Alibaba has officially entered the field of autonomous driving. What are its chances of winning the battle against Baidu with its collaborative intelligence strategy?

Smart cars and autonomous driving are the future development direction of the automotive industry. Whether in China or the world, autonomous driving has become the focus of investors. In China, not only are there many start-ups engaged in the research and development of autonomous driving technology, but the three major Internet giants BAT are also making plans.

Compared with Baidu and Tencent, Alibaba was the last to enter the field of autonomous driving. Baidu's autonomous driving project started as early as 2013. Tencent announced its autonomous driving strategy in November last year. It was not until April 16 this year that Alibaba announced that Wang Gang, chief scientist of Alibaba's artificial intelligence laboratory, was leading a team to conduct autonomous driving research. On September 6, Wang Gang announced Alibaba's autonomous driving route.

How can Alibaba, which came late, catch up?

In the automotive sector, Alibaba initially focused its investment on smart cars other than autonomous driving. Alibaba and SAIC reached a strategic cooperation in 2015. In 2016, the two parties jointly launched the "world's first mass-produced Internet SUV" Roewe RX5 and jointly established Banma Smart Driving.

Alibaba has been developing its own in-vehicle operating system, AliOS. This operating system supports Banma Smart Driving and the Roewe series of Internet cars. Alibaba's plan is to first equip cars with intelligent operating systems to enable them to have intelligent control, perception, service and other capabilities, and then focus on autonomous driving after they are relatively mature.

Although Alibaba has its own strategic plan, time waits for no one. Baidu has already established a leading position in the field of autonomous driving in China. It is not easy for Alibaba to catch up.

Currently, many departments of Alibaba are researching driverless cars. The autonomous driving route announced by Alibaba this time is different from the mainstream single-vehicle intelligence, and it focuses more on solving the problem of driverless cars in a collaborative intelligent way.

At present, most of the autonomous driving technology solutions focus on the car itself, using various sensors to provide the car with road condition information. Alibaba believes that the intelligence of a single vehicle is not enough to solve the many problems faced by autonomous driving, and the ultimate realization of autonomous driving requires vehicle-road collaboration.

Why collaborative intelligence?

Those who support the vehicle-road collaborative technology route believe that single-vehicle intelligence has visual blind spots and is limited in dealing with complex road conditions, extreme weather, and mixed traffic.

The radar, camera and other sensors that self-driving vehicles need to be equipped with are very expensive. Low-end models that are very sensitive to price find it difficult to accept the high cost, which greatly limits the popularization of self-driving technology. In order to ensure the safety of self-driving vehicles, most vehicles must be able to achieve self-driving.

Collaborative intelligence relies on traffic intelligence facilities outside of cars to achieve autonomous driving. This type of intelligent facility is in a static deployment state, can obtain road condition information in real time, and can serve multiple cars at the same time.

This intelligent facility is composed of a variety of sensors and computing units, and can be hung on the road like a traffic camera. Currently, the working radius of this facility is 200 meters, and the collected information can be transmitted to surrounding vehicles in real time to help vehicles achieve autonomous driving.

With the assistance of intelligent traffic facilities, the vehicle's own requirements for sensors can be reduced and the corresponding costs can be better controlled.

The advantage of this solution is that the data is collected uniformly by intelligent traffic facilities and sent to vehicles on the road at the same time, ensuring the real-time and unified data; at the same time, nearby vehicles can be dispatched uniformly, which helps reduce the chance of traffic accidents.

If this solution is feasible, the focus of autonomous driving will shift from improving the performance of automotive sensors and the level of artificial intelligence to the construction of road infrastructure. The government will play a more important role in it, and various technical standards will be easier to unify.

If we only rely on the intelligence of a single vehicle, when driving at high speeds, nearby vehicles will have a time difference in perceiving the environment due to differences in their own sensors and artificial intelligence levels, which may cause safety hazards.

Bicycle intelligence is wrong?

But we cannot conclude that collaborative intelligence is necessarily better than single-vehicle intelligence.

At present, autonomous driving still mainly relies on single-vehicle intelligence. Although the sensors required for single-vehicle intelligence are expensive, with the advancement of technology and the gradual scale of the autonomous driving industry, its final cost may not be unacceptable.

Single-vehicle intelligence does not rely solely on the vehicle itself to achieve autonomous driving. At present, high-precision maps are developing rapidly in China. The development of high-precision maps is to solve the problem of physical limitations of automobile sensors. If the development of high-precision maps is perfect enough, cars do not necessarily have to rely on traffic intelligence facilities.

The cost of intelligent transportation facilities must also be considered. If the density of deployment of such facilities is too high in actual application scenarios, the cost will also be too high.

Intelligent transportation facilities have actually surpassed the car itself and entered the category of road infrastructure. However, infrastructure construction faces large investment scale and long construction period. If the on-board sensors of autonomous vehicles are not developed, they will be heavily dependent on the infrastructure on the road and may face the dilemma of "no road to go".

The future development direction of the automobile industry is not only intelligence and autonomous driving, but also networking. The popularization of autonomous driving is actually very dependent on networking. All the cars on the road are autonomous cars, without manual driving, which is naturally conducive to ensuring safety.

However, this is not realistic.

In the short term, or even for a long time, human driving cannot be banned. Some people enjoy driving, and there is no reason to forcibly ban them from driving on the road. Self-driving technology must learn to deal with human behavior.

This depends on the progress of autonomous driving and artificial intelligence technology on the one hand, and on the popularization of the Internet of Vehicles on the other. Through the Internet of Vehicles, ordinary vehicles and autonomous driving vehicles can communicate, share information, and even coordinate unified dispatch, which can ease the conflicts between the two parties and reduce the occurrence of traffic accidents.

At present, single-vehicle intelligence is developing in the direction of improving the level of on-board artificial intelligence and reducing the cost of sensors. This is also necessary for the ultimate realization of collaborative intelligence. The two are not mutually exclusive.

Alibaba's strengths and weaknesses

Now that Alibaba has entered the field of autonomous driving, it must face the disadvantages of its late entry.

The solution announced by Alibaba this time is a general solution, but it focuses on logistics. This is closely related to Alibaba's huge demand for logistics. The corresponding development scenario of Baidu's autonomous driving is more comprehensive.

Baidu has been working in the fields of autonomous driving and artificial intelligence for many years. This year, it mass-produced L4-level Apollo buses. Baidu has also built a large-scale Apollo ecosystem with hundreds of partners.

What Alibaba needs to face is not only Baidu's leading technology, but also the ecological system laid out by Baidu.

Baidu's layout of autonomous driving emphasizes openness and sharing. The market prospects of autonomous driving are very broad. Not only BAT is planning, but traditional car companies also don't want to miss it. Traditional car companies and Internet giants have different advantages and need to learn from each other, but this does not mean that there are no contradictions.

Traditional car companies, based on their own interests, certainly hope to have a certain say in the field of autonomous driving, rather than letting Internet giants take over everything. Baidu's open attitude is conducive to reducing the concerns of car companies and creating a win-win situation.

In contrast, Alibaba's layout is more comprehensive and powerful.

Alibaba has previously teamed up with China North Industries Group Corporation to create Qianxun Location to provide high-precision positioning services. On the same day that Alibaba announced its autonomous driving technology route, Alibaba DAMO Academy and the Ministry of Transport’s Highway Research Institute announced the establishment of a joint vehicle-road collaboration laboratory to study vehicle-road collaboration technology, autonomous driving technology, and intelligent infrastructure.

Alibaba's layout in the field of autonomous driving has always focused on strong alliances, pushing autonomous driving technology towards infrastructure, and thus playing a more important role in technology promotion.

After being acquired by Alibaba, AutoNavi made rapid progress in high-precision maps. After Cadillac's Super Cruise project was commercialized, AutoNavi became the first domestic map manufacturer with experience in commercializing high-precision maps.

At present, Alibaba has laid out multiple links in the autonomous driving industry, including high-precision maps, high-precision positioning, in-vehicle operating systems, autonomous driving technology, and Internet car manufacturing, forming a relatively complete industrial chain, and has stronger control and influence over related companies.

Although Banma Intelligent Driving, a joint venture between Alibaba and SAIC, has been opened to other car companies and has gained a number of new customers, car companies that want to play a more important role in the fields of smart cars and autonomous driving will be more cautious when cooperating with Alibaba.

What does Alibaba’s entry into autonomous driving mean?

With Alibaba's entry, all BAT companies have entered the autonomous driving field, which further verifies the correctness of the development direction of autonomous driving.

Not only Chinese Internet giants, but also technology giants such as Google, Apple, Microsoft, Intel, and Nvidia have invested in the field of autonomous driving. Autonomous driving has actually become an indispensable strategic business for major technology giants in the future.

In China, Baidu started early and achieved the most significant results. However, the entry of Alibaba and Tencent and the competition of many start-ups will inevitably impact the original dominance of Baidu. The participation of more players is ultimately a good thing for the development of China's autonomous driving technology. In the early stages of the development of autonomous driving technology, the more technical paths are tested, the greater the possibility of China's autonomous driving technology winning.

As a latecomer, Alibaba will most likely spend money to make up for the time lost. Acquiring or investing in related start-ups will be an important way for Alibaba to make up for the gap. The competition between BAT for start-ups in the field of autonomous driving will become more intense.

Competition in the field of autonomous driving has already begun, but it remains to be seen who will win.

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.