Driven by the change of the "new four modernizations" of automobiles and the entrepreneurial trend driven by Tesla, a number of new forces of Chinese Internet car manufacturing have been born. After several years of development and precipitation, these new forces have become the leaders of the industry, such as their "big strides" in intelligence, which has made traditional car companies feel the pressure.
Entering 2021, "software-defined car" has become a high-frequency vocabulary, and has also brought a new round of car-making boom, xiaomi, Baidu, Apple and other technology giants have poured into the car track, or participated in research and development with technology empowerment, or personally made cars. Huawei, which also belongs to the domestic head technology camp, still does not build cars, it wants to help car companies build 'good cars'.
On December 21, Huawei held the "2021 Huawei Intelligent Vehicle Solution Ecosystem Forum", at which Huawei said that it would adhere to the development strategy of "platform + ecology", focus on ICT technology, build an ecosystem around the three platforms of iDVP, MDC and HarmonyOS intelligent cockpit, and work with partners to help car companies build good cars.
Wang Jun, Chief Operating Officer of Huawei's Intelligent Vehicle Solution BU and President of the Intelligent Driving Solution Product Line, said that Huawei has deep technical accumulation in the fields of communications, computing, and operating systems, and we insist on "doing something and not doing something", building a platform with technological innovation, promoting cooperation with openness, and accelerating development with win-win results.
The iDVP ecosystem brings users a continuously evolving experience
The digital transformation of the automotive industry is complex and challenging, and in the era of intelligent vehicles with computing and software as the core, the development, testing and verification models have changed dramatically, requiring the construction of new models and capabilities, as well as the strengthening of close collaboration and joint development of industry partners.
Therefore, in the intelligent vehicle digital architecture, Huawei provides the basic elements of the intelligent vehicle digital platform iDVP, including the computing and communication architecture CCA, the vehicle operating system, the multi-domain collaborative software framework HAS Core and the perfect tool chain, builds a hardware ecology and software ecology, jointly defines hardware interfaces and software interfaces with partners, jointly develops atomization services, realizes the hierarchical decoupling of software and hardware, helps car companies quickly develop cross-manufacturer and cross-device applications, and can help car companies reduce the development threshold of smart cars. Dramatically reduce the time to market for smart cars while also providing users with a continuously evolving experience.
On December 21 last year, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) and 22 start-up members established the SDV Working Group, with the goal of coordinating automakers and parts companies to promote the standardization of software and hardware interfaces for intelligent vehicles, reduce the complexity of intelligent vehicle research and development, and strengthen the intelligent automobile industry chain.
At present, more than 70 enterprises have joined the working group, and more than 520 jointly defined APIs have been successfully released in October this year, including 230 device abstract APIs and 290 atomic service APIs.
As one of the important members of the SDV Working Group, Huawei has completed system pre-integration with 20 devices from 10 manufacturers based on standardized interface specifications. After completing the pre-integration, Huawei and its partners developed one-click rest and welcome modes, which are typical multi-device linkage scenarios, and the development efficiency is increased by 10 times. In the future, the iDVP ecosystem will surely bring consumers a new intelligent car experience, which is also what major car companies are currently waiting for.
MDC Ecosystem Empowers Intelligent Driving
Intelligent driving is the strategic commanding height for car companies to win future competition, and faces three major challenges: long investment cycle, high scene complexity and technical difficulty.
Huawei's MDC Intelligent Driving Computing Platform provides developers with a toolchain and rich SDK covering all scenarios, supports software development and porting of partners, and meets the core requirements of intelligent driving applications for vehicle rules and safety. At present, more than 70 partners have joined the MDC ecosystem to jointly promote the pilot and commercialization of intelligent driving scenarios such as passenger cars, ports, mining cards, and parks.
For example, under the vehicle configuration of Huawei's sensor MDC computing platform, the Mech Dragon that Great Wall Motors unveiled at the Guangzhou Auto Show can achieve L2 autonomous driving in high-speed and urban scenarios, similar to Tesla FSD, Huawei ADS, Xiaopeng City NGP and other systems.
In addition, another GAC Aegean LX Plus exhibited at the Guangzhou Auto Show is also equipped with Huawei's MDC intelligent driving computing platform, which realizes the L2 level automatic driving function.
HarmonyOS Smart Cockpit "Get on board"
In the trend of automobile intelligence, networking, electrification and sharing, the race with intelligent networking + automatic driving as the core has been fully rolled out, and the core components of the car have gradually changed from the former engine, gearbox, chassis to the "car brain" composed of chips, software and data.
Among them, the operating system is the core of the intelligent car, but also the soul of the smart cockpit, and few domestic companies have taken the form of self-research to develop the operating system in depth. In Huawei's view, there are two characteristics of traditional car machines that have been criticized by consumers: one is that traditional car machines are an information island, which is difficult to interconnect with other devices; second, there are few ecological applications of traditional car machines, and the application update is not timely, and the user experience of the application is not friendly.
Therefore, Huawei's intelligent cockpit aims at hardware modularization, interface standardization, and system platformization, builds an intelligent cockpit ecology around the HarmonyOS vehicle-machine operating system, incrementally develops 9 types of vehicle enhancement capabilities on the HarmonyOS operating system, opens 1517 in-vehicle service APIs, and more than 13,000 HarmonyOS APIs, and provides comprehensive and open tools and technical support to reduce the difficulty of integration and development of the cockpit system. Help car companies quickly develop and migrate applications, bringing users a rich experience of human and car life.
Wang Jun said that in Huawei's latest cockpit DEMO car, partners have deployed on-board canopy, electronic rearview mirrors, holographic projection, steering system and intelligent health seats, and the intelligent experience is very strong.
Star flash technology that redefines short-range wireless communication technology
For vehicles, reliability and real-time signal transmission are the highest requirements for transmission when it comes to driving and safety – and in this respect, conventional wiring harnesses offer significant advantages.
However, with the rise of smart driving, the number of car controllers has increased, resulting in an increase in the amount and cost of wiring harnesses and an increase in carbon emissions. The traditional wiring harness is difficult to meet the requirements of flexible deployment of components, resulting in increased assembly difficulty, and due to electromagnetic compatibility and other issues, there may be risks such as the failure of the wiring harness connector.
Therefore, in this case, the trend of industrial wireless emerged. In scenarios such as interactive screen projection, keyless entry, multi-camera screen transmission outside the car, wireless BMS battery management system, and audio signal transmission, wireless transmission presents a greater advantage The deployment of vehicle wired communication cables is complex and not easy to expand; and the commonly used Bluetooth and Wi-Fi delay, reliability, and security cannot meet the requirements of the interconnection of vehicle devices.
As a result, Huawei has brought star flash technology with advantages such as ultra-low latency, ultra-high reliability, and accurate synchronization compared with Bluetooth and WiFi wireless connections.
In addition, the Star Flash Alliance was officially established in September last year, positioning itself to promote the innovation and industrial ecology of new wireless short-range communication technology, carrying the application of smart cars, smart homes, smart terminals and intelligent manufacturing. There are more than 140 member units of the alliance, covering chips, modules, terminals, test instruments and other links, covering the upstream and downstream of the entire industrial chain. The automakers we are familiar with, such as BAIC, SAIC, Dongfeng Motor, and Changan Automobile, are also present.
Moreover, the alliance is also working on building a test certification system. It is planned to complete the formulation and release of the test certification system this year, and issue the first star flash certification certificate next year. In the first half of 2022, we will complete the research and development of star flash supporting test instruments, including comprehensive testers and protocol conformance test systems.
Write at the end
In the past year or so, Huawei has developed about 300 partners in the field of smart cars, and the speed of development has exceeded expectations.
Huawei's Intelligent Vehicle Solution Innovation Center, located in Huawei's Suzhou Research Institute, has been built and put into use, and will be open to automotive customers and partners for joint development, testing, verification, and results display. Huawei will provide technical training and laboratory environments for partners, follow the principles of openness, cooperation, and win-win results, jointly promote joint innovation, cultivate talents, and achieve business success in smart vehicles, and work together to help car companies build "good cars."
In addition, as a vehicle-level test center, the Yangcheng Peninsula Intelligent Network Test Site is expected to be opened next year, which can meet the most stringent test requirements and ensure the high-quality delivery of Huawei products.
Unlike technology giants such as Baidu and Apple, who have joined the ranks of car manufacturers, Huawei has chosen to become a core device supplier. The comprehensive intelligent car solutions and flexible supply/cooperation models brought by it can help various types of car companies better embrace the wave of intelligent and connected cars, and help these car companies take the initiative in the new era.
Although Huawei does not build cars, when we look at smart cars or intelligent networked cars in the future, Huawei is actually a comprehensive and in-depth participant, enabler, and changemaker. Helping car companies build "good cars" and bring Huawei's smart car solutions into every car may also be a big chess game for Huawei.