Easy car original look back at 2021 In the field of smart cars, we have witnessed a big event, we may exclaim that an Internet company is going to transform and build a car; sigh that a company claims that its electric vehicle has a range of more than 1000km; wonder if the price increase is really caused by lack of cores? Curious about whether the self-driving taxis with a "big hat" on the road are really as convenient and safe as traditional taxis?
In fact, with the continuous advancement of the electrification, intelligence, networking and sharing of automobiles, more and more new technologies and new products have come into being, and the reason why we can see the scene of today's flowers blooming in the field of intelligent vehicles is the continuous progress of technology, which is simply the empowerment of science and technology. We want to know why the car can automatically drive the car need to first understand what is the integration of perception, vehicle-road collaboration, large computing chip, high-precision map and other technologies contained; to know where the upper limit of electric vehicle endurance is, we must first see what kind of battery technology has reached a point, 4680 batteries, cobalt-free batteries, solid-state batteries, CTP/CTC, blade batteries, 800V platforms, etc.; in addition, like the vehicle's electronic and electrical architecture, information security, thermal management system, hybrid technology, Fuel cell technology These large and complex technologies, like the underlying foundation, determine the superstructure of future smart cars.
When we look forward to what new progress there will be in the car circle in 2022, we may wish to first take stock and analyze around three key technologies, one is a large computing chip; the other is an 800V high-voltage SiC platform; and the third is a multi-domain fusion central computing architecture. These three pieces of content will be the key technologies that usher in strong development and scale this year, let's talk about it one by one.
01 1000TOPS large computing platform ushered in the first year of mass production and loading
In recent years, we seem to often hear the word computing power TOPS, chip manufacturers racked their brains to improve the computing power indicators of their own products, each car company is also constantly flaunting their own car can achieve the performance of the whole car less computing power, it seems that horsepower is no longer the only criterion for describing the performance of a car, computing power in today's smart car era has also come to the center of the stage. So what exactly is hash rate? Computing power is actually simply described as the computing power of a chip, TOPS is the unit of computing power, 1TOPS represents that the processor can perform one trillion (10^12) operations per second, which does not sound very exaggerated. In fact, we can be analogous to the human brain, the human brain generally has 10 billion neurons, the more neurons also means the smarter, then the car to replace human thinking must have more powerful computing power to help us identify and predict the unpredictable environment on the road, improve the safety of our driving. Therefore, the greater the computing power of the chip, the more scenarios and functions that can be handled and responded to, and the stronger the ability to help us in emergency and complex scenarios.
At the end of last year, the salon mecha dragon released at the Guangzhou Auto Show reached 400 TOPS;
Xiaopeng G9 reached 508TOPS;
NIO's ET7/ET5 is equipped with 33 high-performance sensors, including 5 millimeter-wave radar, 12 ultrasonic radars, and 1 ultra-long-range high-precision lidar, with the blessing of four NVIDIA Drive Orin chips, the final force is as high as 1016 TOPS;
This is not the end, the Great Wall WEY Mocha in the end of the Wisdom and Qualcomm research and development of the "Little Magic Box 3.0" under the blessing of the hashrate will reach a staggering 1440 TOPS.
But we need to clarify a little bit of thousands of TOPS computing power does not refer to a single chip but by a multi-chip integration of a super computing platform, above we mentioned that Weilai's supercomputing platform ADAM reached 1016TOPS because there are four single-chip computing power to reach 254TOPS Orin chip blessing; so we also made a statistical summary of the chip computing power on the current mainstream chip field, to see what kind of level each chip has reached:
Through the statistical table we can find that at present in the autonomous driving domain, NVIDIA's Orin chip is the largest computing power in the mass production chip, and the domestic brand has reached a single-piece computing power of 196TOPS led by the Huashan No. 2 A1000Pro of black sesame, and Yang Yuxin, a black sesame intelligent COM, has said: "The premise of software-defined cars is hardware first, and only the performance and computing power of the hardware are sufficient, and the subsequent software can quickly realize the application of iterative upgrades and expansion functions." "Therefore, the development strategy of black sesame is to hardware first, as much as possible to lay the computing power, just like many performance enthusiasts who pursue the number of cylinders and horsepower, horsepower may not be used, but it must be." But everything has two sides, although the buried computing power space is enough, then the cost will inevitably go up, depending on whether the depot and consumers are willing to pay for this part of the reserved computing power.
Of course, the domestic chip factory Horizon is also very outstanding, last year's release of the Journey 5 chip reached 128TOPS, and Horizon CEO Yu Kai has said many times that Horizon does not simply pursue physical computing power, but pays more attention to the computational efficiency of deep neural network algorithms on the chip, that is, FPS (Frames Per Second). It seems to be a more economic line.
In addition, at present in the field of automatic driving chips, the strength of the three giants of foreign countries NVIDIA, Qualcomm, Intel Mobileye is still not to be underestimated, in the just-concluded CES 2022 exhibition, these three have also come up with the ability to look after the family, NVIDIA announced that more companies will use its open DRIVE Hyperion platform, such as Volvo high-end brand Polar star, Weilai, Xiaopeng, Ideal Car, R car and Zhiji car have adopted DRIVE Hyperion. The platform includes a high-performance computer and sensor architecture that meets the safety requirements of fully autonomous vehicles. The latest generation of the DRIVE Hyperion 8 features redundant NVIDIA DRIVE Orin system-on-chips, 12 surround cameras, 9 radars, 12 ultrasonic modules, 1 front-facing lidar and 3 internal perception cameras.
The system has strong safety redundancy, and even in the event of a computer or sensor failure, backup equipment ensures that self-driving cars can safely take passengers to their destinations.
Qualcomm launched the Snapdragon Ride platform in the field of autonomous driving, which can meet the needs of L2+/L3 level autonomous driving. Qualcomm also recently announced a number of cooperation dynamics, including helping General Motors build Cadillac LYRIQ and helping BMW build its autonomous driving platform. At the same time, Qualcomm announced at the exhibition to expand its technology portfolio to meet the changing needs of the autonomous driving field.
Intel's Mobileye has released three chips in a row, namely EyeQ Ultra, EyeQ 6L and EyeQ 6H. It can also be regarded as a clarion call for a counter-offensive.
The computing power of the chip in the future will be the cornerstone of the development of smart cars, and only by continuously breaking through the computing power can the intelligent upper limit of smart cars be pulled higher.
02 800V high voltage SiC platform will become the magic weapon of car companies
The level of chip computing power we said earlier determines the intelligence level of a car, so the next technology we want to talk about is to determine the ability of an electric vehicle to charge fast or slow. To know that slow charging has become a major pain point for many electric vehicle users is also to dissuade many users who want to try electric vehicles, although there are currently power exchange technology can greatly improve the efficiency of energy replenishment, but due to high cost, difficult to promote and other reasons restrict its development. Therefore, fast charging is a solution with the greatest development potential and the most likely to become mainstream.
First of all, we must know that the charging speed is determined by the charging power, then we recall the physical knowledge of high school, power = voltage× current, that is, P = U * I, so there are only two ways to increase the charging power, either increase the voltage, or increase the current.
Therefore, two technical routes have been developed, one is the high-current faction represented by Tesla and Extreme Krypton, and the other is represented by Porsche, and many other manufacturers closely follow the high-voltage faction supported. First of all, briefly talk about the large current school, the biggest difficulty of this genre is due to the heating problem caused by the increase in current, the same introduction of heat generation formula: Q = I ^ 2Rt, you can see that the heat will increase exponentially with the increase of the current, so how to dissipate heat has become a development problem, taking Tesla as an example, charging at 250Kw on the V3 supercharge pile, the maximum current can be as high as 600A, the heat can be imagined, But Tesla's application of water-cooled charging guns and a variety of thermal management cooperation has solved this problem. And the reason why Tesla chose large current as the development direction is still the cost control problem, because the components of the high-voltage platform will make the cost of the whole vehicle rise, and it can be seen that the high voltage is obviously the opposite of the price that Tesla is currently exploring.
So let's go back to the topic of high voltage platforms. The traditional voltage platform is generally 400V, the high voltage platform is currently to increase the voltage to 800V or even higher, high voltage can effectively solve the problem of high current heating, low current + high voltage need to support the high voltage charging pile and the high voltage adaptation scheme of the car end.
Charging end: charging gun, contactor, wiring harness, fuse and other components should be replaced and upgraded to high-voltage resistant materials.
Vehicle end: the power battery of the vehicle itself, air conditioning compressors, electric drives, PTC, OBC, DC/DC and other components for high-voltage platforms must be newly designed and adjusted to adapt to the new high-voltage platform.
The upgrade of the charging end is good, but the upgrade of the components on the car side requires new technical support to achieve. Previously mentioned that the problem of large current is the problem of heat generation, so the limiting factor of high voltage is the current automotive grade component IGBT (Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor), that is, the insulated gate bipolar transistor.
Its high-pressure resistance is insufficient, so it is necessary to select a new high-pressure-resistant material to replace the existing components, this new material is SiC silicon carbide.
SiC device operating temperature above 200 °C, operating frequency above 100kHz, withstand voltage up to 20kV, these performance are better than the traditional silicon IGBT; SiC device volume is one-third to one-fifth of the IGBT machine, the weight is 40%-60% of the IGBT; but also to improve the efficiency of the system, in different operating conditions of electric vehicles, SiC device power consumption is reduced by 60%-80% compared with IGBT, efficiency can be increased by 1%-3%.
However, it should also be noted that the cost of IGBTs in electric vehicles accounts for about 7%-10%, which is the second most expensive electric vehicle accessory in addition to power batteries. If SiC is used, the cost of the current SiC MOSFET of the same level is about 8-12 times that of IGBTs, and the loss is also greater than that of IGBTs. Therefore, if a high-voltage platform is used, how to control the cost will also become a major problem that plagues car companies.
In addition to the 800V high-voltage platform we mentioned earlier, Porsche's Taycan has also accelerated its layout. For example, the newly released Xiaopeng G9 will be equipped with an 800V SiC platform and a 480Kw high-voltage overcharge pile.
The Great Wall Salon Mech Dragon also supports high-voltage platforms, and many brands such as BYD, Dongfeng Lantu, Geely Automobile, GAC E-An, Ideal Automobile, BAIC Jihu and many other brands will join the camp of high-voltage platforms.
Therefore, both large current and high voltage are to improve the efficiency of our energy replenishment, but at present, the 800V SiC high-voltage platform is expected to become the mainstream, and many car companies will also be equipped with the platform in 2022, so this year will also be the first year of the development of the 800V SiC high-voltage platform, although there are still many difficulties to be solved, but we can see that the prospect of the market is very good.
03 Automotive electronic and electrical architecture from distributed architecture to multi-domain integration development
Talking about this topic, first of all, we need to understand what is the electronic and electrical architecture, also known as the E/E architecture, which refers to the overall layout scheme of the vehicle's electrical and electronic system, that is, all kinds of sensors, processors, wiring harness connections, electronic and electrical distribution systems and software and hardware in the car are integrated together to realize the distribution of functions, operations, power and energy of the whole vehicle.
Popularly speaking, the realization of our vehicle's four-wheel drive, airbags, anti-lock braking system, lifting and lowering windows to radio car entertainment systems, etc. need to be completed on this architecture, and the control of each function is implemented by a component called ECU, ECU refers to the electronic control unit is also called "driving computer", the function of ECU is relatively single, basically an ECU to achieve a main function, then it is conceivable that we have so many functions on the car that need dozens of ECU to control, so in the early E/ E architecture is a distributed form, the various ECUs are connected together through CAN and LIN bus, and now due to the popularity of automatic driving and intelligent cockpit, if the car is also controlled by distributed ECUs, then the number of chips, the cost of the vehicle and safety have put forward great problems, so with one or several "brains" to control the ECU of the whole vehicle and the sensor architecture, DCU (Domain Control Unit), that is, the car domain controller also came into being.
At present, domain controllers are typically divided into 5 main domains of powertrain, chassis control, body control, automatic driving, and smart cockpit. Each domain has a primary high-performance ECUs that handles functional processing and forwarding within the domain. Low-speed buses are generally used within the domain, and high-speed buses are used between domains or more on-board Ethernet interconnections are now used.
Among these domain controls, the more concerned is the automatic driving domain control. In the past, a set of ADAS systems had to be implemented by several independent ECUs. For example, lane shift and traffic identification ECU, forward collision warning ECU, parking assist ECU, blind spot detection ECU. Some also have panoramic surround view ECU, rear anti-collision warning ECU, etc., and now with the domain controller of automatic driving, one domain can achieve all functions, which greatly improves the integration of the chassis and the centralized control of functions.
In the future, the development of E/E architecture will develop in the direction of distributed domain centralized central computing:
Distributed architecture: Under this architecture, the ECU has a correspondence with the implemented function.
Domain Centralized Architecture: This architecture enables further integration with ECUs, introducing DCU (domain controller units).
Central Computing Architecture: This architecture enables further integration of DCU, with all DCU integrated into a single central computer. The correspondence between functions and elements ceases to exist, and the actuator is directed by the central computer on demand.
In the process of domain centralization to central computing, there is also an excessive form that many car companies are currently trying to achieve domain convergence. At present, two mainstream cross-domain fusion schemes have been formed: 1, fusion by function 2, and fusion by location.
Convergence by Function: Three-Domain Architecture. The three-domain architecture divides the whole vehicle into three functional domains: vehicle domain controller (VDC), intelligent driving (ADAS domain controller, ADC), and intelligent cockpit domain controller (CDC), respectively, to achieve vehicle driving, automatic driving, infotainment and other functions. Like the E3 architecture of the Volkswagen MEB platform, the BMW iNEXT model architecture, and the Huawei CC architecture, all belong to this category.
Fusion by location: According to the physical space of the car, the whole car is divided into multiple areas, such as the left body domain, the right body domain, etc. The number of harnesses can be greatly reduced, freeing up more physical space. Tesla, Toyota, etc. all fall into this category.
In short, the future development direction must be in the direction of reducing entropy, distributed means complex, high degree of chaos, step-by-step integration and eventually to unified management will make the entropy value decrease, which means cost reduction and efficiency, which means that more functions can be expanded.
04 Write at the end
Smart cars are bound to usher in a new round of more powerful leaps and development in 2022, we understand the general trend of future development through the underlying logic of these cutting-edge technologies, and we are more looking forward to what updates and stronger technologies emerge this year, as consumers We can have more initiative and say in the choice of products after simply understanding the technical content behind the functions, and we can better distinguish which car companies really have hard power. I hope that in the future, we can witness this smart car revolution together and bring us a more comfortable, safe and cool travel experience.