TapTechNews August 27th news, LatePost Auto had a conversation with Yang Dongsheng, senior vice president of BYD, dean of the New Automobile Technology Research Institute, and the person in charge of intelligent driving.
In the conversation, Yang Dongsheng believes that intelligent driving is an inevitable trend, and the future development will be faster. At the same time, he believes that L4 will definitely come, but L4 is a process. In China, within ten years, he thinks L4 is only implemented in some scenarios.
As the dean of the New Technology Institute, Yang Dongsheng spends almost one-third of his energy on intelligent driving. He believes that advanced intelligent driving will take people's usage scenarios as the starting point, and the functions will become more down-to-earth. Advanced intelligent driving is not only used in cars priced above 200,000 yuan ($28,571), in the future, even models priced below 100,000 yuan should have it.
TapTechNews attaches part of the conversation content as follows:
What is BYD's current idea about intelligent driving?
Now the most important thing for General Wang (Wang Chuanfu) is intelligent driving. He pays great attention to technology, and often calls me at eleven or twelve o'clock at night. He used to pay more attention to the power plan when he called before. I started in the New Technology Institute doing power, and then later did intelligence. Three years ago, General Wang didn't ask much about intelligent driving.
Now when I receive a call at night, it's almost all related to intelligent driving.
What changes has Wang Chuanfu's high attention brought? When did BYD determine that intelligent driving is one of the core strategies?
It is already now. At the beginning of last year, we determined that, and at that time General Wang had already made intelligent driving a company strategy. By July, when the Tengshi N7 was released, the Celestrial Eye (BYD's advanced intelligent driving assistance system) went on the market.
From not paying much attention to the most attention, what changed your mind?
First of all, the arrival of AI. AI empowers all aspects of industries, far more than just intelligent driving. The trend of AI is already irreversible and irresistible. This has caused our thinking.
In addition, in the electric vehicle market, BYD has established a relatively large market advantage and also formed a technological advantage. General Wang is also thinking, is the intelligent strategy our second step? Now the industry is all saying, the first half is electrification, and the second half is intelligentization. This sentence was first said by General Wang in 2018. From the perspective of the development trend of technology, it was also at this time period last year.
We talked to some senior intelligent driving talents, and they would think that BYD doesn't believe in autonomous driving.
In the past, people would think whether BYD's investment in intelligent driving is not enough? Or is the perception and planning not advanced enough? Perception is actually the goal. When our perception changes, a lot of talents will naturally come.
We now attach great importance to attracting AI talents. Last year, BYD held an intelligentization release conference, which received wide attention in the intelligent driving and algorithm industries. The industry thinks that BYD is changing, and the goal has clearly changed. We also talked about generalized intelligent driving a few days ago, and I believe this will touch the industry.