Key words of autonomous driving in 2024： end-to-end, first share, cost performance.

In 2024, the field of autonomous driving ushered in an unprecedented capital boom. The continuous upgrading of Tesla FSD system and rumors of entering China, like a shot in the arm, have stimulated the market’s infinite reverie of end-to-end autonomous driving technology. The capital market responded quickly, and many self-driving companies in China rushed to the market. Horizon, Wen Yuan Zhixing, Xiaoma Zhixing, Youjia Technology and other companies successfully listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and the US stock market, and the financing and valuation of the self-driving industry continued to rise.

The rise of end-to-end autonomous driving technology

In 2024, autonomous driving technology ushered in the upsurge of end-to-end autonomous driving. Tesla has become a leader in this field with the continuous upgrading of its FSD system. Tesla’s version of FSDV12 introduced a brand-new end-to-end neural network architecture, which realized full automation from perception to vehicle control. The subsequent version of FSDV13.2 further improved the user experience and realized the "point-to-point" automatic driving function. The breakthrough of this technology not only makes Tesla shine in the North American market, but also paves the way for it to enter the China market soon.

At the same time, Huawei, Ideality, Momenta and other companies have also actively deployed in the field of end-to-end autonomous driving. Huawei Gankun has released a high-level Gankun ADS3.0 version that supports intelligent driving in urban areas, and an ADSSE version that can realize high-speed navigation assistance and basic intelligent parking. From 2.0 to 3.0, the intelligent driving ability has been optimized a lot, and many new specific functions have been added, such as NCA traffic around the island, NCA roadside parking function, lateral anti-collision avoidance function, and anti-collision function by mistake. Tramway has experienced a variety of models equipped with Huawei Gankun Intelligent Driving ADS3.0 this year. Among them, the most impressive one is Zhijie S7, which can park in the underground parking lot, find parking spaces and park them without driving, and can also complete the operations of courtesy to pedestrians, reversing and avoiding by itself.

On October 23rd this year, LI announced the industry’s first new generation of dual-system intelligent driving scheme, end-to-end +VLM full push. Then on November 28 th, the intelligent driving from the ideal parking space to the parking space took the lead. In less than a month, the 2024 Ideal AI Talk forecast: the whole scene of high-speed cities will be upgraded to end-to-end +VLM, and will be fully pushed to AD Max users on December 31. Accompanying with the "end-to-end" of the ideal, it has achieved phased results, and for the long-term technical pre-research, the ideal has also adjusted the organizational structure of its own intelligent driving team. Recently, in the face of media interviews, Li Xiang even talked about AI Kan Kan. He regarded artificial intelligence as "the whole of the future", and thought that the appearance of large models would fundamentally change human beings. End-to-end +VLM would break the "inertia thinking" that users used to use smart driving, and let consumers truly realize that smart driving is no longer an "unnecessary choice" but an "optimal solution" for travel life.

"Extreme cost performance" smart driving products are favored.

Consumers’ demand for intelligent driving products is no longer limited to functional perfection and advanced technology, and the level of cost performance has also become an important consideration for their choice.

In order to meet the changes in the smart driving market, Mimo has released three "extremely cost-effective" intelligent assisted driving products, HP170, HP370 and HP570, which fully meet the mass production needs of high, medium and low-priced smart driving models. At present, the second-generation HPilot’s extremely cost-effective NOH smart driving products have entered the delivery state one after another.

On November 29th, Mi Mi Zhixing celebrated its fifth anniversary. According to the internal letter, the company’s intelligent driving products have been equipped with more than 20 models, and the mileage of intelligent driving has exceeded 250 million kilometers, providing services for more than hundreds of thousands of car owners; In the past five years, the average price of bicycles in the industry has been reduced from several hundred thousand yuan to several tens of thousands yuan, which has helped the intelligent upgrading of the logistics industry and delivered nearly 900,000 orders for express delivery, supermarkets and other logistics scenes in China. In terms of technology research and development and product landing, we will continue to increase investment in research and development, ensure that the second-generation smart driving products at the end of the year are delivered at a fixed point in mass production, create an urban map-free NOA scheme with the best cost performance in the industry, and achieve full coverage of the whole country.

DJI Zhijia has successfully opened up the market with the strategy of "extremely cost-effective". DJI has greatly reduced the cost of high-level intelligent driving system through its innovative "in-line platform", which makes the technology that only appeared in high-end models in the past more and more popular in the low-end market. DJI Intelligent Driving System, based on pure vision scheme and independent of high-precision maps and lidar, can realize L2+ intelligent driving function on 100,000-150,000 vehicles. Such cost control not only helps the car factory reduce the production cost, but also promotes the popularization of intelligent driving technology.

Capital feast of self-driving track

In 2024, more than a dozen self-driving companies have submitted listing applications or have been listed. It can be found that self-driving companies have ushered in a "capital feast". On January 5, 2024, Sagitar Juchuang was officially listed and became the "first share of lidar" in Hong Kong stocks. Since the second half of this year, such as Qi Chuxing, Black Sesame Smart, Horizon, etc. have been listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The latest information shows that Youjia Innovation started its IPO on December 17, and plans to officially list on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange with "2341.HK" as the stock code on December 27.

With the help of many companies including autonomous driving companies, the amount of new share financing of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange has increased significantly this year. According to the data of Deloitte China, as of December 31st, 2024, it is estimated that 69 new shares will be raised in Hong Kong, which is about HK$ 87.6 billion. Compared with HK$ 46.3 billion raised by 70 new shares in 2023, the number of new shares decreased by 1%, while the total amount of financing increased by 89%. In 2024, while the mainland’s new stock market slowed down, more Chinese-funded enterprises went public in the United States and raised more funds. About 53 Chinese companies will raise $1.843 billion, compared with 34 companies raising $855 million in 2023. In 2024, China enterprises listed in the United States, Kykrypton, Wen Yuan Zhixing and Xiaoma Zhixing ranked in the top three.