Automated driving Autopilot systems: Prices in China are plummeting

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Wuxi InfiMotion Technology Co., Ltd.

Is autonomous driving in China now ridiculously cheap? It's possible, if you believe the manufacturer DJI Automotive's announcements. They have just launched an autopilot that costs only 7,000 yuan for hardware. That's just a little over 900 euros (approx 963 USD) per car.

Henrik Bork, a long-time China correspondent for the Geman Süddeutsche Zeitung and the Frankfurter Rundschau, is Managing Director at Asia Waypoint, a Beijing-based advisory agency specializing in China.

Until now, autonomous and ADAS driving functions have been reserved for relatively expensive "smart cars", many of them representatives of the new species "intelligent electric car". But even drivers of cheap burner carts, bombarded with industry advertising, are increasingly dreaming of autopilot. That's exactly what DJI Automotive is now targeting - and the buyers of cheap electric cars.

Cost-effective solutions

It's sort of like an Ikea cupboard among autonomous driving configurations that the company just unveiled at the China EV 100 Forum trade fair. Its base model 7V+32 TOPS can now easily be upgraded to 7V-100TOPS without the need for new, more expensive sensors, a company spokesperson said. With hardware costs of about 7,000 yuan, which is equivalent to around 908 euros (approx. 963 USD), manufacturers can now offer their buyers autopilots on the highway and within large cities. The latter urban solution, known in China as NOA, is currently taking the market by storm.

By the end of this year, 20 car models from various manufacturers in China are expected to come onto the market using this Chengxing platform technology from DJI Automotive, according to Shen Shaojie, Head of Automotive Systems at DJI Automotive, who made the announcement at the trade fair.

Own algorithms in combination with upgraded hardware features

This announcement could not be independently verified, but it is probably not just pure bragging. They would like to establish the autopilot and other autonomous driving functions in the segment of vehicle models with prices between 80,000 and 250,000 yuan – thus between about 10,400 and 32,400 euros (approx 11,000 and 34,380 USD), said Shen. "Among the suppliers of Smart- Driving products in China and even worldwide, DJI Automotive is a company to be taken seriously," comments the automotive professional portal Gasgoo. The company is making rapid progress towards "ultimate cost-efficiency". Through its own algorithms and upgrading existing hardware configurations, autopilot and other L2 functions can now be realized "without dependency on high-precision maps and Lidar," says DJI Automotive.

New autopilot in the Tiguan L Pro

According to the company, the first affordable gasoline car on the Chinese market equipped with the new autopilot will be the Tiguan L Pro from SAIC Volkswagen. The new model is expected to hit the Chinese market very soon.

In addition to affordable combustion engine vehicles, this cheap hardware solution also brings autonomous driving within the reach of owners of cheap electric cars. Up until now, the market penetration of complex autopilots in the segment below a purchase price of 250,000 yuan, or 32,400 euros (34,380 USD), has been very low.

New player

DJI is known worldwide primarily as a manufacturer of drones. But from the perspective of the company founded in Shenzhen in 2006 by robotics enthusiast Frank Wang, autonomous vehicles are actually no different than drones on four wheels. In 2019 they founded DJI Auto and made it an independent company in 2022 as part of a spin-off, which is now operated by its parent company Shenzhen Zhouyu Technology. In just a few years, the drone company spin-off has become one of the largest providers of autonomous driving technology in China, competing with Huawei, which is also active in this segment.

Without frills, but cheap

The development towards affordable, so-called no-frills solutions in autonomous driving is a story that is quite typical for China. Chinese developers and entrepreneurs may not always be the first to invent something, but they are often the first to turn new inventions into mass-market products.

However, this does not mean that the company's C-suite would be less proud than at other tech companies. When introducing his autopilot for 7,000 yuan, Shen Shaojie couldn't resist talking about the difficulties of this product development.

Building a cost-effective solution for autonomous driving is about as complex as trying to carve a "forest out of a watermelon shell," according to the manager. You can imagine how difficult that would be.