The global craze for autonomous driving

Autonomous driving may revolutionize the future shape of transportation and society, and is therefore a focus of attention worldwide. So, what is self-driving car? In a broad sense, cars with driver assistance functions can be called "self-driving cars" or "intelligent networked cars". According to international standards, self-driving cars can be classified into five levels according to the degree of intelligence: L1 - assisted driving, L2 - partially autonomous driving, L3 - conditional autonomous driving, L4 - highly autonomous driving, and L5 - fully autonomous driving (driverless).

The International Society of Automated Engineers (SAE) defines Level L2 as "a dynamic driving task in which the automated driving system continuously performs lateral and longitudinal motion control within a specific design operating range, and the driver performs failure response and monitors the automated driving system." The autonomous driving system drives the vehicle, but it is the driver who monitors the vehicle's surroundings and takes over for the vehicle when a situation arises. Simply put, if the vehicle can control the direction (lateral) and acceleration and braking (longitudinal) at the same time during the driving process, it meets the L2 level of autonomous driving. However, during the entire driving process, the driver must focus on and monitor the surrounding environment in real time, and be ready to take over the vehicle. From a global perspective, L1 and L2 level self-driving cars have already achieved mass production, and autonomous driving is not far from us, it is always around us.

Autonomous driving involves extremely complex multi-industry integration, which involves a large number of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and data IoT in addition to traditional vehicle manufacturing. Since it is difficult for traditional manufacturers to form relevant technology development capabilities in a short period of time, this gives an excellent opportunity for relevant technology companies outside the industry to enter this huge emerging market. Artificial intelligence startups set out to develop autonomous driving algorithms and complete system solutions for specific or generic scenarios; while Internet companies, based on their strong comprehensive strength in the data and capital industries, hope to develop L4 and L5 platform-level autonomous driving systems for the future travel sector.