At the 2022 CES show in Las Vegas, Volvo Cars, which has just been successfully listed in 2021, has also released a number of heavyweight news to show its latest achievements in the field of pure electric and intelligent networking to the outside world.
In addition to the Volvo Concept Recharge, which is built based on the new pure electric platform, a series of strategies, including the introduction of Qualcomm Snapdragon digital cockpit platform, deep integration with Google Assistant and unsupervised highly automated driving function - Ride Pilot, announced the traditional Luxury brand car company in Northern Europe and sounded the strongest rallying call of intelligent network technology
Ride Pilot is the biggest highlight of Volvo CES
Volvo began research on autonomous driving/driver assistance early on, and it is one of the few luxury brands to popularize City Safety functionality.
Back in 2016, Volvo was cruising at 70km/h on the sixth ring road in Beijing to test the Drive Me self-driving test project. For Volvo, in addition to bringing people a better driving experience, its promotion of autonomous driving is to minimize the various accidents caused by driving is its more important goal.
Therefore, in the past few years, Volvo has been polishing its own autonomous driving system until the latest results shown to the outside world.
At CES, Volvo officially announced that it will launch an unregulated highly autonomous driving function - Ride Pilot - to users in California, USA. Once ride Pilot is activated, drivers can leave all driving-related tasks to Volvo Cars, which means that they can not only be freed from the heavy driving burden, but also spend more driving time reading, writing, office, socializing and other activities. This set of high-level autonomous driving systems built by Volvo, which regards safety as the foundation of life, will naturally be placed on greater expectations.
Achieving high-level autonomous driving requires both software and hardware preparation.
In terms of hardware, ride Pilot will be equipped with more than 20 sensors, of which Luminar's Iris lidar sensor will be the biggest attraction. In addition to the Luminar lidar sensor, it will also be equipped with 5 radars, 8 cameras and 16 ultrasonic sensors.
On the software side, Ride Pilot relies on Zenseact, Volvo's self-driving software development company, and Volvo Cars' internal development team from technology company Luminar to create a software platform that maximizes hardware functionality and enables autonomous driving capabilities.
After Ride Pilot's highway safety test passes, Volvo will also follow the practice of other OEMs such as Tesla to offer subscription services for car owners on its new pure-electric flagship SUV, which will be released later this year. This allows Volvo to find a new source of revenue in addition to the sales revenue of the whole vehicle. Of course, the relevant autonomous driving software can also be continuously upgraded through OTA functions, gradually unlocking more autonomous driving scenarios for consumers.
Qualcomm and Google, power volvo smart cockpit
In addition to automatic driving technology, the intelligent cockpit is also an important area for major OEMs to compete in the era of intelligent networking. In terms of smart cockpits, Qualcomm and Google have become the biggest reliance on driving Volvo to stay ahead of the curve.
At the 2022 CES, Volvo officially announced its cooperation with Qualcomm. In the future, Volvo's pure electric SUV will be equipped with Qualcomm Snapdragon digital cockpit platform as a high computing power hub. Powered by this platform, Volvo Cars' next-generation in-vehicle infotainment systems will run up to 2x faster and image generation will be 10x faster to meet customer demands for continued growth in image, audio and artificial intelligence.
In addition, Volvo will further deepen its cooperation with Google on the next generation of intelligent in-vehicle interconnection systems, which will become the first car company to directly integrate with google assistant-enabled devices.
With the support of Google Assistant devices, Volvo's car-machine system can be deeply integrated with Google's smart home ecology. In a Volvo car or on any mobile device that supports Google Assistant, Volvo owners can remotely control various functions.
When the owner synchronizes the vehicle with his personal Google account, he can directly send voice commands to the Google system on the car side, such as remotely turning on the air conditioning heating in the car in winter, or remotely locking the car and other operations. With the help of Google Assistant, in addition to retrieving various information about the vehicle at any time, users can also unlock a variety of new features, including charging preset functions, allowing users to set a specific time when the car starts charging and other convenient operations.
At the same time, Volvo also pays attention to the exclusive needs of users in the Chinese market.
Its built-in native Android car machine system developed by Google is not only at the forefront of the market segment in terms of adaptability, stability and fluency, but also a more open car intelligence ecology. The services and applications of leading technology giants in China, including AutoNavi Map, iFLYTEK, Huawei, Tencent, Alibaba and other leading technology giants in China, can be embedded in Volvo's car-machine system, allowing domestic consumers to achieve seamless connection between daily life and driving life.
There is an urgent need to accelerate the implementation of forward-looking technologies in China
At present, when domestic consumers buy a car, especially when purchasing a new generation of intelligent electric vehicles, driving assistance/autonomous driving capabilities will be an important reference indicator. Better driver assistance/autonomous driving capabilities can not only greatly improve driving safety, but also reduce the driver's driving fatigue intensity.
As Volvo's largest single market in the world, when ride Pilot can be introduced in the Chinese market will have a direct impact on Volvo's future sales in China.
However, the landing of Ride Pilot is not only to complete the hardware installation, and the introduction of Zenseact algorithm can be achieved. Just as it has already conducted a large number of tests in Europe and the United States, Volvo will need to conduct a large number of road tests in China in the future to achieve the deployment of Ride Pilot technology in China. And this requires a lot of time to accumulate, and it can never be achieved overnight. At present, Volvo has set a medium-term target of 1.2 million annual sales, and the pillar position of the Chinese market is self-evident. With domestic competitors continuing to update driver assistance/autonomous driving capabilities, Volvo needs to accelerate the deployment of Ride Pilot in the Chinese market.
Models on the SPA2 platform will be gradually unveiled in 2022, and Volvo's models on sale will usher in a new round of upgrading. The listing of a new generation of more competitive electric vehicles will help Volvo achieve the strategic transformation of pure electric luxury brand car companies.
In this process, whether it is with its Zenseact self-developed self-driving software platform, or with the software and hardware products of top partners such as Google, Luminar and Qualcomm, Volvo seeks to maximize synergies and strive for its strategic goals.
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