Recently, the more eye-catching news in the car circle is that Tesla is going to launch its own App Store, which means that the car will be more intelligent and open, and it is very important to bind the existing Tesla owners, just like the Apple mobile phone users are relatively easier to retain, which will inevitably drive a new round of car companies "app store" tide.
What is a car's App Store
For a smartphone, the hardware, and even the system, is only its body, and the application is its mind and soul. The car is currently in the early stages of the replacement of "functional machines" to "smart machines", and an important symbol of smart machines is "App Store - App Store", which is also the greatness of Jobs, after building the platform, relying on global software service providers to jointly maintain the Apple system. When we use mobile phones today, only photos and phones are commonly used, the former also needs to be retouched, the latter is gradually replaced by WeChat, and the rest of the APP is almost not developed by Apple, but it can not only share in revenue, but also rely on these applications to stick users.
For Tesla, the current stage is certainly not up to Apple's perfect business model, but an open App Store will certainly allow it to get more "brains", far better than Tesla's developers themselves came up with ideas. These applications can be just multimedia applications, such as music, video, audio, etc., or they can be communications, navigation, shopping and other mobile applications that are more friendly with travel, of course, there are some driving convenience applications, such as more perfect 360-degree images, and even more perfect algorithms to assist driving is not impossible. These are of great significance to Tesla's ecology.
The premise of car companies to make a good app store
In fact, some of the current models, there have been some applications, but the current market of the car system, basically belongs to the semi-closed state, can only be the manufacturer and software vendors cooperation, embedded in the car machine, the openness is seriously insufficient, which leads to a large number of "wisdom" is excluded from the system, but this is not the most core reason. The key to whether you can really do a good App Store lies in the base.
In addition to the OEM's own systems, there are also some independent vehicle and machine system manufacturers that are trying to be installed in a wide range of vehicles. But the car is different from the mobile phone, the possibility of brushing the machine in the later stage is too small, and the expansion cycle of the front installation is too long, and the car company is not willing to use a system that has nothing to do with itself, after all, we all know that this is a piece of fat. Foreign brands, such as Volkswagen and Toyota's cars, are even less likely to adopt systems such as Zebra and Sycamore on a large scale. Without a base, there is no benefit, there are not so many software vendors flocking to, at most migrating mobile phone applications to the car, so the quantity is small and the quality is a common phenomenon. And this deadlock needs an external force to break, and is a particularly powerful force, just like before the Apple mobile phone came out, the Dopod mobile phone is not a pure "functional machine", but there is not enough ability to pry the entire smart phone ecology, so in the end the mobile phone industry has today, or rely on Jobs. Today's automotive industry is really moving towards intelligence, basically relying on Musk.
The impact on the pattern of the mainland automobile industry in the next few years
The previous view of the car review network believes that the high sales of electric vehicles, in addition to meeting the high-frequency urban travel scene, the main reason is that pure electric vehicles are more intelligent, and this functional machine is gradually eliminated, because Tesla's App Store appears, I believe it will open up the gap even more, which will be a big positive for the entire new energy automobile industry.
Domestic new energy vehicle companies, I believe they will also follow up, but the pace should not be too fast, the effect is not necessarily too good. After all, the base is large, there is no intelligent foundation, such as Wuling MiniEV, Nezha, etc.; Wei Xiaoli has an intelligent foundation, but the volume cannot be compared with Tesla, so it is not optimistic about the short-term competitiveness of independent brands in this regard. Of course, if the system of domestic car companies is just the same as Tesla, then the software service provider does not mind generating one more version. But Tesla is currently using Linux, not Android, Wei Xiaoli is not using a pure Android system, everyone has no common foundation, so in terms of obtaining developers, it is not easy for new forces to follow up in the short term.
However, in the long run, it is still good for mainland new energy automobile companies, especially compared with Brands such as Toyota and Volkswagen. In today's domestic new energy vehicle market, independent brands carry most of the country, rather than the world of joint ventures, which means that these new energy vehicle companies have complete autonomy in "intelligence". The joint venture brand, some relevant industry insiders have said, "exaggerated to say that changing an application will take 1-2 years, completely unable to keep up with the times." Therefore, in the next few years, the trend of high probability is that Tesla is running at the strongest, followed by autonomy, while the new energy vehicles of traditional giants are difficult to localize at the software application level and fall behind. This will cause the gap between new energy vehicles and traditional cars in the world to become larger and larger, and the sales of new energy vehicles will inevitably increase further.
This article is the original of "Car Review Network", author: Guo Youli, editor: xiaobian, may not be reproduced without permission. Pay attention to the "car review network" and focus on in-depth reporting of the automotive industry.