Fang Cheng Bao 8 turns into Huawei system. Obviously, BYD's 1 billion monthly investment in intelligent driving is far from enough.

BYD and Huawei, two Shenzhen companies, did not originally start out as car manufacturers, but are now the most technologically powerful players in China's new energy vehicle market, standing side by side.

BYD has various powerful weapons in its hands, including blade batteries, super hybrid DM-i, Yisifang platform, Yunnian intelligent body control system, etc., but it is not good at things like software, ecology, and intelligence.

Huawei’s greatest strengths lie in its smart cockpit and smart driving.

The two puzzle pieces fit together naturally without being polished.

Today, the combination of Huawei and BYD has become the hottest topic. Recently, BYD officially announced that it will use Huawei's ADS3.0 advanced intelligent driving assistance system on the Formula Leopard 8.

Leopard 8 is a high-end off-road vehicle under Fangcheng Leopard. At the Beijing Auto Show in April, the official said that its price was 500,000 yuan. With the Leopard 5 having a bad start and being forced to cut prices to survive, the importance of Leopard 8 is self-evident.

As a high-end model, Leopard 8 must be equipped with the best high-end intelligent driving assistance system currently available, there is no doubt about this, such as the Eye of God intelligent driving system on the Yangwang series. Under normal circumstances, Leopard 8 will also follow the same rules.

However, BYD chose to marry Huawei.

As we all know, BYD has always been known for its "vertical integration". Although it also purchases parts from other manufacturers, it still pursues self-sufficiency in core parts. But this time, BYD has rarely added Huawei to its list of core suppliers.

BYD chose Huawei because the system is easy to use. The popularity of the models under the Wenjie brand and the high attention paid to the Xiangjie S9 are ready-made examples. Although there is no perfect intelligent driving system, judging from the soaring sales, consumers still have a high degree of recognition for Huawei.

Huawei claims that the ADS 3.0 system can already achieve "parking space to parking space" intelligent driving, that is, it can ignore the restrictions of road conditions, cities, and time. In addition, it is also the epitome of end-to-end intelligent driving.

Although many domestic manufacturers claim that they can achieve "end-to-end", common sense tells us that a true end-to-end model requires large models, high-end chips, big data processing platforms and strong integration capabilities. Currently, Huawei may be the only company in China that can meet all these conditions at the same time and have independent control.

If nothing unexpected happens, the ADS 3.0 system will become a core selling point of Huawei's high-end models for a long time in the future. It is actually quite reasonable for new energy vehicle manufacturers to purchase the ADS 3.0 system and use it as a basis to impact the high-end market.

According to normal logic, although the ADS 3.0 system is easy to use, it will not make BYD directly abandon its own "Eye of the God" intelligent driving system.

This only proves one thing, that is, the "Eye of God" intelligent driving system has not met expectations, or in other words, it cannot meet the needs of users for the time being.

BYD’s investment in intelligent driving systems is not small.

At BYD Dream Day earlier this year, Wang Chuanfu said he was ready to invest 100 billion yuan in vehicle intelligence. Currently, BYD's intelligent driving team has more than 7,000 people. According to Zhao Changjiang, general manager of the Denza sales division, the team has to pay 1 billion yuan in wages a month.

In addition to spending money, BYD has also started poaching people. Zhou Peng, the former head of Baidu's cabin driving fusion intelligent driving technology, has joined the company and is responsible for the end-to-end large model regulation and control algorithm development. It is obvious that BYD is a little impatient in the face of the surging development of intelligent driving and is working hard to make up for its shortcomings in intelligent driving.

But the question is, can intelligent driving be achieved in a short period of time by just throwing money and gathering people? The situation is obviously not so optimistic.

The advanced version of Huawei's ADS 3.0 system needs to be based on high-performance lidar. Huawei started the research and development of lidar as early as 2016, and now has 8 years of experience.

At the same time, the ADS 3.0 system is also supported by Huawei's Pangu big model, which has been developed on the basis of Huawei Cloud since 2019 and released its first generation of products in 2021. As for the Kirin chip, which has attracted much attention from the outside world, it has been developed since 2004.

In addition to Huawei, other manufacturers also started and accumulated experience in the field of intelligent driving relatively early. For example, Xiaopeng has already installed lidar in its cars as early as 2021.

In terms of accumulation of intelligent driving, BYD does lack a foundation.

Strictly speaking, BYD only really started to pay attention to intelligent driving in January this year. In just a few months, it was impossible to achieve a technological breakthrough, or even to fully equip and set a unified goal.

More importantly, BYD also needs strong data processing capabilities, relatively powerful artificial intelligence, and the adaptation between various subsystems, none of which can be accomplished in a short period of time.

Just as it is difficult for other manufacturers to catch up with BYD in terms of the three-electric system, BYD cannot achieve success in intelligent driving overnight.

With BYD's R&D capabilities and amazing investment, it is not impossible for it to accomplish these goals in the next few years, but distant water cannot quench immediate thirst. BYD is unrivaled in the price range below 200,000 yuan, but the mid-to-high-end market above 200,000 yuan needs a high-level intelligent driving system as a selling point, and the Eye of God obviously does not have the ability to turn the tide for the time being.

The sales of the three high-end models, namely, the Denza N7, Denza N8 and Fangcheng Baobao 5, were all lower than expected, which indirectly proves that BYD really needs a high-end intelligent driving system to enter the high-end market, but it has not yet produced such a system. In this case, BYD can only settle for the second best and purchase Huawei's ADS 3.0 system.

For BYD, the ADS3.0 system is definitely an emergency transition strategy. How long it will cooperate with Huawei depends on when its Eye of God can mature.

So, when will it be mature? I don't know. The only thing that is certain is that BYD will definitely need to continue to spend a lot of money. On the basis of its own chips, cloud computing, big data and other supporting facilities, Huawei's 7,000-person team has already spent 30 billion yuan. How much will BYD need to build all of these from scratch? Perhaps 100 billion is the most conservative estimate.

Why is "intelligent driving" nonsense? Why do we have to "buy rather than make" and ask Huawei to save the situation? The price is too high, which may be the closest to the real reason.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.