TU-TESL

• 22

ZF joins hands with Tucson in the future. Recently, ZF, a German first-class component supplier, and Tucson, a truck solution developer, announced that they would jointly develop a mass-produced truck system. The specific cooperation contents of the two enterprises include: the cooperation will be officially launched in April this year, and the products and systems to be cooperated in the future will be supplied to the global market. To some extent, this means that ZF + Tucson will form a new tier 1 in the field of self driving trucks. Such a cooperation mode is worth learning from other tier 1 and innovative companies in the industry. Before ZF and Tucson reach a future cooperation, they have a common good friend named NVIDIA. On the one hand, NVIDIA participated in the b-round financing of Tucson in 2017, and acquired 3% of the shares of Tucson as a strategic investor. Tucson's future self driving truck scheme also uses NVIDIA's self driving computing platform. At the annual NVIDIA GTC conference, Tucson's future prototype vehicles are not absent. On the other hand, NVIDIA established a cooperative relationship with ZF on CES in 2017. Based on NVIDIA's Xavier, ZF has built a computing platform for automatic driving, proai. This product is highly expected by ZF and has now been promoted to the fourth generation. It's fate that ultimately leads to the future cooperation between ZF and Tucson. It's the technical complementarity of the two companies and the mutual agreement of the development strategy of autonomous driving. The so-called technical complementarity refers to the deep accumulation of ZF in automatic driving sensors, computing hardware and control technology, while Tucson's future is longer than the overall algorithm of automatic driving system. The cooperation between the two is of great benefit to the development of a complete set of software and hardware system for automatic driving. In terms of automatic driving, ZF has established the strategic direction of developing L2+ class automatic driving system and commercial vehicle / city L4 automatic driving system on CES this year. Tucson's future is an innovative company focusing on L4 level autonomous truck solutions. At this time, ZF is the most appropriate choice for Tucson's future. Tucson has a good momentum of operation in the United States in the future. According to the information released by the government, Tucson now has more than 20 customers in the postal express, e-commerce and logistics industries, manages more than 50 teams of self driving trucks, and will open up new operation lines in the future. According to Tucson's future plan, they want to realize the unmanned freight service in 2021. With the help of ZF, this goal adds more certainty. In fact, before choosing the future of Tucson, ZF has made extensive and in-depth layout in the field of automatic driving, and the results are beginning to show. At CES this year, ZF also announced its latest commercialization progress in the field of automatic driving: first, the coassist system developed by ZF can bring a safe and comfortable experience to drivers at a price of less than $1000. The system meets the test requirements of European NCAP 2024 and can provide common L2 + functions. The system will be put into production by 2020 in cooperation with a leading Asian automobile manufacturer. Second, based on the proai computing platform, ZF is currently developing an electronic control unit (ECU) for L4 system for a global commercial vehicle manufacturer, which is scheduled to be launched in 2024 / 25. This time, choosing Tucson to cooperate in the future is just one of ZF's fall in the field of commercial vehicle automatic driving, and there should be more new actions in the future. So what kind of ammunition does ZF have for autonomous driving? The overall layout of ZF in the field of automatic driving. In 2016, ZF put forward the development path of "see think act" automatic driving technology, which has become a consistent strategy of ZF. The so-called "see" refers to automatic driving perception, including all kinds of sensor hardware and systems; the so-called "think" refers to the computing unit of automatic driving, that is, the proai central processing platform; and the "act" refers to the traditional strengths of ZF, including chassis system, braking system, steering system, transmission device, etc. related to vehicle control. Over the years, ZF has been building autonomous driving capabilities around the "see think act" path, including investment, acquisition and strategic cooperation. In 2018, the new CEO of ZF, wolf Henning Scheider, said he would invest about 12 billion euros ($14 billion) in electrification and autonomous driving over the next five years. This means that ZF will allocate US $2.8 billion per year for the above research and development. Roughly, its investment in the field of automatic driving should not be less than $1 billion per year, which is no less than that of waymo, the leader of automatic driving. "See" starts with the sensor and sensing technology represented by "see". ZF's sensor family hardware includes the latest generation of cameras, millimeter wave radar, lidar and sound sensors. They are used to monitor the internal and external environment of vehicles, so as to improve the safety of autonomous vehicles. In the field of cameras and millimeter wave radar, ZF has been a veteran for many years. In 2018, ZF launched the latest generation of camera s-cam4 series, which is a high-performance monocular front-view camera with very small size. The camera adopts the eyeq4 image processor of Mobileye, and optional 2.3mp high-resolution imager to expand the length and width of the field of vision. At present, it is rated ASIL B in the application of automatic emergency braking (including pedestrian protection). In June 2019, ZF developed a dual cam dual mirror camera for commercial trucks, also equipped with the eyeq4 processor of Mobileye. The camera can be used with other ADAS technologies of ZF. Dual cam is one of the ZF s-cam4 series products. With its assistance, vehicles can realize functions such as traffic sign recognition, lane keeping assistance, Lane center keeping, object and pedestrian monitoring, automatic emergency braking, etc. In addition, in 2019, ZF announced a strategic partnership with Hella, and the two sides will fully cooperate in vision system, imaging and radar sensor technology. The joint development project of the first camera system of the two sides is expected to be launched to the market in 2020. In the field of millimeter wave radar, in addition to the traditional 77GHz radar ac1000 / AC100 / ac20, ZF acquired about 45% of the shares of astyx company in 2017, which mainly produces ultra-high frequency radar sensors and modular products. The company's products include short-range and long-range radars, which can detect the relative distance and speed of objects, with high resolution. Based on depth learning technology, it can accurately perceive the centimeter level movement changes of pedestrians and objects. Lidar is now recognized in the industry as a necessary sensor in L4 class autonomous vehicles. In 2016, ZF acquired 40% of ibeo, a lidar company based in Hamburg, Germany. On May 20, 2019, ZF, together with AMS and ibeo, launched a solid-state lidar system for the automotive industry. However, there is not much detailed information about this system at present, I only know that it will be put into application in 2021. The system has not yet released detailed information and is expected to be put into mass production in 2021. This series of layout at the "see" level enables ZF to have a comprehensive autopilot perception. "Think" at the "think" level, in fact, refers to the automatic driving computing platform proai that ZF has been pushing. At CES 2017, the platform made its debut and attracted a lot of attention. After two years of iterations, in 2019, the fourth generation of proai product, proai robothink controller, ushered in its first show on CES. The proai robothink platform has its own image processor, which has more than 150 teraops computing power (equivalent to 150 trillion calculations per second), and can modularize up to four units to achieve a total computing power of about 600 teraops. Combined with ZF's sensor components, the platform can help L4 and above autonomous vehicles and shared services. In addition, at the 2019 Shanghai auto show, the sample vehicle of ZF copilot, which is equipped with the second generation of ZF proai products, also appeared. The copilot system can meet the needs of L2 + automatic driving. It is suitable for semi-automatic driving and can be controlled by voice. The production of copilot will start in 2021. In fact, at present, ZF has decided to make efforts on the L2+ automatic driving system for passenger cars, and has developed several sets of products, including: "Act", referring to the "Act" executive part of automatic driving, has returned to the traditional strength of the 100 year supplier of ZF. In the final analysis, the self driving vehicle is still a vehicle, the chassis, steering, transmission, braking system and other traditional components are indispensable. It's bound to be a castle in the air to break away from these expertise to build self driving vehicles, so we will see waymo finally choose to cooperate with vehicle manufacturers and parts suppliers. ZF is recognized as the world's leading supplier of automotive powertrain and chassis technology. Even with the top 10 global parts suppliers' revenue at that time, ZF still announced the acquisition of TRW in May 2015 for us $13.5 billion. Dr. Stefan sommer, then CEO of ZF, briefly explained the reason for the launch of the acquisition: "Trina's experience in occupant safety systems and electronic technology, as well as steering and braking technology, is a perfect complement to our original product portfolio, which can develop further after integration. "After ZF acquired Trina Solar, the latter was incorporated into ZF to become a new business unit - active and passive safety technology business unit, but maintained independence and brand. Later, after rapid integration, ZF and Trina Solar finally showed people in a unified image. Through this acquisition, ZF's original product portfolio has been strengthened, and many key technologies related to autonomous driving have been harvested. Because Tianhe has developed various vehicle intelligent safety technologies before, including vehicle dynamic control, electronic stability control, collision warning, driving assistance, etc. Four years after the acquisition of Tianhe, ZF started the pace of M & A. In April 2019, ZF announced the acquisition of WABCO for us $136.50 per share (a total price of US $7 billion), and the two will jointly become a leading global supplier of commercial vehicle technology integration system. The acquisition will be completed in the second quarter of this year. Veburco is a leading supplier of variable speed braking systems, technologies and services, including integrated braking systems and stability control, air suspension systems, automatic transmission control products, as well as aerodynamics, telematics and fleet management solutions. ZF said the acquisition of Weibo is part of its next generation travel strategy and will expand the company's capabilities to include commercial vehicle braking solutions. This plays a key role in the implementation of the automatic driving function, including the emergency braking system of trucks and trailers. Speaking of truck braking, Tucson's future CEO Chen Mo once mentioned that "in addition to the difficulty of braking, the truck structure is loose, the parts and components are easy to shake when driving at high speed, which has high requirements for sensor installation and coordinate positioning; at the same time, the truck's center of gravity is high and the car body is long, leading to turning