| Toretto
When the car is gradually being defined as a mobile smart terminal, more and more car companies and companies in the automotive industry chain appear at CES (International Consumer Electronics Exhibition).
This phenomenon did not begin to appear this year, but the technology and functions demonstrated by the participants in the automotive industry at CES 2022 certainly allow us to see the boundary between the present and the future.
Present: The main theme of intelligent driving
What is a smart car? This is indeed an overly grand proposition, including both the Internet of Vehicles, the intelligent cockpit, and the vehicle-road collaboration, of course, automatic driving is also covered, which is indispensable. Compared with the intelligent cockpit, the main theme of this year's intelligence is more inclined to the progress of automatic driving.
McKinsey released a report saying that for assisted driving, the features that consumers are most willing to pay and are willing to pay the highest amount are collision avoidance or collision warning systems, followed by adaptive cruise ACC and lane keeping systems. More advanced autonomous driving, consumers prefer automatic parking and automatic follow-up of congested roads. Another consulting firm's report shows that 90% of consumers want vehicles to have smarter ability to follow cars in congested road conditions, prevent congestion, do not change lanes and so on.
Recently, the latest data released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology is verifying this statement: the domestic passenger car new car market equipped with a combination driving assistance system accounts for 20%, which is the critical point for innovative products to move from the early incubation stage to high-speed growth, and the golden period of assisted driving in the Chinese market is coming. I believe that the outbreak of overseas markets will not be too far away.
Car companies are directly to consumers, and General Motors is one of the representatives. In the field of autonomous driving, assisted driving systems such as Super Cruise and Ultra Cruise have repeatedly won the first place in professional evaluations, and cruise, the self-driving startup it controls, is also one of the leaders in the Robotaxi industry.
Focusing on the future, Cadillac InnerSpace autonomous driving concept car debuted at this year's CES, the car as an electronic product, breaking the boundary is what car companies must do.
InnerSpace self-driving concept car
Of course, the transformation of car companies is inseparable from the support of suppliers.
As a relatively emerging supplier, Mobileye is quite high-profile at this CES. The Israeli company announced that it will provide the Volkswagen Group with crowdsourced mapping technology to improve the comfort of ADAS functions including lane keeping/centering in Volkswagen, Skoda and Seat brands.
As it and Ford deepen their long-term relationship to a strategic partnership, Mobielye's road information management mapping technology will be added to future versions of Ford's BlueCruise system and provide L2+ ADAS solutions for multiple brands and models.
While the giants of traditional parts suppliers are also transforming, Valeo's third-generation scanning lidar debuted at CES in 2022 and is expected to be available in 2024.
Bosch, on the other hand, continues to show its "tool man" attributes. In order to simplify the development of electric vehicles and increase the productivity of automakers, Bosch offers pre-integrated components for electric vehicles, such as advanced driving modules (ADMs). ADM combines the powertrain, braking and steering into an integrated unit, allowing automakers to install them into vehicles faster and more cost-effectively. In addition, simplified interfaces and a standard software structure ensure as flexible a fit between components as possible and provide the basis for the implementation of new functions.
At the same time, in order to adapt to the "high-tech" future, Bosch is developing central computers dedicated to the future electronic architecture, which will be used in assisted and autonomous driving, car chassis, smart cockpit and body electronics, and continuously improve car functions through OTA updates.
This year's main theme of intelligence is automatic driving, especially the landing of assisted driving, which is the most noteworthy and profitable technology and function in the short term.
"There are people who do the basic work, but there must always be people who do forward-looking research, and don't blindly deny leapfrog innovation." Zhao Fuquan, dean of tsinghua university's Automotive Industry and Technology Strategy Research Institute, told HD Auto that car companies and startups with the ability and willingness should be encouraged to explore new directions.
The future: platform, architecture and new cars
In the era of intelligent cars, car companies are not only competing in products, but also systematic competition. Although many intelligent functions and technologies can be landed on fuel vehicles, the future of electric and intelligent are inseparable two lines.
At this year's CES, GM highlighted the wave of change unleashed by their Ultium Aotene platform, and Mary Barra, GM's chairman and CEO, said they are transitioning to platform innovators. On the Aotene platform, they developed the Chevrolet Silverado pure electric pickup, the NewErSpace self-driving concept car, a new member of the Cadillac Halo concept family, the Ultra Cruise Advanced Driver Assistance System, which enables point-to-point letting go, and Ultifi, a new software platform for General Motors.
That is to say, this platform is not only the key to electrification transformation, but also an important cornerstone for the landing of software such as automatic driving.
Aptiv's Intelligent Vehicle Architecture (SVA), launched as early as CES 2020, is more focused on the software level. It is an upgradable, open vehicle architecture platform that contains logical blocks that can be flexibly expanded to enable software-defined vehicles.
Aptiv SVA architecture
This year, Aptiv launched a series of SVA-based developments. In particular, area controllers such as power data centers (PDCs) and vehicle central controllers (CVCs) have enabled SVA to be fully operational, supporting the implementation of software-defined vehicles.
Today, with SVA, suppliers can customize automotive features such as ADAS, infotainment, and smart cockpits for automakers. In addition, Aptiv also offers an open platform and development kit with standardized interfaces, on which OEMs or third-party developers can further define and develop individual settings and functions.
This is a future-oriented architecture, and many car companies are currently promoting the domain controller idea is not the same, the use of companies is not many, Xiaopeng Automobile's latest G9 model uses the design concept of regional controller.
As Yang Xiaoming, President of Aptiv Asia Pacific, Global Vice President of Connector Systems and Managing Director of Asia Pacific, said, "Intelligent vehicle architecture (intelligent + centralized + regionalized) is currently in its infancy at home and abroad", but the collision of different technology paths can give birth to the spark of innovation, and SVA has opened up another road for car companies.
Shortly after CES, China's startup Youpao Technology released the UP super chassis and UP SPACE super cabin, proposing the new car 2.0 model developed by upper and lower splits, and its super chassis includes: full-line control chassis, pluggable ring network electrical and electronic architecture, CTC battery system and highly integrated thermal management system, software and hardware integration.
To some extent, this lowers the threshold of car manufacturing and represents the future, but at the same time, it is also "grabbing food" with traditional car companies. After all, in terms of the traditional industrial chain and industrial division of labor, suppliers are "crossing the line".
Car companies want to control their own future, and Aoteneng and SVA were born. In the new automobile ecology, before all parties have a clear new role positioning, they have the ability and financial and technical strength to lay out a multi-point layout, which is a more secure strategic choice.
While it's not just chassis suppliers sneaking up on food, tech companies like Sony are blatantly "declaring war." At CES 2022, Sony officially announced the establishment of a new company "Sony Mobility Inc." and released a second concept car, vision-S 02, which began to explore the commercialization of electric vehicles this spring.
Although it is not explicitly stated to build a car, the OEM or the service provider is also a "new car manufacturing force". Outside of Apple, Sony is undoubtedly a very powerful crossover challenger. The GENES of entertainment or gaming companies make people look forward to their involvement in the automotive sector.
However, more companies are willing to cooperate with car companies.
Mobileye, which has been questioned for lagging behind in the field of autonomous driving chips, has launched EyeQ Ultra, a single-package autonomous vehicle integrated chip supercomputing platform designed for end-to-end autonomous driving, with a computing power of 176TOPS. In addition, it also announced that it will cooperate with Extreme Krypton Automobile to develop a new consumer-grade pure electric vehicle with L4 autonomous driving capabilities.
At the end of 2021, Waymo also chose the Car Company from China to produce its own vehicles for its driverless fleet.
Every family is making the right choice, the future is still unclear, and the competition continues.
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