A feeling of being carried forward by the tide of the times has returned.

Two years ago, the author eagerly participated in the trial of Baidu's self-driving car "Carrots Run" in Shenzhen, because he could get a box of Zhongxue Gao ice cream for free.

Two years later, the founder of Zhongxue Gao fell into selling sweet potatoes to pay off his debts, but "Carrots Run" is like a broken bamboo, sweeping the internet with extremely low costs and exploding order volumes.

It turns out that self-driving cars have already accelerated into reality.

1

Are online car-hailing drivers losing their jobs?

It is said that the three choices for middle-aged people to lose their jobs are to deliver takeout, drive online car-hailing, and be a security guard. But it seems that online car-hailing is also going to be "unemployed".

"Carrots Run"'s cost advantage is overwhelming. There are no drivers, 24-hour operation, year-round operation, so the fare is more than half cheaper than traditional taxis and online car-hailing. It is reported that in Wuhan, the 10-kilometer journey by Carrots Run costs 4-16 yuan, while ordinary online car-hailing costs 18-30 yuan.

Faced with such huge cost advantages, insiders cannot help but worry about a realistic problem: what about their rice bowl?

Regarding whether self-driving cars have taken away the jobs of taxi and online car-hailing drivers, the person in charge of the Wuhan Municipal Transportation Bureau responded:

"The (taxi) auto industry in Wuhan is relatively stable, and there are many rumors online." According to the person in charge, Carrots Run has deployed more than 400 autonomous vehicles in Wuhan, not the rumored 1,000.

Objectively speaking, since 2023, intelligent driving policies have been continuously introduced to promote the rapid development of advanced autonomous driving.

On July 3, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and other five departments announced that they would carry out a pilot project of integrated application of smart network-connected cars and roads in 20 cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Chongqing, and Shenyang.

The policies recently introduced by Beijing provide institutional norms for L3/L4 autonomous driving operations, and are intended to support the use of autonomous vehicles for urban public electric bus passenger transport, taxi passenger transport (online car-hailing), car rental and other urban travel services. Other places are expected to follow suit and continue to promote.

Shanghai proposes to empower innovative vehicle networking technology and orderly open up the scope of application of new intelligent network-connected vehicles in new cities, and to carry out large-scale application scenarios such as intelligent taxis and intelligent public transportation.

From the perspective of industry trends, in addition to Baidu, Tesla FSD has continued to upgrade and iterate, and has entered the V12.4 stage. In April of this year, Tesla CEO Musk said that he plans to launch self-driving taxis (Robotaxi) on August 8.

In June of this year, it was reported that the Shanghai Autonomous Driving Demonstration Zone had issued a road test license to Tesla, and FSD may be undergoing testing in China.

At present, Tesla has entered the procurement catalog of the Jiangsu local government and Shanghai state-owned enterprises. As the leader in global autonomous driving technology, it is expected to once again play a "catfish" effect and drive domestic autonomous driving technology progress.

As long as policies continue to support the landing of advanced autonomous driving, combined with the development of AI technology and the active promotion of leading companies, the innovation of the taxi and online car-hailing industries is just a matter of time.

In other words, it is expected that human drivers will become unemployed.

2

The AI wave has arrived.

Is it meaningful to repeatedly say, "AI will take my job," in the face of the surging trend of the times?

If Xiangzi accuses the driver today, "How can you drive a car with four wheels? I am still pulling a rickshaw." The audience may sneer, thinking that it is an artifact of the old times.

I used to not understand why there is a trend of anti-globalization despite the many benefits of globalization. Before the First World War, Europeans enjoyed all the benefits brought about by globalization. Why would they walk the same path again?

"Peaceful Coexistence" mentions:

In the 19th century, Europeans became increasingly accustomed to pineapples from the Azores, lamb or lamb from New Zealand, and beef from Argentina. Agricultural progress and the opening up of new farmland globally, coupled with cheaper and faster transportation systems, have resulted in a 50% drop in food prices in the last three decades of the 19th century.

Thomas Mann referred to the period he spent in his youth (1900) before the World War I as the "golden age of peace" in his last book, "The World of Yesterday." The book mentions:

"People would rather believe in ghosts and witches than the possibility of reverting to barbarism, such as wars between European countries."

However, those who experienced the "golden age of peace" in the 19th century have experienced two world wars in the 20th century.

Looking back at the history of the last few centuries, we find that globalization seems to have a cycle, and one of the key factors that drives this cycle is production efficiency.

From the steam revolution to the electrical revolution to the information technology revolution, in the first two decades of the 21st century, the global economy experienced a quiet time of "low interest rates, low inflation, stable growth, and high leverage."

Now, this era is gradually coming to an end. The world urgently needs new technologies to improve production efficiency. The tide of the AI era is surging forward, and whether you accept it or not, it will not change the trend.

Today's driver unemployment crisis is just a dress rehearsal for the AI era. In the future, Goldman Sachs' prediction of "0.3 billion people losing their jobs due to AI" is likely to be played out repeatedly.

Growing up seems to be a process of learning to accept one's fate. When I was a child, I was always curious about what I would be like when I grew up. After becoming an adult, the first thing I learned was to accept that I was an ordinary person.

Now, it seems we must learn to accept that we will be left behind in a time of great change.

3

What will be the main trend of the market in the next three months?

Guotai Junan Securities believes that unmanned ride-hailing cars have lower prices and better passenger experience than their human-driven counterparts. It is expected that the operating cost per bike will decrease significantly as the number of deployed cars increases, and economies of scale may be reflected. In addition, Tesla may release Robotaxi on August 8, which may further catalyze the development of the industry. Self-driving is expected to become the main trend of the market in the next three months.

Looking at the performance of the secondary market, Tesla's stock price has soared for 11 consecutive sessions, accumulating an increase of more than 44%, not only recovering lost ground this year but also recording a nearly 6% increase in positive returns for the year.

(The content of this article is a list of objective data and information and does not constitute any investment advice)

Today, A-share Hithink Royalflush information network concept stocks continued to perform strongly, with Tiamaes Technology "20CM" limit up, Alt, Lais Laser up 18% and 12%, respectively. Kangsheng Share and Lifan Technology both hit the limit up, the former debuted on the first board today, and the latter hit the limit up twice in three days.

As for ETFs, compared to the madness of the previous day's strong rise, the Smart Driving Theme ETF was relatively restrained today, and the ETFs of the New Energy Vehicle theme had a more significant increase, including the Guotai Fund New Energy Vehicle ETF, the Huitianfu Fund New Energy Vehicle ETF, and the Ping An Fund New Energy Vehicle ETF, all of which rose more than 3%.

Yifangda Fund Smart Automobile 50 ETF, Huabao Fund Smart Electric Vehicle ETF, and Guotaifund Smart Automobile ETF rose by 2.21% and 1.95%, respectively.

Looking at the increase from this week, 5 ETFs including Guotai Fund Smart Automobile ETF, Huatai Bairui Fund Smart Driving ETF, Fuguo Fund Smart Automobile ETF, Huaxia Fund Smart Vehicle ETF, and Haitong Securities Fund Smart Vehicle ETF all increased by more than 8% this week. The tracked index names are all CS Smart Automobile.

Currently, there are several A-share indexes related to the automobile industry chain, such as CS Smart Automobile, CSI 800 Automobile, CS Vehicle Networking, Auto Index, Auto Parts, Smart Electric Vehicle, New Energy Vehicles, and CSI New Energy Vehicles index.

The three indexes most closely related to the intelligent driving theme are CS Smart Automobile, Smart Electric Vehicle and CS Vehicle Networking.

According to the official website of the CSI index, the CS Smart Automobile index selects companies that provide terminal perception and platform application for smart vehicles, as well as representative companies that benefit from smart vehicles as samples.

The CS Vehicle Networking index selects content and service providers, software providers, hardware providers, and car manufacturers and other related listed companies as component stocks.

The Smart Electric Vehicle index selects listed companies' securities related to intelligent electric vehicle power systems, perception systems, decision-making systems, execution systems, communication systems, vehicle production, and post-car market as index samples.

Looking at the top ten weighted stocks of the three major indexes, the CS Smart Automobile index is more focused on electronic concept stocks related to perception systems.

How big of a storm will autonomous driving cause this time?