From Tesla To Weilai: How To Escape From Autopilot'S Curse Of Death?

Weilai was once again pushed to the forefront of public opinion.

On August 12, Lin Wenqin, founder of Shangshan Ruoshui investment management company, founder of yitongtianxia catering management company and founder of meiyihao brand management company, died of a traffic accident in Hanjiang section of Shenhai expressway. He was 31 years old. At that time, Lin Wenqin was driving a Weilai es8. At the time of the incident, the vehicle was equipped with NOP (pilot assisted driving system).

This is the first accident in which the auxiliary driving function of Weilai has caused the death of the owner, and it is also the second fatal accident in Weilai in half a month. At more than 5 a.m. on July 30 this year, a Weilai ec6 caught fire after hitting a stone pier on the Shanghai Pudong expressway. The driver failed to escape in time and died. Weilai later responded that the fire department believed it was a traffic accident, and the battery pack was in good condition after preliminary judgment of the damaged vehicle.

The full name of Weilai NOP is the navigation on pilot system. As an automatic driving assistance function, NOP can enable vehicles to automatically merge into the main road, cruise on the main road and intelligently select the optimal lane according to the navigation planning path in most expressways and urban elevated sections covered by high-precision map According to the navigation planning, it can automatically switch to the next high-speed / elevated road, and automatically leave the main road.

At present, there are only three car companies that provide this similar function. In addition to velai NOP, there are NOA (navigation on autopilot / automatic assisted driving system) launched by Tesla and NGP (navigation guided pilot / full speed autonomous navigation driving system) of Xiaopeng automobile. In addition, the ideal car also plans to launch NOA this year.

The automatic driving ability of the above-mentioned companies has exceeded L2, but it has not reached L4. Therefore, when using the relevant auxiliary driving functions provided by the above-mentioned car companies, the car owners should still put their hands on the steering wheel and need to observe the road environment at all times. Strictly speaking, only vehicles with L4 level can be regarded as automatic driving vehicles, while NOP, NOA and NGP can be identified as automatic driving assistance systems.

However, Tesla has had a number of major accidents in different regions of the world due to its automatic driving assistance function. At this stage, there are great risks in using or blindly believing in the automatic driving function.

Tesla is the benchmark enterprise in the intelligent electric vehicle industry, and is also regarded as the "apple" of the automobile industry, promoting the transformation of the automobile industry to electric and intelligent. But product defects and frequent accidents have also polarized Tesla's reputation.

On the way to catch up with Tesla, China's new forces of Internet car building have the most positive attitude. Therefore, after Tesla launched NOA in 2019, several new forces of car building have also launched their own pilot assisted driving function.

From Tesla to Weilai, serious accidents caused by automatic driving have undoubtedly sounded the alarm for the automatic driving industry, Weilai and the new forces of China's car making. In the process of pursuing technological progress, how to avoid falling into Tesla's "Curse"?

Similar accidents occur frequently

According to the pictures of the accident scene circulated on the Internet, Lin Wenqin's friends and Wei Lai's description, the accident happened at more than 2:00 p.m. on August 12, Lin Wenqin's vehicle ran into an operating engineering vehicle on the Hanjiang section of Shenhai Expressway and was killed.

On the evening of August 14, an individual public account named "meiyihao" issued an obituary. Late that night, Zhang Bo, general manager of Weilai Xiamen regional company, wrote a brief description of the incident on Weilai app, and said that Weilai was cooperating with the local traffic police and other relevant departments in the accident investigation, and would assist the user's family members in the aftermath work. Li Bin, founder, chairman and CEO of Weilai, and Qin Lihong, co-founder and President of Weilai, also expressed their sympathy for the deceased and stressed that they would cooperate with the traffic police to investigate the accident.

At present, all parties speculate that the cause of the accident is that the vehicle driven by Lin Wenqin did not recognize the engineering vehicle and hit it directly when the NOP function was turned on. However, the details of the incident need further investigation.

In the user manual of Weilai es8, NOP is defined as the function of deep integration of navigation system and pilot automatic assisted driving (NOP's basic function). However, it is also mentioned that the function is still in the stage of continuous optimization.

The user manual also lists a number of warnings, especially mentioning two important points: like pilot and other driving assistance functions, "pilot assistance" cannot respond to static obstacles (such as roadblocks, warning triangles, etc.), if there is an accident or construction area ahead, please take over the vehicle immediately to control the direction and speed. The relative speed between this vehicle and the vehicle in front is greater than 50 km / h. If the front vehicle is stationary or slow, pilot may not be able to stop. In case of the above situation, please exit pilot immediately. Do not try pilot to stop or follow the vehicle in front of you under the above conditions.

When Weilai introduced the NOP function, the external tone was always "NOP is not equal to automatic driving, but auxiliary driving function". When using this function, drivers still need to pay attention to the traffic environment at all times and need human intervention at critical moments.

In fact, this is not the first time that Weilai NOP has caused an accident.

At the end of January this year, a Weilai es8 hit a man and a Wuling Hongguang parked on the highway when starting NOP on the highway.

On July 16, a Weilai ES6 collided with a stationary engineering vehicle while using NOP on the highway. The accident is very similar to this fatal accident. According to the traffic police department's notice, after investigation, the new energy vehicle driver Zhuang returned to Wuxi from Hangzhou, on the highway, he started the auxiliary driving mode. When passing through the accident section, the driver did not pay attention, and the vehicle did not recognize the reflective cone barrel behind the construction area to avoid collision. Instead, the driver directly rushed into the construction vehicle at the speed of 80 km / h. Fortunately, the personnel in both vehicles were wearing safety belts, but there was only a slight scratch.

It can be found that the above-mentioned accidents all met the warning in the user's manual, and the driver failed to take over the vehicle.

However, it is not clear whether the driver's hands were detached from the steering wheel at the time of the fatal accident, whether their attention was focused, or whether there were other technical defects in Weilai.

"NOP can provide convenience, but it needs to be awed. NOP may make the driver careless when driving in disguise. Whether or not to use automatic driving and auxiliary driving functions, driving must be cautious. This accident has also sounded the alarm for everyone. " An owner of Weilai in Beijing told the 21st century economic reporter.

Some car owners said that if they hold the steering wheel with both hands when assisting driving, accidents may occur because they are unprepared.

In addition, there are also users on Weilai on the handling of this matter there are doubts“ Why did the accident on the 12th wait until the 14th incident ferments. If this is not a relatively influential public figure, is Weilai going to pretend to be deaf to such a serious accident? "

Difficulties of "automatic driving"

As early as 2016, Tesla had the world's first autopilot fatality.

On January 20, 2016, a rear end collision accident occurred in Handan section of Beijing Hong Kong Macao Expressway in Hebei Province. A Tesla started autopilot automatic driving mode and directly collided with a working road sweeper. Gao, a driver of model s, was killed.

Compared with Weilai, Tesla has more vehicles, more frequent accidents, and many fatal accidents.

It can be found that bumping into a stationary vehicle is the main state of the accident. In other words, the recognition of static and irregular targets is the difficulty of automatic assisted driving technology.

From the technical logic point of view, whether Tesla or Weilai, the defects of assisted driving accidents may come from the perception system. There are some differences in perception between the two. Tesla is a pure vision scheme, while Weilai NOP is a vision + high-precision map. The perceptual algorithms of both cameras come from Mobileye.

Some industry insiders told the 21st century economic report that the infrastructure of Weilai NOP system is composed of a vision system composed of camera and millimeter wave radar. The camera sensing algorithm is provided by Mobileye, and the millimeter wave radar and sensing algorithm are from Bosch.

It's very easy to find static objects on the road, but why can't the autopilot recognize them? Some industry insiders told reporters that both cameras and millimeter wave radars have defects in recognizing irregular shaped objects and stationary objects, which need lidar to make up for.

From the perspective of automatic driving technology, Tesla has indeed maintained a leading position in the world, and has played a leading role in accelerating the competition and follow-up of other car companies.

In 2019, after Tesla officially launched the navigation assisted driving function NOA, several new forces of China's car making began to make relevant layout. In October 2020, Weilai launched NOP, and compared with NOA, with the help of domestic environment and high-precision map, in addition to expressways, it can also drive in urban elevated roads and main ring roads (such as Yan'an viaduct in Shanghai, outer ring road in Beijing, etc.). At the end of 2020, Xiaopeng automobile released NGP, which declared that "NGP is the most suitable pilot assisted driving system for China". In addition, ideal car also released its own NOA this year, but it hasn't been pushed to users yet.

Why are new forces keen on automatic driving and automatic assisted driving? On the one hand, it is to cultivate their core competitiveness in the future era of intelligent electric vehicles. On the other hand, autopilot has opened a new software profit pool for car companies, and these new car makers hope to let the capital market see a new story.

Whether NOA, NOP or NGP, consumers need to order relevant functions after purchasing the vehicle.

On August 12, Li Bin said in the second quarter financial report telephone conference: "in the second quarter, the selection rate of NiO pilot has exceeded 80%. As of July, the total mileage of NiO pilot automatic assisted driving has exceeded 200 million km. In the future, NiO pilot can increase its gross profit by 3 to 4 points on average. "

Out of the "trap" of automatic driving

Autopilot is the shape of the next generation of cars, and today's autopilot is more like a "trap.".

Most car companies have adopted a progressive technology development route, that is, continuously adding various functions, using more and more consumers, constantly improving the algorithm through big data, and finally realizing automatic driving.

In the past few years, some car companies represented by Tesla have over publicized the automatic driving function, blindly advocating the leading technology to attract consumers, but did not give too much warning about the hidden risk concept. But it can also mislead consumers and put too much trust in technology.

"To return all the functions of assisted driving back to the original expectations and definitions, we need to manage and manage them. Enterprises should properly publicize compliance, and drivers and owners should also know the technical boundaries." On August 15, some people in the automobile industry told reporters of the 21st century economic report.

On August 16, Li Xiang, founder of ideal automobile, published an article on social media, calling on the media and industry organizations to unify the standard of Chinese terms for automatic driving, so as to avoid misunderstanding caused by exaggerated publicity.

"Users of L2 and L3 don't understand, so it is suggested to unify the name: L2 = assisted driving; L3 = Advanced assisted driving; L4 = automatic driving; L5 = driverless. To maximize the control of the expected value, to avoid the automatic and auxiliary in the same state, auxiliary driving is the responsibility of the people, automatic driving is the responsibility of the car. "

Of course, in the actual process, it is inevitable that such a situation will occur: when users use the automatic driving assistance function for many times and gain a lot of experience, this may make the car owners relax their vigilance. However, it is obvious that there is a risk of over reliance on automatic driving when the technology is not fully mature.

Some industry insiders told reporters of the 21st century economic report that autonomous driving is not a joke. A lot of people will "concentrate" on the first use, and then "relax" more and more, until unfortunately happens.

At this stage, most car companies are emphasizing the "dimension reduction use" of automatic driving function, which is defined as L2, but provides L3 or L4 automatic driving functions that can be supported in some scenarios.

From the legal point of view, once the owner of an accident occurs in the assisted driving state, the main responsible person is probably the driver. However, this does not mean that car companies can lower safety standards. New functions are developed and provided under the premise of insufficient security at present stage.

It is worth mentioning that regulatory regulations have begun to pay attention to the risks of self driving vehicles.

On August 12, the Ministry of industry and information technology finally released the "opinions on strengthening the management of intelligent networked vehicle manufacturers and products access", which clearly mentioned the need to strengthen the safety management of automatic driving function products.

Automatic driving is not "accomplished overnight". The ultimate goal of automatic driving is to make cars and roads safer. One accident after another reminds the whole industry and all automobile enterprises to be nervous and keep the balance between technical exploration and safety at all times.