Written by | Liu Yiwei
Edit | Yang Guang
Produced | Automotive Sankei
An inconspicuous track, because of a new rule, suddenly caught fire.
The National Standard No. 2 of the "Technical Conditions for the Safety of Motor Vehicle Operation" stipulates that new cars leaving the factory on January 1, 2022 must be equipped with EDR (Automobile Event Data Recording System) or equipped with DVR (Vehicle Video Driving Recording System) that meets the regulations.
For most people, the car video driving record system is not unfamiliar, but the concept of EDR does make many people scratch their heads.
The EDR system, also known as the "black box" of the car, can record the key data of vehicle operation before and after the accident, and provide more real and detailed raw data for later investigation and evidence collection.
In fact, as early as 1974, GM had equipped EDR in selected models, but at that time, EDR was mainly used to control and record the deployment of airbags.
At present, the EDR of the vehicle is given more functions.
According to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the EDR function requirements are divided into two stages of AB, the first stage to be implemented, the EDR equipped with the new production vehicle needs to meet the reading of longitudinal acceleration, ABS status, engine speed, seat belt status, pedal position and other 23 items of data, and the next stage can read data or will increase to 50 items.
This means that EDR devices can completely and accurately record the trajectory and driving status of the car.
Therefore, the arrival of the "black box" of the car means that the era of using data to restore the truth of the accident has arrived? What new markets will this track drive?
Will EDR promote data openness?
The "black box" is the most powerful "evidence" to restore the truth of the accident, at least in the field of aviation. But for the car "black box", is data information equivalent to the truth?
Henan Tesla female car owner rights protection incident may be used as a reference.
In April this year, in the Tesla showroom of the Shanghai Auto Show, Tesla female owners publicly complained about the brake failure of Tesla vehicles. For a time, the reason for the sudden acceleration of the vehicle became the focus of public opinion.
The data information recorded by the EDR in the car has played an important role.
In the process of fermentation of the incident, at the request of the regulatory authorities, Tesla submitted the driving data stored in the EDR to the owner of the accident for 30 minutes, and at the same time published the driving data of the 1 minute before the accident in the media.
But the dispute did not end.
In the view of rights protection owners, the data provided by Tesla may have been "moved", missing many parameters, and is not complete.
Tesla insists that the stored data is recorded by encryption technology and cannot directly read, modify, or delete related data.
Therefore, even if the vehicle is equipped with EDR and the relevant data can be recalled, the cause of the accident is sometimes difficult to say clearly.
After all, the data comes from car companies, and consumers are more willing to believe that the data provided by car companies will be more biased towards the car companies, which will inevitably produce a sense of distrust.
This leads to the core contradiction of the event, how to ensure the authenticity and integrity of these data?
Looking back at the implementation of the new regulations, the mandatory installation of EDR can solve the problem that the vehicle has the ability to record relevant data, but it does not specify who has the right to manage the data and the final interpretation power.
Or take the Tesla owner rights protection incident as a reference.
The premise that car owners can access the data stored by EDR is that a regulatory agency needs to intervene. For example, in this incident, it was under the order of the Zhengzhou Zhengdong New District Market Supervision Bureau that Tesla provided relevant data to the owner.
This forensic process is basically applicable to all passenger car companies equipped with EDR.
According to the understanding of auto industry and economics, at present, most of the domestic passenger cars equipped with EDR, the relevant data is generated locally, will be stored in the car's on-board computer, and does not support consumers to read data in their personal capacity.
But there are also special ones.
For example, Tesla's EDR data is encrypted, and the decryption of EDR data is realized by uploading the EDR data in the car through Tesla's official website, and then returning a decrypted EDR data file by Tesla's official website.
At present, in terms of relevant data reading, storage, etc., car companies are waiting for policies, and consumers are confused.
Nearly 90% of the owners interviewed by Sankei of the car are unaware of the existence of EDR (car event data recording system), how to extract data, and whether the owner of the car questioned whether the "black box" leaked the privacy of the car.
Guo Jishun, vice president of Joyson Electronics and president of joyson intelligent automobile technology research institute, told Automotive Sankei that EDR will only record the parameters of the car, not the privacy. And the data is used as a tool for the identification of relevant liability accidents, and the owner cannot directly view it.
An engineer of a joint venture car company also believes that the main purpose of this regulation is to require data to be open and facilitate accident identification. In fact, relevant data car companies have also existed before, but users and third parties can not extract, and now require mandatory EDR, which can be based on evidence in the determination of accident liability.
With the landing of this regulation, the car company has given its own views on whether the specific operation process of data extraction has changed, and the executive of a new car brand has given his own views.
He said that the data reading process should still be based on the relevant national laws and regulations, and the specific implementation plan should also depend on the subsequent policies.
Looking back at May this year, Tesla announced that it has established a data center in China, and wrote at the end of the official Weibo: Automotive data security is very important, and we firmly believe that unified standardized management will be more conducive to the orderly and long-term development of smart cars. Tesla will make every effort to implement the automotive data security management work to ensure data security.
Therefore, after the mandatory installation of EDR, complex data management and unknown data permissions, data extraction and interpretation are more worthy of attention than the new regulations themselves.
The EDR system is like a key to unraveling the mystery, but it is not versatile enough.
The 10 billion market of automobile "black boxes"
The mandatory installation of car "black boxes" is only the first step, which is accompanied by a potential market of tens of billions or even hundreds of billions.
According to data from the Gaogong Intelligent Automobile Research Institute, in 2020, the number of new vehicles equipped with driving recorders in China is 1.3571 million, and the loading rate is only 7.12%. For EDR systems, which are relatively more expensive, there is a smaller proportion of assemblies in cars sold domestically.
And how big the market gap is, it means how much wealth there is in the blank field.
Founder Securities has made a forecast that if passenger car sales can reach 23 million units in 2022, according to the incremental EDR equipment of about 80%, it is estimated that China's incremental EDR market will reach 5.5 billion to 7.4 billion yuan next year (excluding the value of EDR data extraction tools).
Industry insiders believe that EDR, as the standard of new cars, will also drive the demand for storage, backup power, sensors, and MCUs in the future, especially in new markets such as vehicle-grade storage and backup power.
It should be added that having an EDR system does not mean that the owner can directly obtain the data for free, and if you refer to Tesla's operation in North America, the extraction of data also requires a large amount of money.
In April this year, Tesla's official website announced an official method for reading and restoring EDR data for Tesla models. However, the premise of obtaining the data is that the user needs to purchase the EDR data extraction kit first, and the official price is as high as $1200. (Sold to users in North America only)
Back to the EDR system itself, auto industry and economics understands that the current market price of the system is about a few hundred yuan, and for car companies with annual sales of hundreds of thousands or even millions of vehicles, mandatory assembly of EDR means that it will face additional expenses of up to tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of yuan every year.
Consumers have therefore questioned whether the mandatory installation of EDR systems in cars will affect the terminal price of new cars.
He Wen, deputy general manager of Changan Automobile Intelligent Research Institute, said: "This system is now generally a few hundred yuan, and mandatory installation will definitely increase the cost. However, it is uncertain whether the terminal price will be raised, and ultimately it depends on the strategy of the automaker. ”
However, some car executives bluntly said that from the current situation, the new car should not increase the price.
Write at the end
In the era of intelligent cars, especially the wide application of new energy remote monitoring and data service systems, cars have become more complex. Once the vehicle has an accident, especially due to the electronic control system and automatic driving system, it is necessary to rely on the EDR system to provide detailed data on the accident vehicle.
However, for consumers, the EDR system is only a guarantee for protecting their own rights and interests in the era of big data, and it is also the key basis for car companies to prove their innocence.
The definition of peripheral rules driven by the EDR system also needs to be accelerated and improved.
Regulators have already acted. Since the beginning of this year, the Cyberspace Administration of China, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and other relevant ministries and commissions have successively issued the "Several Regulations on the Management of Automotive Data Security Management (Trial)" and the "Opinions on Strengthening the Management of Access to Intelligent and Connected Vehicle Manufacturers and Products", all of which are intended to protect data security, reduce the disorderly collection and illegal abuse of data, safeguard the legitimate rights of car owners and enterprises, and let the regulatory authorities have a law to follow.
A smart car technology research and development executive said: "EDR is not the final form, and the "black box" will be given more functions in the future. As for how the "black box" of the next generation of cars will be presented, we may as well wait and see.