In January, when Sony announced that it was embracing car-making, the Nikkei Chinese network commented that the imaginary enemy of Sony cars may be the metacosm. There's a point in that Zuckerberg said when introducing the metaversm earlier: "[People] can spend more time on important things and less time on the road." "This of course includes car travel, but it seems that this is a problem that car companies should worry about more - pure electric vehicles for travel and the metacosm that causes people to travel less."
What cannot be ignored is that in the past year, including brands such as Zhiji Automobile, Weilai, and BMW, the automotive industry has more or less intersected with the concept of metacosmity. However, as the second home of modern people, how can the car navigate a parallel world? Is the automotive X meta-universe a game of friend and foe, or is it an evolution of synergy?
Car companies want to "surpass reality"
A somewhat awkward reality for the metaverse concept is that behind the grand imagination, we can only glimpse the charm of AR/VR glasses or virtual software. However, this is a different opportunity for car companies, which means that only a high cost is required, and car companies can bring some novel experiences to their signature products. At present, there are roughly three forms of "you nong and me nong" between car companies and meta-universes. It should be noted that not all car companies are willing to use the meta-universe as a clear publicity point, which is more of a habitual summary.
The first category is represented by Xiaopeng Motors. On November 1, 221, according to the news from Tianyancha and other channels, Guangdong Xiaopeng Automobile Technology Co., Ltd. applied for the registration of a number of "Xiaopeng Yuan Universe" trademarks, the international classification involved means of transport, machinery and equipment, scientific instruments, the current trademark status is in the trademark application, waiting for substantive examination. This is a defensive move, because in September 2021, the "Xiaopeng Yuan Universe" trademark was preemptively registered by others. In addition, Changan Ford has also shouted out the definition of "the ultimate key to unlocking the stunning meta-universe" in the publicity. On December 27, 2021, Auchan Auto officially announced the first NFT in the industry, and the first meta-universe digital collection in the automotive industry jointly launched with Tencent Phantom Core. These are conceptual proximity.
The second category is represented by NIO. On December 18, 2021, NIO unveiled a new model, THE5, on NIO Day 2021, which is equipped with a panoramic digital cockpit PanoCinema with AR/VR technology jointly developed with NIO Capital member companies Nreal and NOLO. Among them, NIO Air AR Glasses, jointly developed with Nreal, can project a large screen with a visual distance of 6 meters, equivalent to 201 inches; NIO VR Glasses, jointly developed with NORLO, is equipped with ultra-thin Pancake optical lenses, which can realize binocular 4K display.
Nio's action is to get on the car on hardware and preemptively integrate into new applications such as digital cockpits. At this level, user experience, especially entertainment and leisure experience, is the first for the time being. However, assuming a breakthrough in the policy aspects of subsequent technologies, this type of hardware can also be transformed into more application scenario services.
The third category is represented by zhiji cars. On August 27, 2021, Zhiji Auto "Rough Stone Valley" was officially launched on the "IM Zhiji" App, where the official said that users can pioneer rough, exchange ideas, upgrade equipment, and evolve vehicles. In fact, at its core, a real-world economic system built on this mechanism: "rough" can be used to redeem various hardware or OTA services.
The layout of Zhiji Automobile corresponds to software services, which strengthen user stickiness, improve brand recognition and loyalty, and motivate users to be far greater than the construction of a real virtual world. The third stage of Rough Valley will create a meta-cosmic space where real cars and virtual cars are stirred together - Crypto Horizon, where real vehicles will have a digital twin, and the data of real cars will help virtual cars grow, and the abilities developed by virtual cars can also be upgraded by feeding real cars. Qian Gang, director of digital innovation at Zhiji Auto, said he pays more attention to the creation of user communities based on the invisible value behind the rough.
It is not difficult to see that car companies can only meet the current entertainment and life needs as a starting point, and seize the future intelligent opportunities as a long-term goal. This can also be deduced why content + carrier companies like Sony will have the idea of building cars: the vehicle itself is an important carrier of the meta-universe, if the car companies themselves build a perfect ecosystem, Sony can only choose to give the initiative to the car companies. At the same time, the entertainment life in the car will obviously affect the development of a number of daily entertainment enterprises, because the consumer's time is always limited.
So, is the car really so reliable in the meta-universe trend?
Why did the automobile become an outpost in the metacosm?
When explaining the concept of Baidu's automotive robots, Baidu CEO Robin Li said: "These automotive robots can communicate with people, roads, and their own kind autonomously, and make corresponding actions according to the results of communication. They are like schools of fish in the sea, moving autonomously and orderly, with ease, completing a variety of tasks and becoming intelligent assistants for humans. It is true that the current automotive industry is still far from being able to achieve per capita intelligence, but it is this trend that makes cars, especially smart cars, become an "outpost" in the metacosm. Because, just as smart phones accompanied the great development and prosperity of the mobile Internet, in the absence of large-scale breakthroughs in basic technology, there are few industries that are so aggressive and have sufficient imagination space as smart cars.
Moreover, the technology of smart cars and metacosms can assist each other. Google, which not only has the leading self-driving player Waymo, but also has a strategy to integrate and develop technologies such as maps and artificial intelligence. Their best fusion carrier is the car, and for traditional car companies, Google is superior to comprehensive capabilities. This is also the reason why car companies are willing to catch up on cutting-edge concepts such as the meta-universe. Tsinghua University's "2020-2021 Metacosmological Development Research Report" pointed out that the metacosm has a multi-dimensional technical base, of which fields such as 5G, artificial intelligence, cloud computing and other fields have long been the outlet for smart cars to chase.
Secondly, the relatively closed and complete experience space of the car has raised the realization ability of the metacosmum and derived more functions and experience methods. How to understand this? Compared with a special meta-universe experience hall, or creating a simple meta-universe experience space at home, smart cars have the ability to improve the underlying support of the meta-universe at the factory, such as weilai's smart cockpit. In fact, for the user of the vehicle, the sense of space and immersion of the vehicle itself is even more likely to go beyond the self-created meta-cosmic experience, because the car itself is closed. This is at least more likely to be in line with Roblox's sense of immersion and openness in the eight elements of the metacosmonic definition – this is relative to the traditional travel scenario, which means that you do not need to turn on any additional equipment during driving or riding, but can complete the experience of a one-dimensional universe with a vehicle.
Finally, and most realistically, the problem is still related to the eight elements of the metacosm: pluralism and economic systems. Just like the rough stone valley of Zhiji car, when the owner's actions can form a linkage of interests between virtual and reality, the system has vitality. With the growth of real car mileage data and the improvement of data contributions in various aspects, users can get some virtual and real incentives, among which data coincidentally corresponds to the trend of smart car big data operations. For example, the current professional insurance for electric vehicles has begun to adopt models such as UBI for comprehensive data evaluation, and the metacosm has improved the utilization efficiency of these data.
However, the advantage of this aspect at present is that the automobile business itself can form a synergy in marketing and service with the metacosm, and ultimately settle on effective output, first solving the problem of applause or not. Its form is the community of Zhiji Automobile and Nio. Obviously, some practical problems have constrained the car and the metacosm to go hand in hand, forcing them to cooperate only in the short term.
The two real-world puzzles of driving a car into the metaverse
If the pressure of Sony's car manufacturing does come from the car's squeeze on other forms of entertainment, then entertainment content such as games and movies and television will be affected together with PlayStation hardware. Fortunately, at present, both the automotive and meta-universe industries are difficult to solve the real in-car experience problem.
Twenty years ago, the electronics used in a car could account for only 3% of the total cost, but today it has risen to 30%. According to data from agencies such as ICVTank, this proportion will rise further by 2030, reaching 50% of the total cost of the car. Costs don't go all the way to the powertrain or interior, and parts like smart cockpits and entertainment hardware are becoming new spending points. The agency expects that by 2025, the market size of China's smart cockpit industry will reach 103 billion yuan. For example, Volvo's 360C concept car, the seat is a simple bed, the window and desktop can be turned into a display, at this time, the car and the metacosm are more like integrated equipment, rather than means of transportation.
However, the concept car is a concept car precisely because of its manufacturing difficulty, process cost, policy restrictions and other problems. The native meta-universe industry is still slowly advancing on the traditional route of VR headsets and AR glasses - this is not to say that the traditional hardware route is wrong, but considering the autonomy of car companies, in addition to the cooperation between Weilai and ecological enterprises, the rest of the car companies are more likely to independently develop meta-universe basic equipment or adopt integrated solutions. But just as car companies are launching concept cars every year, the emergence of meta-universe cars will not be completed overnight.
Hardware is the lower limit, software and data are the upper limit: as we all know, although big data creates many industrial opportunities, basic problems such as "killing" are often reported. The collection of multi-dimensional content such as personal information and driving information in the metacosm is bound to reach an unprecedented level, involving data use and security issues. The reason is that its data contains at least two aspects, one is hardware data such as the driving of the vehicle, and the other is the software data generated by users in experiences such as entertainment and social networking. No matter what kind of way and channel of collection and storage, due to the high correlation between the car and safety, this will inevitably go through a large-scale and long-term discussion, trial and error.
On the other hand, only by connecting the car with society through data will the value be maximized, and the car is a huge complete system, which also means that the use of data has both opportunities and challenges. The core of this is whether it is possible to start from data and build a system of interconnection between virtual and real. And this is also the pursuit of the metaverse itself.
What is certain is that no matter what step the integration of the car and the metacosm is, the hardware and software must precede the ecology, the experience must precede the overall logic, and the practice will precede the norm. Attempts from car companies, software vendors and other forces will build an effective experience before the automotive metacosm is formed. Kong Rong, chief analyst of global technology at Tianfeng Securities, pointed out, "If we abandon the concept of metaversity today, the 3D presentation and transformation of many application scenarios and content displays has actually begun gradually, which may contain many opportunities in the future." ”
Perhaps, this would be more like the view of Puri, a Tweet blogger and former BEBO CEO@Shaan: The metaverse is not a place, but a moment. The automotive metacosm is also a whole new moment.
On the whole, when the transportation industry emphasizes intelligence and experience more and more, and tries to provide consumers with digital life within the ecological closed loop it has created, it will inevitably face the question of competition with traditional technologies and IT industries: is it collaboration or self-sufficiency? The run-in problem of the metacosm and the automobile will be solved with technological progress, and the distribution of benefits is the focus of the future contradiction.