China Passenger Car Association & Core Consulting: July 2023 Intelligent Connected Vehicle Insight Report

Trends in China's New Energy Vehicle Market

• China's new energy vehicle market sold 779,000 vehicles in June 2023, down 3.2% from the previous month and up 32% year-on-year, with a penetration rate of 32.6%. Among them, passenger car sales were 746,000, down 2.7% from the previous month, and commercial vehicle sales were 32,000, down 12.6% from the previous month and up 45.2% year-on-year.
• Overall, the market maintained a good development momentum, and the penetration rate of new energy vehicles steadily increased.

China's new energy vehicle market structure

• In July 2023, new energy SUVs accounted for 46.2%, a year-on-year increase of 7.5 percentage points. New energy MPVs grew by 333% year-on-year this month. The MPV model's new energy progress was relatively late, and the year-on-year growth rate was relatively high. The growth rate of sedans slowed down, and the share gradually decreased. The new energy passenger car market structure is gradually changing.
• In the commercial vehicle market, sales of microvans saw a significant decline year-on-year, while sales of trucks increased significantly this month, up 67.4% year-on-year.

Loading rate statistics

• In terms of the proportion of vehicles installed, the proportion of new energy passenger vehicles installed at level L2 and above is significantly higher than that of fuel vehicles. In the first half of 2023, the installation rate of L2-level assisted driving functions in new energy vehicles has been close to 40%. In terms of price range, most models above 160,000 yuan are already equipped with L2-level assisted driving functions.
• The current penetration rate of L2+ assisted driving functions is relatively low, mainly because achieving L2+ assisted driving requires more sensor hardware assistance and the cost of installing the vehicle is relatively high. At the same time, when driving on urban roads, customers do not have a strong perception of the L2+ function, which makes the cost-effectiveness of installing the L2+ assisted driving function on the vehicle relatively low.

Installation rate statistics - AEB automatic emergency braking function

• As an important active safety function, AEB has been made standard in most new cars launched in 2023, and the penetration rate of AEB function in passenger cars above RMB 160,000 has reached 67%. In the field of new energy, the installation rate of AEB function continues to increase, but the price range of large-scale installation remains above RMB 160,000. Due to the pressure of vehicle manufacturing costs, new energy vehicles below RMB 160,000 lag behind fuel vehicles in the installation of auxiliary functions.

Installation rate statistics - full-speed ACC adaptive cruise control function

• The full-speed ACC adaptive cruise control function has a high installation rate in both fuel vehicles and new energy vehicles. The installation rate in the new energy vehicle range of 240,000-400,000 yuan is close to 99%, which has basically achieved full popularization.

Installation rate statistics - ALC automatic lane change function

• The ALC automatic lane change function is a L2+ level assisted driving function, with a low overall installation rate. Its supporting models are mainly concentrated in new energy vehicles with a price of more than 320,000 yuan. The realization of the ALC function requires high requirements for vehicle side and rear monitoring, and requires the vehicle to be able to achieve automatic lane change, which is a prerequisite for achieving point-to-point assisted driving in urban/highway sections.

Installation rate statistics - APA automatic parking function

• The APA automatic parking function requires the vehicle to automatically identify parking spaces and automatically control the lateral and longitudinal movement of the vehicle body. This technology has been developed in the field of fuel vehicles for many years. Due to its high cost and low configuration scale. Due to the development of advanced assisted driving functions, many assisted driving companies have launched technical solutions for driving and parking. The automatic parking function is realized with the technical architecture of assisted driving. On the one hand, this technology improves the cost-effectiveness of the assisted driving system, and on the other hand, it accelerates the popularization of APA and provides advanced parking functions such as remote control parking, tracking parking and autonomous valet parking for automatic parking. At present, more than one-third of new energy passenger cars are equipped with APA functions. In the first half of this year, the installation rate of the 320,000-400,000 price range has declined to a certain extent. The 240,000-320,000 range has increased to a certain extent.

• NOA stands for Navigate on Autopilot, which means navigation-assisted driving in Chinese. According to the standards of the Automotive Driving Automation Classification, NOA is between L2 and L3 autonomous driving, and can realize intelligent assisted driving from A to B according to the route set by the user. Currently, NOA is mainly divided into two application scenarios: highway NOA and urban NOA. Many research institutions have set 2023 as the first year of urban NOA.
• The urban NOA assisted driving function is the last link in the closed loop of the three major assisted driving scenarios: high-speed scenarios, parking scenarios, and urban scenarios. It is an important sign that smart cars can achieve L3 assisted driving.
• Compared with highway NOA, urban NOA has more complex road conditions, which puts higher requirements on perception solutions. Traditional high-precision maps are difficult to respond to the real-time changes in complex road conditions in cities due to their low update frequency and high collection costs, causing many companies to turn to "light map" solutions.

• The light map solution requires intelligent driving algorithms to integrate and process multi-sensor information and convert road information into 3D geographic information in real time.
• As an industry pioneer, Tesla is also the first company in the industry to adopt BEV+Transformer for visual perception tasks. Subsequently, China also began to increase its research efforts. This technology unifies static road information and dynamic road participants into a coordinate system. Through real-time perception, it can instantly generate a "high-precision map" of the current road, providing technical feasibility for the industry to "de-map".

• After key technologies have become mature, many domestic car companies have begun planning to push urban NOA function OTA since 2023.

• On March 31, Xiaopeng launched Xmart OS 4.2.0 and opened point-to-point city NGP. On April 11, Haomo Zhixing said that it would realize the city NOH function in the third quarter of this year and develop 100 cities in 2024. On April 12, Zhiji Auto, on April 16, Huawei, and on April 18, Ideal all released city NOA time nodes, and city NOA officially entered the first year of mass production.