Auto-First|Chai Xiaona
On the night of October 26, Beijing time, Mobileye Global, an autonomous driving subsidiary of chip giant Intel , logged in to Nasdaq , and was listed again with the code "MBLY". It rose 37.95% on the first day of its listing, with a market value of US$23.1 billion.
Although it is with the halo of the fourth largest IPO in the U.S. stock , the largest IPO in the autonomous driving and chip fields this year, it is a fact that Mobileye was "disliked" and its valuation plummeted. Its valuation at the end of last year was as high as US$50 billion. 5 years ago, Intel acquired Mobileye and spent US$15.3 billion. The former self-driving giant now has to face a bleak reality.
On the other side, I don’t understand the darkness of the night during the day. The American and Chinese self-driving star companies are undergoing the test of ice and fire. The "popular chicken" horizon, known as the Chinese version of Mobileye, is pleased to have an investment of 2.4 billion euros from the automobile giant Volkswagen, and will consider further IPOs in the future to tie their name firmly with international giants.
For Mobileye, what is even more serious is the loss of orders from car companies. The rise of large-scale computing power autonomous driving chips and the closedness of Mobileye's own chip bundling algorithm have made other competitors smell huge business opportunities. Ideal Auto CEO O Li Xiang once said on Weibo: "Because it cannot meet our full-stack self-developed needs for intelligent driving (the most important perception algorithm is the black box), we stopped cooperation with Mobileye at the end of 2020 and began to use Horizon's J3 chip to carry out full-stack self-developed intelligent driving."
At present, many domestic mid-to-high-end electric models choose Nvidia, Qualcomm , Horizon, Huawei , and Black Sesame Intelligent autonomous driving chips. Tesla replaced Mobileye EyeQ3 with its self-developed FSD chip, Ideal Auto changed from EyeQ4 to Horizon Journey 3, Nvidia's Orin chip has become the new favorite of car companies, and the name of Huang Jiaozhu is now becoming more and more popular in the automotive industry.
Objectively speaking, macroeconomic declined, technology stock fell across the board, L4 was difficult to implement, not profitable, business model was not clear enough, there were factors caused by the general environment, and many other factors. In Auto-First's view, the other side of Mobileye's severe valuation is a great opportunity to reshape the supply chain of China's smart driving track.
Intelligent Electric car player path. Intelligent and electric are the two biggest tags. "Smart" is related to key technologies such as autonomous driving, chips, computing power, big data, sensors, and "electric" is related to core indicators such as electric drive and batteries. Among them, production capacity and supply chain are the key, which has also led to domestic battery suppliers and autonomous driving suppliers becoming popular in the entire industry in the past few years.
In the field of power batteries, there are endless news that power battery suppliers are being earned by giants and automakers. These multinational giants have selected Chinese companies that have already risen or grown, such as BMW and Vision, Volkswagen and Guoxuan, Mercedes-Benz and Funeng. In China, , , , Chery and Deyi Energy, not to mention the "No. 1" CATL , which accounts for 40% of the global power battery installed capacity.
is obvious, in the field of power batteries, China dominates the market and outputs technology. Data released by South Korean research firm SNEResearch shows that CATL's global installed power battery market share increased to 39.3% in August, and BYD's market share in August was 14.3%. The two Chinese leaders accounted for more than 50%, occupying the world's first and second place.
In the field of autonomous driving, things have gradually changed.
Mobileye was founded in Israel. Over the past few years, it has established partnerships with automakers such as Audi , BMW, Volkswagen, Nissan , Honda, and General Motors, focusing on providing full-stack solutions for advanced driving assistance system (ADAS) and autonomous driving.
Mobileye predicts that with the increase in the value of ADAS functions and the acceleration of the deployment of autonomous vehicles, the total available market (TAM) size of ADAS and autonomous vehicles will be approximately US$40 billion (equivalent to approximately RMB 288.9 billion) around 2026, and the TAM scale will reach US$480 billion (equivalent to approximately RMB 3.5 trillion) around 2030.
In order to seize this huge market cake, chip players such as Intel Mobileye, Nvidia, Qualcomm, Tesla, Horizon, Black Semiconductor have put in full force, setting off a competition craze around the world.
Chinese players are not willing to lag behind. International car companies or first-tier suppliers from Germany and Japan have successively invested in several Chinese autonomous driving companies. For example, Toyota html invested in Pony Smart Shop for US$6.4 billion; Toyota, Daimler , Bosch invested in Momenta; Bosch invested in Wenyuanzhixing . The most eye-catching news is that the world's most successful car company, , Volkswagen Group, , joins hands with the Chinese self-driving star company Horizon. On October 13, 2022, Volkswagen and China Horizon officially announced the establishment of a joint venture, with an investment of 2.4 billion euros far exceeding expectations. Behind this is the rise of China's smart electric vehicle supply chain, and autonomous driving companies from China are becoming one of the competitive players in the global market.
such as Baidu, DJI , Huawei, Black Sesame, Cambrian, Heduo and other companies are increasingly entering the intelligent driving supply chain. China is becoming a part of the output technology, changing the dilemma of changing technology in the past few decades of history.
In the view of Auto-First, on the one hand, China's autonomous driving technology is widely recognized by international car companies, and on the other hand, local autonomous driving companies will bring more localized solutions for intelligent driving. In the official announcement statement, Volkswagen and Horizon emphasized that "integrating multiple functions on a single chip to improve system stability, and providing the group's pure electric models in China with scalable, cost-effective advanced driving assistance systems and autonomous driving solutions."
This reminds people of the beautiful scene of the second half of New Energy, which is a domestic replacement in the intelligent driving track. It should be wary that new energy smart electric vehicles are still capital-intensive, technology-intensive and personnel-intensive industries, and require division of labor and cooperation in the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain. Although various giants and new car-making forces are having a lot of fun in seizing resources, there is one consensus that no one can make all the money, and no company can cover all areas.
It is worth mentioning that even if it is not popular in the capital market, "a lean camel is bigger than a horse" is still applicable to Mobileye. Currently, Mobileye driving assistance technology has been used in more than 125 million cars. The technology is expected to be deployed on 270 million vehicles by 2030. In 2022, Mobileye launched its latest product, EyeQ Ultra, which is expected to be supplied by the end of 2023 and achieve automotive-grade mass production in 2025.
Nvidia, Qualcomm and Intel are still three major mountains that need to be surpassed in the field of autonomous driving chips, but Chinese companies are no longer looking up at the foot of the mountain, but are working together and catching up with big strides. In the view of Auto-First, it is now a capital winter, and there are many companies falling in the field of autonomous driving. Horizon joins hands with Volkswagen to offset the harshness of the overall track of autonomous driving. The good news is that the trend cannot be stopped. In the second half of smart electric vehicles, China is exporting its own technology to the world, whether in the field of autonomous driving or power battery.
A long-term observer in the field of new energy vehicles told Auto-First that from the market, industrial workers, and parts to today, it has evolved all the way to the technology, R&D, and engineers. In the new energy vehicle track, technology companies are becoming more and more valuable.
Chinese electric vehicles have already reached the forefront of the United States and Europe. Next, it depends on how China will perform in the second half of the new energy vehicle with the technology of Chinese local autonomous driving companies. (Some pictures are from the Internet)
