When the Zhiji L7 uses the concept of "data cooker" to define the verification process of a new car, the intelligent electric vehicle has in fact subverted the traditional automotive industry's automotive production standards that have been adhered to for many years.
Before the end of 2021, Zhiji Automobile completed the small-scale delivery of its first product - the first batch of 200 Beta Experience Editions of Zhiji L7 was officially delivered at saicel Lingang Intelligent Factory, and thus began the "urban parade" in 9 cities across the country.
This is not a mass production delivery in the strict sense, we can understand it as the only way for a smart electric vehicle to go from the production end to the user side. This change is something we have not seen in the era of traditional fuel vehicles.
A car also needs a "cooker"
At the same time that the Zhiji L7 Beta Experience Edition was launched, Zhiji Automobile proposed a concept: a data cooker.
For audiophiles, the term "cooker" is no stranger. The so-called cooker refers to the aging of some parts of the equipment through a long period of time of different frequency materials, with the ultimate goal of achieving the best state of sound quality expected when designed.
However, the name has never appeared in the automotive field, and the concept of "data cooker" proposed by Zhiji Automobile is even more difficult to understand.
According to Zhiji's introduction, the 200 mass-produced models recently delivered in a small range will be placed in 9 cities across the country, including Shanghai, to conduct a large number of real road conditions and use scenario tests to collect different types of user data. These data will eventually be applied to the optimization of high-load usage scenarios such as perception systems, domain control software, and human-computer interaction.
In this way, the "data cooker" of the Zhiji L7 is a bit like the concept of audio equipment, the purpose is to adjust the optimal state of system operation. According to Zhiji Automobile's plan, the 200 Beta model "data cooker" will continue until the end of February 2022, after which the test drive experience will be promoted nationwide, and the test drive experience based on consumers will open a large set link.
It's an interesting concept.
Entering the era of intelligent electric vehicles, car manufacturers are always keen to flaunt the advanced degree of software and hardware, a year ago Mobileye EyeQ4 was still the industry leader, and a year later the entire industry was proud to be equipped with NVIDIA Orin.
The characteristics of smart electric vehicles are software definition, and the iteration of the software itself is very rapid, for ordinary consumers, the advanced level of software and algorithms represents the upper limit of a car intelligence. But a problem that cannot be ignored is that no matter how much energy the engineers of smart cars invest in software development, they eventually need to be put into real scenes for a lot of verification, which is the basis for software system learning and the basis for users to get a good intelligent experience.
In the era of traditional fuel vehicles, after a new car has completed the engineering development, it also needs to be placed in extremely cold, extremely hot, humid, arid environments, and dozens of different road conditions for millions of kilometers of verification, and finally presented to the user's state to be complete, or even close to perfect.
The same is true for intelligent electric vehicles, but while the intelligent electric vehicles have undergone hardware verification such as the three-electric system and the chassis architecture, they also need to verify the safety and maturity of the intelligent system, especially the driving assistance and human-computer interaction. This brings us to the concept of the Zhiji L7 "data cooker".
Data, the heart of smart electric vehicles
Before the delivery of the Zhiji L7 Beta, the car only took 22 months from project establishment to off-line, which was nearly half compared with the development process of traditional fuel vehicles that often took three or four years. Of course, this is related to the structural characteristics of electric vehicles, on the other hand, it also reflects the efficiency of internal collaboration of zhiji cars.
The research and development of the Zhiji L7 car, in addition to the participation of passenger cars and technical centers, also involves suppliers such as Zero Beam, Zebra, Momenta, Huayu, etc. Zhiji Automobile mentioned a detail: at 4 a.m. the engineer updated a software version, and another group of engineers who went to work at 5:30 began to test.
This is not to promote this 007-like model of work. In fact, from the establishment of Zhiji Automobile in December 2020 to the off-line of Zhiji L7 Beta version in December 2021, this speed has indeed far exceeded the traditional fuel vehicle era, but in the current situation of intelligent electric vehicles, it is still necessary to compete every second and catch up with the competition in 2022.
The Beta version of Zhiji L7 is not like the founder version launched by other new forces, it is currently only delivered to some system test users, and it emphasizes not only a large number of lifetime rights and interests of users who purchased in the early stage, but also pays more attention to the user co-creation in the process of product verification and optimization of this car.
For example, after the small-scale delivery of the NIO ES8 in 2018, there was a national sensational Chang'an Avenue OTA incident. Even if today's Weilai Automobile can face that major accident very calmly, it was a wake-up call for the entire intelligent electric vehicle industry at that time.
One of the advantages of smart electric vehicles is the continuous iteration of the whole life cycle, commonly used and constantly new, but this advantage relies on the data that users constantly feedback in real use scenarios, as the basis and experience of system updates. Consumers of smart electric vehicles are of course looking forward to the surprises brought by each OTA, and are also keen to participate in the exchange of each version of OTA, which is a new relationship between users and brands in the era of smart electric vehicles. However, for some less mature systems, the user itself is at an unknown risk.
Tesla Autopilot has been embroiled in security controversy many times, and it is this kind of problem. The iteration of intelligent electric vehicles requires higher upper limit software and hardware as a basis on the one hand, and on the other hand, it also needs to collect a large amount of data for analysis and learning. Rather than handing over a semi-finished product to the market for verification, the "data cooker" of the Zhiji L7 Beta version is more meaningful for the subsequent real user experience.
"Data cooker" is a popular concept, placed in the professional terminology of the automotive industry, which is in addition to DV (design verification), PV (product verification), separately proposed DFV (Data Feed Validation real scene data verification) process, which will become a new and necessary vehicle development and verification mode for intelligent electric vehicles.
In fact, the Beta version of zhiji L7 has fully complied with the legal requirements for driving on open roads, and before the off-line delivery, the car has also undergone 88 versions of the architecture software iteration, with an average of one iteration of the intelligent driving function completed every three days. In other words, the Zhiji L7 Beta edition is already a finished product that meets the delivery of terminals.
However, when the requirements of smart electric vehicles in terms of intelligent experience are getting higher and higher, before an excellent finished product is delivered to the terminal, the "cooker" becomes indispensable, which is why zhiji L7 will open Dading after 2 months of real-world scene verification and acceptance of large-scale test drives.
Smart electric vehicles emphasize co-creation, which does not mean putting users into a possible risk to modify vulnerabilities together. We would like to see what kind of best state the Zhiji L7 will present after experiencing the "data cooker".
Figure | Sourced from the web
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