Investment Rating - The report does not explicitly state an investment rating for the smart driving industry Core Insights - The smart driving industry is experiencing rapid evolution driven by "end-to-end" and "smart driving equity" concepts, with significant growth in both new energy vehicle sales and smart driving functionalities [3][4][9] - The penetration rate of L2-level smart driving in new energy vehicles in China has increased from approximately 7% in 2019 to around 65% by the first half of 2025, indicating a strong correlation between new energy vehicle sales and the adoption of smart driving technologies [9][10] - The smart driving market is projected to exceed 5 trillion yuan by 2030, with a compound annual growth rate driven by technological advancements and increased consumer acceptance [15][16] Summary by Sections 1. "Equity + End-to-End" Accelerating Smart Driving Evolution - The smart driving industry has seen a significant increase in new energy vehicle sales, which has created a positive feedback loop for the adoption of smart driving technologies [9][10] - The penetration of L2-level smart driving features in new energy vehicles has rapidly increased, reflecting the growing consumer acceptance and market expansion of smart driving technologies [9][10] 2. End-to-End Smart Driving Review - The evolution of end-to-end smart driving can be categorized into four main stages, with advancements in perception, decision-making, and control processes [30][32] - The introduction of the "occupancy network" has enhanced environmental perception capabilities, allowing for more accurate and stable decision-making in complex driving scenarios [46][47] 3. VLA Technology Route - The VLA (Vision-Language-Action) model is emerging as a key driver of paradigm shifts in autonomous driving, integrating visual, linguistic, and action modalities into a cohesive framework [70][71] - The VLA model's development is divided into four stages, with significant advancements in task understanding and execution capabilities [76][77] 4. World Model Technology Route - The world model approach emphasizes physical reasoning and spatial understanding, representing a long-term evolution path for smart driving technologies [69][70] - The integration of world models with cloud computing is expected to enhance the iterative optimization of end-to-end smart driving systems [65][66]

Core Viewpoint - The article discusses the evolution of Bird's Eye View (BEV) perception as a foundational technology for autonomous driving, highlighting its importance in ensuring safety and reliability in complex driving environments [2][4]. Group 1: Essence of BEV Perception - BEV perception is an efficient spatial representation paradigm that projects heterogeneous data from various sensors (like cameras, LiDAR, and radar) into a unified BEV coordinate system, facilitating a consistent structured spatial semantic map [6][12]. - This top-down view significantly reduces the complexity of multi-view and multi-modal data fusion, aiding in the accurate perception and understanding of spatial relationships between objects [6][12]. Group 2: Importance of BEV Perception - With a unified and interpretable spatial representation, BEV perception serves as an ideal foundation for multi-modal fusion and multi-agent collaborative perception in autonomous driving [8][12]. - The integration of heterogeneous sensor data into a common BEV plane allows for seamless alignment and integration, enhancing the efficiency of information sharing between vehicles and infrastructure [8][12]. Group 3: Implementation of BEV Perception - The evolution of safety-oriented BEV perception (SafeBEV) is categorized into three main stages: SafeBEV 1.0 (single-modal vehicle perception), SafeBEV 2.0 (multi-modal vehicle perception), and SafeBEV 3.0 (multi-agent collaborative perception) [12][17]. - Each stage represents advancements in technology and features, addressing the increasing complexity of dynamic traffic scenarios [12][17]. Group 4: SafeBEV 1.0 - Single-Modal Vehicle Perception - This stage utilizes a single sensor (like a camera or LiDAR) for BEV scene understanding, with methods evolving from homography transformations to data-driven BEV modeling [13][19]. - The performance of camera-based methods is sensitive to lighting changes and occlusions, while LiDAR methods face challenges with point cloud sparsity and performance degradation in adverse weather [19][41]. Group 5: SafeBEV 2.0 - Multi-Modal Vehicle Perception - Multi-modal BEV perception integrates data from cameras, LiDAR, and radar to enhance performance and robustness in challenging conditions [42][45]. - Fusion strategies are categorized into five types, including camera-radar, camera-LiDAR, radar-LiDAR, camera-LiDAR-radar, and temporal fusion, each leveraging the complementary characteristics of different sensors [42][45]. Group 6: SafeBEV 3.0 - Multi-Agent Collaborative Perception - The development of Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) technology enables autonomous vehicles to exchange information and perform joint reasoning, overcoming the limitations of single-agent perception [15][16]. - Collaborative perception aggregates multi-source sensor data in a unified BEV space, facilitating global environmental modeling and enhancing safety navigation in dynamic traffic [15][16]. Group 7: Challenges and Future Directions - The article identifies key challenges in open-world scenarios, such as open-set recognition, large-scale unlabeled data, sensor performance degradation, and communication delays among agents [17]. - Future research directions include the integration of BEV perception with end-to-end autonomous driving systems, embodied intelligence, and large language models [17].

Core Insights - The smart driving industry is currently in a critical phase of competing on technology and cost, with many companies struggling to survive in 2024, although the overall environment has improved slightly this year [2][6] - Traditional planning and control (规控) has matured over the past decade, and professionals in this field need to continuously update their technical skills to remain competitive [7][8] Group 1: Industry Trends - The smart driving sector has faced significant challenges, with many companies unable to endure the tough conditions last year, but some, like Xiaopeng, have found a way to thrive [6] - The price war in the industry has been curtailed by government intervention, yet competition remains fierce [6] Group 2: Career Guidance - For professionals in traditional planning and control, it is advisable to continue in their current roles while also learning new technologies, particularly in emerging areas like end-to-end models and large models [7][8] - There is a growing trend of professionals transitioning from traditional planning and control to end-to-end and large model applications, with many finding success in these new areas [8] Group 3: Community and Resources - The "Automated Driving Heart Knowledge Planet" community offers a platform for technical exchange, featuring members from renowned universities and leading companies in the smart driving field [21] - The community provides access to a wealth of resources, including over 40 technical routes, open-source projects, and job opportunities in the automated driving sector [19][21]

Core Viewpoint - The article discusses the rapid advancements in BEV (Bird's Eye View) perception technology, highlighting its significance in the autonomous driving industry and the various companies investing in its development [2]. Group 1: BEV Perception Technology - BEV perception has become a competitive area in visual perception, with various models like BEVDet, PETR, and InternBEV gaining traction since the introduction of BEVFormer [2]. - The technology is being integrated into production by companies such as Horizon, WeRide, XPeng, BYD, and Haomo, indicating a shift towards practical applications in autonomous driving [2]. Group 2: Technical Insights - In BEVFormer, the temporal and spatial self-attention modules utilize BEV queries, with keys and values derived from historical BEV information and image features [3]. - The grid_sample warp in BEVDet4D is explained as a method for transforming coordinates based on camera parameters and predefined BEV grids, facilitating pixel mapping from 2D images to BEV space [3]. Group 3: Algorithm and Performance - Lightweight BEV algorithms such as fast-bev and TRT versions of BEVDet and BEVDepth are noted for their deployment in vehicle systems [5]. - The physical space size corresponding to a BEV bird's eye matrix is typically around 50 meters, with pure visual solutions achieving stable performance up to this distance [6]. Group 4: Community and Collaboration - The article mentions the establishment of a knowledge-sharing platform for the autonomous driving industry, aimed at fostering technical exchanges among students and professionals from various prestigious universities and companies [8].