Mcity (Image courtesy of University of Michigan )
Last month, Southern University of Science and Technology, University of Michigan, and Frontier Industry Fund signed a cooperation agreement in Shenzhen to announce the joint construction of a driverless demonstration base. The project will have a total investment of 10 billion yuan and will be located in the Longgang District of Shenzhen or the Shenzhen-Shantou Cooperation Area. Specific areas are still under exploration and planning.
This demonstration base is an unmanned town. According to Wang Lejing, the co-founder of the Frontier Industry Fund, the small town will bring together smart car-related technology R&D and innovation companies to build unmanned demonstration operating areas, housing, education, hospitals and other infrastructure. Employees can walk to work, investment agencies can negotiate multiple companies within a day...
Wang Lejing wants to build a “Silicon Valley+Mcity†model that is related to the smart car industry (Mcity is the world’s first testbed dedicated to testing the potential of automotive networking and self-driving cars built by the University of Michigan). According to the plan, the first batch of test vehicles will be tested at the base in the third quarter to the fourth quarter of next year.
In addition to the Shenzhen unmanned township, Baidu and the Wuhu municipal government have jointly created the “Driving Area for All Driverless Vehicles†and the first driverless car test base at Shanghai International Automobile City has opened.
Rong Hui, the vice president of Beiqi New Technology Research Institute, said in a media interview that the Shenzhen unmanned town is different from the above projects in that it not only has vehicle operations, but also arranges related industries and cooperates with the universities and the government. The goal is to promote Unmanned popularity. "Let the driver drove in. This is a relatively central part of our entire project." Wang Lejing told Lei Feng Network (search "Lei Feng Net" public concern) .
Not long ago, Wang Lejing accepted an exclusive interview with Lei Feng Network. He described his understanding of investment, smart cars and unmanned townships from the perspective of investors.
1,
I have been investing for 11 years. The scope of investment in the project and the coverage of the project are quite decentralized, including investment in wind power generation, solar energy and superconductivity, investment in cement plants, and dairy farms.
Although these projects have received some returns, they are more tired. Because it often involves new industries, such as superconductivity, the team spent a year to understand the status of superconductors and the invested companies in the industry. When this project is actually put into use, the reuse (reuse) rate will be small, which is a normal state of the investment industry.
Since 2013, we have been thinking about whether or not we should change the way we do investing. Later we focused on artificial intelligence.
Artificial intelligence is a very low-level science that can be associated with homes, cities, automobiles, and finance. When we were investing in artificial intelligence, the team did research on the underlying applications. We think that there are artificial intelligence, new materials, new energy, and genetic science that change human society. In addition to artificial intelligence, China does not have much advantage in other aspects.
In my opinion, the most important highlights of artificial intelligence: one is the algorithm and the other is data.
There are 300 to 500 sensors in the car, which is six to seven times the number of aircraft and produces a lot of data. If we do data mining on it, then it is the best application of artificial intelligence. In addition, the unit price of a car itself is high, and it is relatively easy for a technology to be put into a product.
To give an inappropriate example, last year a company made a speaker, sold more than 700 yuan, sales are also good. If this product is sold for 5000, no one will buy it. Its function is - when I say "to listen to XXX song", it will be played automatically. This scenario also applies to cars, such as switches that control air conditioners and sunroofs. In this case, if you go to buy a car, the sales person says that the conventional car has 200,000 but no voice control function; the voice control function sells for 205,000. Which one do you choose? I believe most people will choose the latter.
This is the value we see in the smart car: high unit prices can carry more new technologies. It can be said that the car is the best carrier for artificial intelligence.
2,
Why do "unmanned towns"? This is related to our experience with investing.
A few years ago we invested in several companies in Shanghai. We wanted to find a large office space for these companies. At that time, the idea was very simple: After they were gathered together, hang a signboard of our investment agency at the door. When the start-up company said this, they thought it was good. So we began to look at the venue and chose several places. We were unsatisfied. Then this matter was shelved.
After our analysis, we found that there are two main reasons: First, the family, the second is the industrial chain or partners. They feel that after moving, they will inconvenience their work and life.
Then there was a time when Shenzhen Putian was building an industrial complex with an area of ​​3 million square meters. Someone asked me if they could cooperate and gave us tens of thousands of square meters for incubators. At that time, I thought that I had invested in many companies in Shanghai and it was difficult to bring them together. I think it is also difficult to do this in Shenzhen. Later, I chatted with people over there and found that the original industrial complex was really big, even kindergarten, elementary school, and middle school.
This incident gave me an inspiration: One or two thousand square meters could not be determined. Is that one or two million square meters possible? Starting from this point, we would like to build a multi-million-square-meter park that will bring together the upstream and downstream industries of the automobile industry and allocate infrastructure such as kindergartens and elementary schools.
The automobile is a very concentrated industry, and the coordination and requirements of the industry are high. In general, where there are car manufacturers, it is surrounded by car-related industries. The idea of ​​building a "smart automobile industry cluster" is the way we come.
On January 1, 2015 we decided to do this.
Creating an "unmanned town" started as a concept. What needs to be specific to it requires time to find, judge, and think. When we communicate with many auto manufacturers and parts companies, we always ask: If there is such a "small town," what do you hope for and what you need? Everyone has his opinion, and we do the screening: what is important and what is secondary. For example, kindergartens, primary schools, this is what they need, it is also important.
When we communicate with people in the auto industry, they all feel good and need it. But how do you do it? This involves industrial planning: After it is completed, why are you willing to go? What value can the town produce? What else do we need to introduce? This is a question we are thinking about.
This process is very similar to the product definition. It is actually equivalent to a research and industry integration, because the town is ultimately serving them.
3,
Silicon Valley and Detroit, this is where global innovation is more intensive. The population is small, with 2 million in Silicon Valley and 1 million in Detroit. These two regions are closely related to the industry and it is easy to find their partners, upstream and downstream, and investors interested in this project. All parties can quickly participate in the links of the industry chain, so doing things will become simple and efficient.
One of the reasons why we wanted to be an industrial cluster was that we discovered that some of the companies we invested in cooperated with others needed planes, trains, and long distances to climb. In two days, actually one and a half hours spent on transportation, and everyone had a really limited time to talk.
Now that we have mobile phones and Wechat, why do we have face-to-face communication? Information can be transmitted via telephone and WeChat, but no collision of ideas can occur. If there is a gathering place, I believe that everyone's efficiency in innovation and creativity will increase. For example, traffic efficiency, whether upstream or downstream. Daily commuting, the original two hours, now 20 minutes; cooperation negotiation may take two days, now becomes 2 hours.
For investment institutions, investment efficiency increases: spend time looking at the upper and lower reaches and the team, half a year is the normal cycle, in the town, financial investment institutions are usually together, free time to talk, there will be more intuitive Judgment. Outside the venture capital agencies to see the project, the upper reaches of the upstairs, the lower reaches of the downstairs, competitors are not far from this, the company's research can be completed in a month.
Before the entrepreneurs wanted to build a car, it took him a year and a half to understand the entire industry chain and where related facilities were. If you join the town, he does not have to spend a year and a half.
This is the advantage of industrial clusters.
4,
In my opinion, smart cars are not an upgrade of automobiles, but a combination of automobiles, artificial intelligence, and communications. This is beyond the capabilities of traditional automotive companies and they have no way to complete productization. At present, the industrial ecology of auto manufacturers is the traditional industrial ecology, not the industrial ecology of smart cars. We hope to build the latter.
I think the current smart car is "car + AI". Unmanned driving is undoubtedly the most revolutionary.
Last September, we held a forum on smart cars in Silicon Valley, and invited those who invested in the automotive industry, including Sebastian Thrun, the father of Google's unmanned vehicles.
At the time, I had a dialogue with him. I said that we plan to build a smart car industry cluster in China. He said that Google spent a lot of time doing unmanned driving. What it actually does is one thing: to prove the reliability of driverless driving. The next step is to industrialize and commercialize it, but relying on Google itself is not enough, but also need the coordination of the entire industry chain.
The demonstration zone like Mcity is the most important part of unmanned industrialization. There is a saying that driverless technology has reached a certain stage of maturity, but the relevant laws and regulations do not support it. The most fundamental issue is the lack of driverless test areas and demonstration areas.
The driverless car has no place to go for a road test. The government said how to prove that it can drive on its own? How can auto companies say that they don't give the road proof of its safety? The two sides are deadlocked in such a cycle.
So Mcity is needed: Let the car learn to drive and let the government believe it will drive safely. Mcity is needed by automobile manufacturers and local governments. Only in this way can a relatively sound law be developed to allow unmanned drivers to get on the road. This is a relatively central part of our entire project. To achieve such a goal, there must be a small town where the law needs to be perfected and the unmanned related procedures will mature.
To say “not quite rightâ€, although people in the auto industry generally don’t lack the money, he can’t use his own efforts to build such a small town, or work hard to give his employees welfare rooms, or let them Children enter a good school. This requires the help of external forces. We are the forces that help him organize these configurations.
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