As 2021 draws to a close, this evening, a number of avant-garde smart cars formed a fleet of cars and drove through Shanghai's popular business districts, forming a beautiful scenery to welcome the new.
In the next two months, the Zhiji L7, which was born in SAIC's Lingang Intelligent Factory, will carry out similar cruises in 9 cities across the country.
"It's not about attracting attention." Jiang Jun, CEO of Zhiji Automobile, introduced that the fundamental purpose of this cruise is to preheat its "data engine" for smart cars.
After the traditional automobile factory rolls off the production line, it has been a fully defined product and is only waiting to be delivered to the hands of consumers. But this time, the new car rolled off the production line, but like the application software was named beta (beta version).
At saic motor's Lingang intelligent factory, the Zhiji L7 Beta version was officially rolled off the production line
These new cars have fully complied with the legal requirements of driving on open roads, have complete safety, and after delivery to the system test users, they will start the optimization process of data-driven intelligent cars in a real environment.
The traditional automobile development cycle is about 36 months, and it takes an average of 2 to 3 years for new domestic car-making forces to develop a new car. It took only 22 months for Zhiji Automobile to go from the establishment of the project to the launch of the first model. On the one hand, in order to grab the market - the national new energy vehicle market share has increased by 10 times in less than two years; on the other hand, in order to seize time - to set aside more time for the cruise test after the offline line and adapt to the new development model of smart cars.
According to the intelligent automotive engineer, during the two-month cruise, the intelligent performance of user contacts and product software systems will be fine-tuned through the real scene data of 9 cities; at the same time, the product perception system, domain controller software, human-computer interaction, etc. will be optimally calibrated. "The data feedback in the real scene will be used to optimize the upgrade of the subsequent delivery vehicle. This is very different from the traditional automobile development and production model. The engineer said.
The appearance of the car
A unique "parade road test" reflects that the technology and product changes in the automotive industry have reached a new stage. Traditional cars, as simple industrial products, begin to be "depreciated" after purchase; but today's intelligent networked vehicles are accelerating from industrial products to "new terminals". Driven by data accumulation, the artificial intelligence "brain" of the car will continue to release its potential, and the algorithm software will continue to be iteratively updated to create new experiences and value for consumers.
In 2020, SAIC Motor, Alibaba and Zhangjiang Hi-Tech will spend 10 billion yuan to jointly build Zhiji Automobile. At that time, the "ten billion project" was based on this logic. Now the launch of the Zhiji L7 Beta Experience Edition, data-driven product experience, redefining the intelligent car development process, is also the embodiment of this logic.
"In 22 months, 290 million lines of code were written." Liu Tao, co-CEO of Zhiji Automobile, said that once traditional car companies cut into the new energy and intelligent networked car track, with the advantages are still the engine, gearbox, chassis "three major pieces"; but in this "tens of billions of project", car companies have completely cloud computing and big data, artificial intelligence, chip computing power as the "technical base".
Zhiji Auto strives to build a data factory, through data recycling, data processing, model training evaluation and OTA (over-the-air download), to help the car achieve intelligent upgrades, so as to add a virtual engine to the car in addition to the physical engine.
For the car itself, through the revolutionary electronic and electrical architecture cross-domain fusion technology, Zhiji opens up the various control domains of the vehicle from the bottom layer, from large-scale vehicle domain systems such as intelligent driving, intelligent cockpit, chassis, to small functional modules such as vehicle camera, intelligent lighting, and wireless charging, which can be upgraded; FOTA is updated every 3 months, and SOTA can be updated at any time.
During the 22-month development process, participating in the "10 Billion Project" is not only the three major shareholders. According to SAIC Motor, leading domestic battery, algorithm and chip companies such as CATL, Momenta and Horizon are all partners of Zhiji Automobile. Taking Momenta as an example, this year's self-driving head company has just received investment from auto giants such as BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and General Motors, and SAIC motor is the leader of its initial venture.
The Zhiji L7 uses Pirelli P ZERO tires
In addition to its outstanding peers, SAIC is also incubating emerging forces internally. At present, SAIC motor has formed 20 "science and technology innovation small giants" in the group, and in 22 months, many "small giants" in different fields have jointly tackled key problems, and about 3,000 software opening and verification engineers have passed the "conference battle" to ensure the high-quality landing of the vehicle software system and intelligent experience.
"We will accelerate the layout of new tracks through intelligent networked terminal products such as Zhiji Automobile, user-centric, and promote the comprehensive transformation of SAIC Motor into a high-tech enterprise." Chen Hong, chairman of SAIC, said.