Author | Walker
Edit | Egg total
Produced by | Bullet Finance
Recently, the "stealing core" incident of Euler Good Cat Car under the Great Wall has aroused heated discussion in the industry.
According to media reports, at the end of October, the owner of a programmer-turned-Euler good cat (hereinafter referred to as "Euler") found that the model he purchased did not support the Apple car connected to mobile entertainment to link the standard CarPlay, so he found an Euler manufacturer hoping to get help.
After learning that the manufacturer can not increase this function at present, the programmer with strong hands-on ability decided to "brush the machine" and use the computer ADB to access the car machine system, only to find that the Qualcomm 8-core Snapdragon SA8155P car processing chip, which had been used as a selling point by Euler in the publicity, was "tanuki cat for prince".
According to the programmer's test, Euler, which was launched in November last year, at the end of October 2021, still uses the Atom A3940 released by Intel five years ago, a 4-core main frequency 1.6HZ on-board processing chip.
The news came out, which quickly triggered a strong reaction from Euler car owners - on the Internet, a large number of Euler car owners' rights protection groups appeared, and the voices of "Euler good cat compensation and return" in major communities came and went.
On December 6, CCTV Financial Channel publicly "named" Euler Automobile, pointing out that the brand side "stole the core", played word games or was suspected of consumer fraud. In this regard, Euler Automobile not only issued two compensation plan notices in a row, its general manager Dong Yudong publicly apologized, and also proposed a service compensation plan worth 10,000 yuan.
Euler Automobile said in the latest statement that it deeply apologized for the troubles caused to the owners of Euler's good cats in response to the promotional content of the chip part of the "coffee intelligent car control system" on the official website of Euler. After the incident, Great Wall Motors attached great importance to it and asked the Euler brand to verify and correct the content of the official website, and gave a satisfactory answer to the majority of car owners.
However, on the Internet, the dissatisfaction of Euler car owners is still high, because the compensation scheme proposed by Euler twice is mostly compensation for post-maintenance and upgrade services, and does not solve the chip replacement problem that the owner cares about.
This seems to have become a "dead knot" and has begun to affect the brand reputation of Great Wall Motors. However, in the eyes of auto industry practitioners, such a situation may be one of the evil consequences brought about by the "inner volume" of new energy vehicles.
1, the chip can not be replaced
"This chip cannot be replaced by post-maintenance, and if Euler promises to replace the chip for consumers in the later stage, it will be a big joke." Zhang Xutu, an auto industry veteran who has worked at Mercedes-Benz in Beijing for five years, told Bullet Finance.
According to him, the official launch of the Euler Good Cat in November 2020 means that the car should start research and development in 2018, with follow-up safety tests and a series of improvements done at the end of 2019 or early 2020.
The Qualcomm SA8155P, which caused a storm this time, is the world's first mass-produced 7nm process car chip, and the process is close to only a few car chips such as Samsung and MediaTek, and its performance level is similar to that of the flagship mobile processor Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 in 2019, and the AI computing power of the entire chip can reach 8TOPS. In addition, Bluetooth 5.0, Wi-Fi 6 and other hardware are also available.
"Although Qualcomm's chip was released in July last year, it was limited by the production capacity and market demand, and the real large-scale adaptation of domestic auto manufacturers was after May this year." Zhang Xutu said.
He believes that as a new energy vehicle that has been doing post-research and development in 2019, Euler cannot modify all circuits and control systems and rematch the core chip in the 4 months before the listing in 2020.
"You know, Qualcomm chips and Intel chips are two different concepts in the whole car engine system and control principle. At present, the Intel chip that Euler really uses is the Linux system, for the control and function superposition of the car machine content, it is actually implemented with a web interface and logic, that is, WEBAPP; and Qualcomm SA8155P runs the Android system, and the follow-up new energy vehicles like to use Qualcomm, because it can be seamlessly connected with many mobile phone operating systems, and can even be directly called across the screen. Zhang Xutu explained.
In his opinion, the difference in the operating systems of these two chips allows new energy automobile manufacturers who choose chips to embark on two completely different software research and development paths when developing cars.
Graph /Photo Network, based on VRF protocol
"The possibility of replacing Qualcomm chips for these owners in the later period is almost non-existent, because that means that they have to redevelop Euler's car system and match all the functions with a new system, which is not something that can be done in a moment and a half." Zhang Xutu said.
In addition, he believes that if you want to replace the chip, this investment may make the manufacturer very nervous, "If Euler finally chooses to do this, it means that they have to re-go through the software level of development, then the invested funds may not be solved by the current follow-up maintenance funds." ”
In response to euler's initial publicity with the Qualcomm SA8155P chip as a highlight, Zhang Xutu believes that it is likely that they were already testing the chip at that time, and it may be launched in the 2022 remodeled model.
"The models selected by major automobile companies will basically have a small makeover every year, and there will be a medium or major modification in 3-5 years, so Euler in 2022 will choose this latest chip, plus some small adjustments, which can be launched as a new remodeled model." Zhang Xutu said.
He believes that Euler is indeed a bit unauthentic in the promotion of the good cat model, "This highlight of the subsequent possible increase in the configuration as a highlight, in fact, is a unspoken rule of the domestic automotive industry, but the general manufacturers will put this kind of thing into some consumers will also feel dispensable configuration, in the car processing chip such a core configuration to play the unspoken rules is still rare." ”
2, more and more like the phone of the car
Objectively speaking, the reason why Euler's "chip door" will arouse so much attention from the outside world is that for new energy vehicles, the on-board processing chip is equivalent to a mobile phone processor, which can affect the willingness of consumers to buy a car.
Or to some extent, today's new energy vehicles are becoming more and more like smartphones.
Whether it is BYD, Great Wall, Euler, GAC, FAW and other traditional automobile manufacturers entering the manufacture of new energy vehicles, or the new car-making forces represented by "Wei Xiaoli", very few automobile manufacturers have mastered all the manufacturing processes of new energy vehicles, and the vast majority of automobile manufacturers need to purchase various accessories from the supply chain.
Even some new energy vehicle manufacturers even need to mine the three electricity (that is, batteries, motors and electronic control systems), and then find an assembly plant to assemble, and the manufacturer only provides the car design drawings and control systems.
This is very similar to the current situation of most domestic mobile phone brands.
In addition, as the processing chips of new energy vehicles gradually take the Qualcomm system as the core, the proportion of these cars' car machine systems compatible with Android is getting higher and higher, so that the mobile phone software "cross-screen" runs to the central control screen of new energy vehicles.
This is also an important reason why Huawei, which is known as "no car", believes that its Hongmeng intelligent cockpit is the core of all the subsystems it provides. Of course, only car partners who use the Hongmeng intelligent cockpit can add the HI logo of Huawei's car behind its logo.
The key is that from the perspective of the development of the intelligent automobile industry, "open source co-creation and cross-border integration" is already the consensus of the industry. Cross-border technologies such as semiconductors, cloud computing, AI, and IoT are intertwined in the automotive industry, and the automotive industry chain structure has evolved from traditional chains to meshes, and the automobile itself has also shifted from mechanical drive to data-driven and software payment.
Now all mobile phone brands, in addition to the stacking is optimized on the system, coupled with the cultivation of the consumer market and the design of the screen and form, gradually formed a distinction between brands.
However, due to the inability to expand Huawei's Kirin chip manufacturing, the mobile phone chip market is now almost a "double battle" between Qualcomm and MediaTek. The technical level and market share of MediaTek are far lower than Qualcomm, which makes the latest flagship chip launched by Qualcomm every time it will inevitably trigger a series of high-end flagship releases of domestic mobile phone brands.
Recently, Qualcomm released the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 flagship chip, which invited more than a dozen well-known domestic mobile phone manufacturers to the scene. Similar to the situation of mobile phones, now new energy automobile factories are basically only Qualcomm.
However, BYD and Geely have gradually built up their own in-vehicle chip production capacity, and the impact is relatively limited, which is one of the reasons why BYD's pure electric car sales have caught up with Tesla for several months.
However, car manufacturers like the Great Wall still rely on Qualcomm to provide chips, which also restricts the production of global in-vehicle chips, which affects the speed of delivery of domestic new energy vehicles.
Of course, the fact that the chip is highly monopolized and the homogenization of the accessories of mobile phone manufacturers has made the current mobile phone market enter an era of extreme inner volume. Similar to new energy vehicles, the trend of inner volume is also very obvious.
3, the crazy inner volume of new energy vehicles
The advantages and disadvantages of the cars of the past, whether it is the appearance, interior design, or power performance, are obvious, but they also make each brand unique and impressive memory point.
Like the Leather Patience Volkswagen that everyone has been talking about, as well as the mediocrity of Toyota, the American car that emphasizes the "muscle sense", the Honda that buys the engine to deliver the car, the Mercedes-Benz that knows the most luxury, and the BMW that knows the most about control...
In the era of new energy vehicles, although various new brands emerge in an endless stream, no brand can leave an indelible impression, and the homogenization is becoming more and more obvious.
Now the appearance has become the only point that can be distinguished by new energy vehicles, and the large-screen interior design pioneered by Tesla has almost become the style of the current new energy vehicle interior. Vertical, horizontal, dual, triple or rotary screens, even exaggerated to take a large tablet directly above the dashboard and center console.
This also makes the entire cabin interior of the new energy vehicle now have almost no other design elements except the screen.
Coupled with the fact that the computing chip has Qualcomm, there are only a few large battery manufacturers in the world, and the motor system and automatic driving are all done by suppliers, so all this makes the car manufacturing appear "relatively simple", but at the same time, the homogenization of electric vehicles is becoming more and more serious.
The surplus of intelligent technology and the homogenization of functional experience brought about by "inner volume" make it difficult for consumers to make comparisons and choices among a large number of new energy vehicles. If you don't have a little IT and car knowledge, you can only blindfold tesla, because Tesla is the head brand after all, which is similar to the fact that consumers who don't understand mobile phones often prefer Apple.
And the OTA, intelligent driving, voice recognition and other functions that are regarded as "standard for new energy vehicles" must rely on the computing power of the core chip behind them, which is also an important reason why the anger of the owners of euler good cat owners will be triggered after the outbreak of euler 'chip door'.
In addition, there is the problem of battery life. At the beginning of the year, Weilai proposed to do a model with a range of 1,000 kilometers, which opened up an arms race in the field of new energy vehicles. But the problem is that almost all new energy vehicles do not have the ability to develop and manufacture automotive batteries, and must rely on third-party battery manufacturers such as Ningde Times or BYD. If 1,000 km of range becomes standard, it means that in a very short period of time, manufacturers will match similar batteries and performance.
Eventually, the battery life of each family will gradually converge.
Therefore, for a long time, the manufacturers of new energy vehicles can only work the system interface, intelligence and appearance to trigger consumers' desire to buy.
Another manifestation of this industry volume is that each company has made a sudden effort in publicity, showing all configurations to consumers as the "best standard".
This is the most fundamental reason for the emergence of Euler's "chip gate".
For an industry, the energy of enterprises is not in the development of good products and good technology, but on "how to highlight the differences of their own products in the homogenized market", there will be problems.
Objectively speaking, instead of constantly piling up materials and trying to study market slogans, players of new energy vehicles should sink their hearts, seriously understand what consumers want, and make products according to consumer needs, which is the real way to develop.
After all, a market that is rolled into the extreme will not produce good products.
*The title image in the text is from the photo network, based on the VRF protocol.