience, but also accelerates the digital transformation process of the automotive industry, laying the foundation for the advanced automotive robots.
With all parties in the industrial chain, including car companies and Internet giants, the pace from technology research and development to commercialization is unprecedented. Geely SEA’s vast architecture of integrated "automobile robots" is also being imitated by more and more industry partners and gradually "integrated".