On the first working day of 2022, the SuperCharger Station introduced Mercedes-Benz's New Year "King Fried" - the new pure electric concept car VISION EQXX.
And this is just the new year's prelude to the giant's decisive battle for smart cars.
At CES 2022, which is being held on the other side of the ocean, technology giants are opening up the "fairy fight" mode around all aspects of smart cars such as smart cockpits and autonomous driving.
While the full name of CES remains the International Consumer Electronics Show, it has evolved into the most important smart car technology event at the beginning of each year.
Once upon a time, smartphones and laptops were the absolute protagonists of CES. Today, these consumer digital products have "given way" to automotive technology.
This still confirms the old saying: in addition to the energy structure change brought about by "fuel switching pure electricity", for future cars, the bigger imaginary picture will focus on "intelligence"——
After the small smartphone revolutionized people's lives, the larger one", the "four-wheeled super mobile terminal", became another key track that changed the world.
Sony cars, shine into reality
As early as cess 2020, Sony showed the world a pure electric concept car called VISION-S.
At the time, the official propaganda was still so familiar: "Not going to be a car manufacturer, Sony is committed to becoming a driving force for change in the automotive industry."
Two years later, at the CES 2022 stand, "Sony Made Cars" has gone one step further.
After introducing the latest VR video game device, the PlayStation VR2, Sony Chairman, President and CEO Kenichiro Yoshida slowly drove out of a new concept car: vision-S 02.
The exterior design of the new car is highly consistent with the Sony VISION-S concept car that has been unveiled, but it has been "heightened" into an SUV.
At the same time, Sony, as a technology company, is obviously too interested in introducing vehicle conventional information such as vehicle size, endurance, and power, but uses VISION-S 02 as a pretext to introduce three thoughts on the future development trend of smart car technology:
Safe, adaptable and entertaining
（Safety/Adaptability/Entertainment）
Sony said that although cars are evolving from pure point A to point B mobile tools based on smart technology to smart cockpits that can create rich mobile experiences, safety is still a top priority.
As a result, the VISION-S 02 has a total of 40 sensors installed inside and outside the vehicle to monitor safety conditions and ensure a safe journey.
Adaptability refers to the continuous evolutionary ability given by the internet of vehicle technology to the intelligence of the car. With 5G technology, in-vehicle systems and clouds can be connected at high speed, high capacity and low latency.
OTA upgrades to make the car experience commonly used and new, providing more user personalization. The connection between vehicles and digital products such as mobile phones and smart homes makes the car a super mobile terminal that connects everything.
The final entertainment obviously refers to the use of cockpit on-board screens and audio equipment to bring richer audio and video and game choices to passengers in the car.
Sony's two concept cars are equipped with a multi-screen composed of five screens in the center of the cockpit, and what kind of new audio-visual entertainment experience these screens can bring is worth looking forward to.
You know, now that people can play "The Witcher 3" in Tesla, Sony put the PlayStation 5 into the car, it should not be difficult.
The scene that generated the most applause at the entire press conference appeared in the following picture: Sony officially announced that it would establish a new "Sony Mobility Inc." to begin exploring the commercialization of the electric vehicle business.
Although the expression "exploring the commercialization of the electric vehicle business" still sounds ambiguous, we still do not know whether Sony will build the car itself, or whether it will adopt a model of cooperation with car companies to extend its technology to other brands of smart cars.
But on second thought, Sony has accumulated a lot of software and hardware technology in the fields of photography, audio-visual and even video games. Integrating these technologies, packing them into a car cockpit, seems like a matter of course in itself.
It sounds like it's very similar to another Chinese tech company that constantly emphasizes that it "doesn't build cars."
In addition, thinking about the slowness of the overall intelligent transformation of Japanese cars today, I wonder if Sony will stand up and be the "leading big brother" of Japanese car intelligence?
Qualcomm: Snapdragon digital chassis family barrel with $13 billion orders
With the continuous popularization of electric vehicles, consumers' demand and cognition of automobile intelligence are also rising.
This is not, last year's domestic boiling of a certain model "core change door" told everyone, even the little sisters who were once too "cold" to technology, now know that Qualcomm 8155 chips are more advanced than Intel Atom chips.
And if you talk about Qualcomm, you simply stay on the cognition of smart cockpit system chips, it seems a bit outdated.
At CES 2022, Qualcomm brought the overall solution of the family barrel smart car, snapdragon digital chassis.
Specifically, the Snapdragon digital chassis is composed of the following parts, covering four aspects: automatic driving, intelligent cockpit, Internet of Vehicles, and cloud services, forming a complete set of open and scalable cloud connection platforms.
1. Snapdragon Ride, an autonomous driving platform
It is an open, programmable autonomous driving platform that meets the full range of development needs of automakers, from new vehicle evaluation specifications (NCAP) to L2+/L3 level driver assistance and autonomous driving.
At the hardware level, Qualcomm will provide manufacturers with a scalable portfolio of 4nm process system-on-chip (SoC) processors and accelerators for vision, central computing, and high-performance autonomous driving needs.
At the software level, based on Arriver's one-stop vision software stack, Qualcomm will support automakers and Tier-1 suppliers to create their own software functions related to autonomous driving, parking or driver monitoring.
The platform also provides full support for advanced features, functional safety/expected functional safety (SOTIF), and system architecture capabilities.
2. Snapdragon intelligent cockpit
Qualcomm launches the 4th Generation Snapdragon Smart Cockpit Platform, providing manufacturers with highly customizable and always-connected cockpit system-on-chips and software solutions.
The 4th Generation Snapdragon Cockpit Platform addresses the computational, performance, and functional safety needs of smart cars for partitions or domains, delivering a wide range of capabilities such as high-performance computing, rich graphics and multimedia, highly intuitive AI experiences, situational awareness and security enhancements, and immersive audio.
3. Snapdragon Auto Connect platform
Based on LTE and 5G networking services, cellular connected vehicles (C-V2X), Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and precision positioning capabilities, the Snapdragon digital chassis will fully support the secure connection between the car and the cloud, other vehicles and the surrounding environment, meeting consumer demand for a safer and more immersive driving experience.
4. Snapdragon car to cloud service
With pre-integrated software and service platforms designed for a new monetization model, Snapdragon digital chassis provides automakers with a flexible feature portfolio and performance upgrades as well as new capabilities.
Qualcomm said automakers can choose any or all of the platforms covered by snapdragon's digital chassis in their product lines and provide a highly customized experience for their products through continuous upgrades in the cloud.
In other words, car manufacturers can choose to purchase the relevant functions of the Snapdragon digital chassis as a whole or part of it to improve the intelligence level of their own vehicles.
And how much profit will this bring?
Qualcomm appeared confident at the press conference: at present, it has cooperated with up to 37 manufacturers, including Honda, Volvo, BMW, Hyundai, GM, Xiaopeng, Weima and a series of familiar names, with a total order valuation of more than 13 billion US dollars.
Nvidia: Hyperion 8 software and hardware integrated autonomous driving solution
Qualcomm extends the tentacles from the smart cockpit to all aspects of the smart car, and other manufacturers will naturally go further in their original focus areas.
At the 2022 CES, NVIDIA once again showed off the Hyperion 8 autonomous driving platform. The platform has been officially announced at the GTC conference last November, and the details can be reviewed by clicking on the OEMs Gospel: NVIDIA's Software and Hardware Integrated Autonomous Driving Solution.
All in all, Hyperion 8 can be summarized as NVIDIA's hardware and software integrated autonomous driving solution for automakers.
At the hardware level, Hyperion 8 is powered by two Orin chips, and the final force exceeds 500TOPS. The sensor level includes 12 cameras, 9 millimeter-wave radars, 12 ultrasonic sensors, and 1 front-facing lidar.
With perfect hardware, you also need strong supporting software. Hyperion 8 has built-in drive Sim, an autonomous driving training, testing, and validation platform for machine learning.
This software platform can generate a digital twin environment similar to the real world from the software side through the data of the real physical world collected by the vehicle, and continuously exercise the ability of autonomous driving assist software in this virtual traffic environment.
Autonomous driving manufacturers equipped with DRIVE Sim are expected to accelerate their deployment plans in 2022.
According to the previous statement, Mercedes-Benz and Nvidia will build a new in-vehicle computing architecture based on the DRIVE DRIVE AGX platform, jointly develop AI and autonomous vehicle applications, including SAE L2 and L3 functions and automatic parking functions (up to L4 level), and deploy the new architecture in the next generation of Mercedes-Benz products, the time node is set for 2024.
That is to say, as soon as 2024, we can see the landing of models equipped with NVIDIA's autonomous driving solutions.
Mobileye: Autonomous driving empowers global car companies
Finally, we must not forget Mobileye, Intel's supplier of autonomous driving solutions. For the relevant introduction of this company, you can also click on our previous report behind the independent listing, I saw Mobileye's anxiety for a review.
At CES 2022, Mobileye took up considerable space at Intel's launch, summing up three new moves: new chips, new maps, and models with higher self-driving capabilities.
In terms of chips, Mobileye brings the new EyeQ Ultra autonomous driving chip. The chip uses a 5nm process with a computing power of 176 TOPS. At the same time, the chip will actually consume less than 100 watts of power, reducing the additional power losses caused by the autonomous driving system.
It is reported that the EyeQ Ultra chip will be mass production at the end of 2023 or early 2024, and will be large-scale loading in 2025.
In addition to the new chip, Mobileye also said that its mapping platform will be installed on the vehicles of volkswagen, Ford and other automakers.
Previously, Mobileye has conducted considerable commercial tests of autonomous driving in international metropolises such as Paris and Tokyo. Today's accumulated data, in addition to serving Mobileye's own self-driving taxi business, will effectively "feed back" to automakers.
ID of the Volkswagen Group MEB platform. The family of electric vehicles, Ford's existing models equipped with the BlueCruise driver assistance system, will benefit first. The Mobileye mapping platform can capture the driving data of the vehicle in real time, so that the vehicle's automatic driving assistance performance in the unspecified route segment is more stable.
At the press conference, we saw The VW CEO Herbert Dies sitting on an ID.4 equipped with a Mobileye map that is driving autonomously, talking and laughing with Mobileye CEO Amnon Shashua.
It seems that Mobileye's new technologies are serving international manufacturers, and most of its self-driving technology tests are in foreign cities, which seems to have little to do with Chinese consumers.
However, if we look closely at the press conference, the background behind the company's CEO can still see a lot of "Chinese flavor".
In addition to this small Easter egg, Mobileye has also come up with a new plan to cooperate with Chinese manufacturers: it will jointly launch the world's first L4-level autonomous vehicle in 2024.
Judging from the exposed trailer, the new car will most likely be an SUV.
Officials said the model will continue to be built on the SEA Haohan architecture, based on six EyeQ5 system-on-chips, to achieve the efficient integration of krypton proprietary software technology with Mobileye True Redundancy sensing solutions, responsibility-sensitive security systems (RSS) and road network acquisition management (REM) and other technologies.
However, compared with the distant 2024, the majority of Chinese consumers may be more concerned about when the already listed Extreme Kr 001 can turn on the automatic driving assistance function - when the Extreme Kr 001 was just delivered a few months ago, even the most basic AP could not be opened, which is a bit surprising.
We found some clues to this problem from the Mobileye launch. An official demonstration of a video of Extreme Kr 001 conducting a road test in Israel. The test vehicles in the video have been able to implement autonomous driving assistance functions such as automatic lane changes and unprotected turns.
Mobileye also said it expects to push a functional OTA upgrade to Extreme Kr 001 in the coming months to provide L2 level autonomous driving assistance.
As for how the automatic driving of Extreme Kr 001 will perform in the actual traffic section of China, we may wish to look forward to it.
Write at the end
These are the highlights of cess 2022 for several major tech giants.
Every year, CES will bring us many eye-catching, advanced and fragmented new technologies and new trends, which all paint a very beautiful picture of the future of smart cars for us.
But back to the present, in the real environment of the global pandemic of the new crown epidemic, when these new technologies will really land, it seems that no one can say.
But through technological innovation itself, we can still see two clear lines:
1. The pyramid cooperation model of "supplier-manufacturer" in the traditional automotive industry is now being broken. The influx of more and more technology giants and innovative companies has made the field of automotive intelligence present a "hundred flowers blooming" network structure.
2, the general trend of smart cars is unstoppable. After smartphones, this will be the most active area of technological innovation, both in China and around the world.
It is these two clear veins that make the automotive industry, which once appeared traditional and conservative, full of infinite vitality.
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