Li Shufu: Removing the steering wheel is extremely irresponsible for autonomous driving

Li Shufu: Removing the steering wheel is extremely irresponsible for autonomous driving
At this year's World Internet Conference, driverless cars were clearly a focus, and more and more emerging Internet companies showed great interest in car manufacturing. Li Shufu, chairman of Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, expressed his views on current hot topics in the industry, such as Internet car manufacturing and driverless cars.
Robin Li: Baidu's driverless cars can be put into commercial use in three years and mass production in five years.
Li Shufu: That’s impossible! It’s too far away. It can’t be achieved today, and it can’t be achieved tomorrow!
Li Shufu, Chairman of Zhejiang Geely Holding GroupLi Shufu, Chairman of Zhejiang Geely Holding GroupLi Shufu: Maybe everyone thinks that automobile companies are "traditional" and Internet cars are trendy and high-tech, but in fact, this is not the case. Automobile companies are now developing information technology and developing intelligent interconnection standards that connect to the Internet. For cars to enter the Internet environment, the prerequisite is that the network environment inside the car must be formed, and at the same time, the car must be connected to the external Internet world. Only when both conditions are met can the car be truly seamlessly integrated into the Internet from the control experience to the derivative services, and it can be called a true Internet car.
From the day it was born, the automobile company is a combination of industry and information technology. Whether in the mechanical age, the electrical age or the information network age, the new technologies of each era will be quickly absorbed and integrated by the automobile industry. So today we say that an automobile company is not a steel plate assembly company, but a complex of machinery, electronics, electrical appliances, and information technology. Automobile products have moved from the past mechatronics to the integration of "man-machine + mechatronics + electronic information". Therefore, the automobile company itself is a high-tech company, and it is an Internet company.
Internet cars are just cars, but they can be used in an Internet environment. Therefore, the development of Internet cars must be done by an automobile company. This is a big premise. The advantage of Internet companies lies in software development. The systems and architectures they make need to be applied to many brands of cars, and then they are constantly iterated and upgraded. But now all the automobile industry peers in the world understand this. It’s not that they don’t understand, everyone understands it, so they will not let the ideas of Internet companies become reality.
Internet companies treat imagination as reality, while automobile companies need to continuously iterate and advance based on reality. These are two different directions. We are down-to-earth, moving forward step by step, while they are hanging in the air about to land. It is very different.
The development of Internet cars is a continuous iterative upgrade. We are now working on the overall design of the basic architecture of cars and the basic architecture of the Internet. After that, we will continue to iterate and upgrade. Some Internet companies do have some good ideas that we can apply, adopt, and cooperate with. However, as a car company, I cannot become an appendage of an Internet company. This is impossible.
The so-called "Internet car" literally means that the car is used in the Internet environment, and the car can be controlled through the Internet, so that the car can be driven freely in the entire Internet environment. This is the Internet car in the full sense. It must be lightweight, electric, intelligent, must be used in a network environment, automatically charged, and self-driving.
Electrification is the premise of Internet cars. Without a continuous supply of electric energy, it is difficult to achieve real-time online intelligence. There are many technical and application details, such as automatic energy replenishment. If it is a gas-powered car, it is difficult to achieve automatic refueling, but automatic charging is relatively much simpler. For another example, since it is an Internet car, it must be online, not offline, under any circumstances. Once it is disconnected from the Internet (Internet of Vehicles), it is no longer an Internet car. To stay online in real time, it must be electric energy.
Judging from the overall development trend of automobile products, the electrification of driving energy is the prerequisite for Internet cars, intelligence is the characteristic of Internet cars, and lightweight is the development direction of all car products.
Installing application software in ordinary cars and transplanting mobile Internet applications from mobile phones into cars can give cars some Internet functions, but this is too superficial. On the other hand, if I don’t transplant these functions, can I still use them in the car space through the mobile phone? It is still possible. Therefore, if the Internet car is not considered and developed as a whole system, it is impossible to build the core technology.
Some companies claim that driverless cars can be commercialized and even put into mass production in a short period of time. That is impossible. It is too far away! We have been in this industry for such a long time. In addition, I think Volvo is completely ahead of other car companies in the world in terms of driverless technology. No other car company can surpass it. So we are very calm in this situation. Driverless cars are definitely a direction, but they cannot be realized today or tomorrow. I think most of the technologies can be realized within five years, but they can be realized conditionally. All roads can realize driverless cars, which is impossible within five years. The premise of safe large-scale application of driverless cars must be achieved with the cooperation of perfect infrastructure, including road environment, vehicle networking system, intelligent traffic management, legal revision, etc.
With current technical conditions, it is realistic to achieve highly assisted driving functions. For example, the Volvo XC90, which has been put on the market and mass-produced, has achieved highly assisted driving functions from 0 to 130 kilometers. On the highway, you can let go of your hands and let it drive itself. This is possible.
Under unmanned driving conditions, the driver can choose not to drive, but as long as the system prompts, he must take over the vehicle. If you do not take over manually, the car will find a suitable place to stop directly and tell the driver that the road ahead is not suitable for unmanned driving and can no longer maintain unmanned driving mode; of course, if the road is suitable, the vehicle will prompt the driver, and the driver can take a rest at this time. This is to ensure safety to the greatest extent.
Therefore, the driverless car we want to achieve is a system that emphasizes the cooperation between vehicles and people, and must be coordinated with vehicles, roads, and infrastructure. At this stage, it is extremely irresponsible to simply cancel the steering wheel and call it the realization of driverless car.
Once upon a time, he was called a "car maker" and even had a "madman's quotes" -

"Please allow private enterprises to try boldly and dream of making cars. We don't want the government to pay a penny for the billions of dollars of investment, and we don't want to borrow a penny from the bank. Private enterprises will bear all the costs themselves, and we don't want the government to bear the risks. Please give us a chance to fail!"
"In 100 years, people will be able to buy parts and assemble cars by themselves, just as it is easy for individuals to assemble computers now. By then, how can Ford and GM not close down?"
"Buying a Volvo is not something you can buy just because you have money, but it's also not something you can't buy if you don't have money, so money is not important."
"Geely is spending so much money to buy a world-class luxury car company. If it doesn't have the support of intellectual property rights, the company it buys will be powerless. So we are very particular about intellectual property rights."

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.

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