From 2014 to the present, China has hundreds of new forces from the field of science and technology to build cross-border cars halfway. Recently, another technology company that previously claimed that it had no intention of building a car hit its own face and stepped into the field of ten non-existent cars, which is Sony.
Sony unveiled its new electric SUV VISION-S02 at CES 2022 on Jan. 5. In addition, Sony will establish Sony Mobility Inc this spring, which will be responsible for the commercialization of Sony's electric vehicle business. This means that from this moment on, Sony officially entered the automotive field.
Sony entered the game, premeditated
Sony President and CEO Kenichiro Yoshida said it is uncertain whether he will be able to drive a Sony-branded car one day in the future, but Sony has a vision in the field of autonomous driving and electric vehicles, and they are already exploring the path to commercialization of Sony's electric vehicles.
Although Kenichiro Yoshida is cautious about entering the automotive field, Sony has already made moves in this regard. Back in 2020, Sony unveiled the "VISION-S" concept at CES 2020 and showcased its prototype. In December of the same year, Sony began public road testing in Europe, and conducted verification tests on the safety of the image and sensing technologies installed inside and outside the car, as well as the human-computer interaction system.
In April 2021, Sony tested its models with a 5G ambient driving test and combined with its cutting-edge technology to provide a new experience for the mobility field. It is understood that vision-S body is installed around a number of sensors for assisted driving, and its L2+ advanced driver assistance system will realize assisted driving through real-time identification and analysis of the surrounding environment to ensure driving safety.
Compared with the "temptation" at CES in 2020, Sony unabashedly demonstrated its ambitions for the automotive field at CES 2022 two years later, and the new cars it showed at this CES are closer to mass production cars. However, for Sony, which has just announced its entry into the automotive space, this is just the beginning. You know, from product design to mass production of products, to products sold in bulk, Sony still has a long way to go.
Sony makes cars, the most lacking is time and product power
In Xiao Lei's view, a lot of black technology in Sony's eyes has been realized by new car-making forces in mass production cars. Therefore, after its mass production, it is difficult to say how much market competitiveness Sony's black technology can bring to it.
For example, the Sony VISION-S02 is equipped with 40 sensors designed to keep cars safe and enable higher levels of autonomous driving functions. In fact, from the current point of view, even if Sony VISION-S02 is equipped with 40 sensors, its automatic driving ability is not very advanced.
Mass production vehicles with the potential for autonomous driving upgrades through stacking in 2021 abound. Among them, the Xiaopeng P5 550P, which is priced at less than 200,000 yuan, is equipped with 33 automatic driving sensors, and Xiaopeng Automobile has obtained massive road condition data through large-scale mass production, and it has a set of automatic assisted driving solutions that have been tested by the market.
Obviously, according to Sony's brand tone, its new car is unlikely to sell for only 200,000 yuan even if it is mass-produced. At the 300,000-400,000 level, the NIO ET5 and ET7, which will be delivered this year, also have a good performance in terms of autonomous driving hardware.
You know, Sony's new car is still just a concept car that does not know when it will be able to achieve mass production, and it is an unfair comparison to compare the sense of technology with the concept car and the mass production car. However, even in such a situation, sony VISION-S02 has no chance of winning.
In addition, Sony VISION-S02's support for 5G networks is the standard for current intelligent vehicles. Among them, as early as February 2021, SAIC's MARVEL R has obtained the automotive grade 5G terminal product certification, becoming the world's first mass production vehicle to support 5G networks.
Nowadays, not only SAIC Motor, but also CAR companies such as GAC And Great Wall have also launched 5G in-vehicle wireless terminals that support 5G vehicle networking. It can realize the application of 5G/C-V2X scenarios such as traffic light information push, parking start guidance, speed guidance, intersection collision avoidance, etc.
Audio and gaming are Sony's housekeeping skills, so the new car will improve in both aspects, making the new car a mobile entertainment space. For such a riotous operation as playing games in the car, the BYD DiLink intelligent network system that is famous for being able to "eat chicken", and Tesla, which was criticized by the NHTSA of the United States for the game not long ago, will laugh at it.
It can be seen that even from the current point of view, Sony's so-called black technology is not really a black technology that can make it proud. Since the beginning of Tesla, the tide of new car-making forces set off by the rise of intelligent new energy vehicles has been developing for more than ten years, and Sony, which has only now entered the game, is obviously a latecomer among the new car-making forces.
In Xiao Lei's view, if Sony wants to catch up and challenge the "old-school" new car-making forces and traditional car companies that have been in the battlefield for a long time, then it will not only continue to work hard in technology, but also seize the time to achieve mass production. You know, new car-making forces that have been dragged down by time abound, and the longer the time drags on, the more unfavorable it is to Sony, which does not have a technical advantage in the first place.
Interestingly, among the many new car-making forces, there is such a technology company that gets up early in the morning but can only catch up with the late set is slowly developing its new energy vehicles. The company has been proposing a product idea for car building since 2007, and after more than a decade of bumps and bumps, its product is still a mystery, but it can bring an unprecedented sense of oppression to all car companies around the world, which is Apple and its "Titan" plan.
Sony released two new cars, Apple can still be calm?
From the perspective of product form, Sony may not become a competitor to Apple Cars. Sony is similar to the car-making model of the new car-making forces at this stage, and it only wants to build cars in the traditional sense. Therefore, if Sony's new car mass production plan is delayed for too long, it is likely to lose its product strength.
Apple's "Titan" plan is different from all the cars that traditional car companies and new forces, including Sony, want to build. It's about building the cars of the future. Therefore, even if Apple's car-making plan has been delayed for more than ten years, and it has been repeatedly frustrated on the way, it is still a good meal in the industry and it is not afraid of late.
Li Bin, the founder of Weilai, once said that there is no two billion not to build a car. Later, he once changed the "two billion" car-making threshold to "four billion". In Xiao Lei's view, if Apple's ambition in the automotive field is only to stay in the traditional form of the car, then with its scientific and technological strength and financial resources, whether it is 20 billion or 40 billion, or even 80 billion can be taken.
If it weren't for the high profile, Apple's Titans program would never have dragged on from 2007 to 2022. Xiao Lei believes that the apple titan program is slow to progress for three main reasons:
First, Apple hopes to apply its successful model in the field of consumer electronics and find a mature traditional car company to oem automotive products for it. In order to be able to complete its car-making plan in the OEM mode, Apple has negotiated with at least 7 traditional car companies, including BMW, Volkswagen and Hyundai.
However, traditional car companies are not Foxconn, and they are not interested in the oem of Apple at all. In Xiao Lei's view, the reason why traditional car companies do not want to see Apple, in addition to looking down on the Microblog profits obtained after investing a lot of production capacity in the OEM, is mainly afraid of personally cultivating a strong competitor, which is tantamount to digging a grave for traditional car companies.
Because Apple rarely discloses information about its car building, the outside world is mostly only speculation about what kind of car it wants to build. In Xiao Lei's view, the people who know Apple's car products best are the car companies it wants to cooperate with in addition to Apple itself. If Apple's auto products are already strong enough to chill several traditional car companies with centuries-old car heritage, how strong does it have to be?
Second, technical reasons. In Xiao Lei's view, Apple cars belong to typical scientific and technological products, but the technical products of the vehicle regulation level are the most important safety. You know, between 2016 and 2020, Apple has specifically turned the "Titan" project to the development of autonomous driving technology. By 2020, Apple's self-driving mileage has exceeded 30,000 kilometers, and the longest "off-hand" distance has reached 232 kilometers.
The longest "off-hand" distance of 232 kilometers may be considered excellent among L2-level driver assistance technologies, but it is only in the field of L3 or higher level of autonomous driving. It can be seen that the integration of technological technologies, including automatic driving, and safety may be a difficult problem that Apple cars are tackling.
Third, policy reasons. As mentioned above, the car apple wants to build is different from the traditional car, and its future-oriented car is likely to be equipped with high-level autonomous driving technology. In terms of autonomous driving, some time ago it was reported that Apple cars will be launched in 2025 and use a footless pedal and steering wheel design. According to the US SAE autonomous driving grading standard, only self-driving cars above L4 level can adopt such a design.
However, As a powerful country in the automobile industry, Germany has just landed L3 level autonomous driving technology, and there is still a long time to go before the landing of unmanned driving technology, so Apple Cars has sufficient research and development time. In Xiao Lei's view, this is also the main reason why Apple's car manufacturing has been repeatedly frustrated, but the industry is still optimistic about it.
Titans and executives jumping back and forth
Apple's highly confidential form of holding back the big move will also bring certain negative effects, and may even directly lead to its car-making big tire stillbirth.
Apple proposed the idea of entering the automotive field in 2007, and seven years later, in 2014, it gathered thousands of employees to form a pure electric vehicle project team that could compete with Tesla. However, the actual progress of Apple's car-making plan has not been as smooth as expected.
The following year, Apple's Titan plan was shelved over management turmoil, as well as a number of other issues, and most of its team members were dismissed. In 2016, Apple restarted the "Titan" program, but the project is not as ambitious as it was 2 years ago. At that time, tesla's "Titan" plan has changed from vehicle research and development to specializing in autonomous driving.
It was not until 2021 that the Titan program changed its strategic goals again and shifted its focus to car building. It's laughable that just as Apple was preparing to re-emerge in the automotive space, Titan executives lost confidence in it. In 2021 alone, Apple's Titan project has left at least 5 executives.
There is an old saying in our country that says, one drum blows, then declines, and three exhausts. In Xiao Lei's view, although Apple has sufficient funds and scientific and technological strength, the repeated tumultuous operations in the past few years have caused it to lose its first-mover advantage, and it has now reached the stage of three exhaustion.
In order to stabilize the internal popularity of the car project and alleviate external pressure, Apple urgently needs to come up with a product that can hold the field, even if this product is still a concept car that cannot be put on the road.
summary
In Xiao Lei's view, Sony and Apple are two completely different companies in the choice of car-making routes, but they have the same destination. Sony focuses on the present, but with its product strength and mass production capacity, it may not have its living space at present. Apple is focused on the future, but its people's hearts have been lost, the product is a blank, and it may not be able to persist into the future. If they want to break this deadlock, both Sony and Apple need to come up with a more convincing product.
Note: The material for this article comes from the Internet