Author | Mei Xukang
Edit | Hao Qiuhui
Core ideas
- The demand for C-end intelligence has increased, and the intelligent cockpit has become a landing point to achieve user needs;
- Chinese chips have sufficient potential, together with the underlying operating system that is often deeply bound to them, and gradually move towards the road of domestic substitution;
- Interaction precision, scene segmentation, construction standards, computing power outbreak, and integration competition will become the keywords of the development of the intelligent cockpit industry in 2022.
"Don't let driving become a burden." Dr. Kai Wang, Director and CEO of Core Engine Technology, said this to Yiou Auto. This also represents the most simple driving vision of many users.
In recent years, the automotive industry is in the midst of a dramatic upheaval, with leaps and bounds almost every year.
In the past 2021, new energy vehicles accounted for more than 10% of China's auto market, lidar was installed in mass production models for the first time, Robotaxi scenario-based landing operation was officially opened, and major car companies have released carbon neutrality goals...
Time into 2022, what new changes will the automotive travel industry usher in? Where will the winds of the industry blow? Who is the most favored pearl in the palm of the capital market?
Yiou Automobile specially launched the special topic of "Nongyin Acceleration - Insight into the Development Trend of the Automobile Travel Industry in 2022" to find the investment trend, market segment trend and product development trend of the automobile industry in 2022 for the reference of industry insiders.
This article is the sixth in a series of articles - "Insights on the Development Trend of Smart Cockpits in 2022".
In 2022, the century-long changes in the automotive industry represented by electrification and intelligence will continue to deepen.
Looking back, the oil truck seems to have been a "century-old body", and green energy has slowly become the "blood" flowing in the trunk of the car, and the industry has been rejuvenated.
AI, big data, 5G and other technologies are booming, and an intelligent revolution in the automotive industry is also quietly emerging.
Among them, the cockpit space, which is most closely related to the user experience, has been transformed under the urging of the wave of intelligence, which is different from the past. The change of user needs and the increased emphasis on the sense of experience have made the smart cockpit gradually become the just need of the car.
Despite the rise of the crowd, the market has not yet had a unified definition of what is a smart cockpit, more is a separate battle, the smart cockpit industry in 2021, in a hot scene of barbaric growth.
In the blink of an eye, yiou automobile believes that in 2022, there are the following four major development trends in the intelligent cockpit industry.
01 Industry hair, intelligence began to appear, to user demand-oriented to improve the penetration rate of intelligent cockpit
According to data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, in 2021, China's automobile production and sales reached 26.082 million units and 26.275 million units, respectively, an increase of 3.4% and 3.8% year-on-year, ending a three-year downward trend.
Among them, the sales of new energy vehicles reached 3.521 million units, an increase of 1.6 times year-on-year, ranking first in the world for seven consecutive years.
The automotive market is undergoing drastic changes in 2021, and in the case of the aftermath of the world epidemic and the lack of cores, the Chinese auto industry players have handed over an amazing answer.
As new energy vehicles move to the center of the stage, the penetration rate of smart cockpits is also rising. According to the survey data of Yiou Think Tank, the penetration rate of smart cockpits for passenger cars in the Chinese market will exceed 50% in 2021.
Yiou think tank predicts that in 2022, China's new energy vehicle sales will reach nearly 4.5 million. Yiou Automobile believes that as a good carrier of intelligent transformation of automobiles, the change in its market share will be positively correlated with the penetration rate of intelligent cockpits.
According to a survey by Yiou Think Tank, 100,000 to 700,000 models are the main range of smart cockpit power.
Nowadays, the automobile market has gradually changed from dumbbell type to spindle shape has become the consensus of the industry, and the main models in the market are moving closer to the low and medium price range, which will further enhance the penetration rate of smart cockpits.
The deeper reason affecting the development of the smart cockpit industry is the change in user demand.
In the view of Yiou Automobile, consumers have gradually developed from simple physiological safety needs to personalized and self-willed satisfaction for the cognition of cockpit needs.
Comfort, socialization, identity, personalization, etc. have become the new demands of consumers to buy cars. Users are beginning to pursue the added value of the car more than just using it as a means of transportation.
As the best way to achieve many personalized needs, intelligence has become an important factor affecting consumers' willingness to buy a car.
The demand for C-end intelligence has increased, the intelligent cockpit has become the landing point to realize the needs of users, and the change of car companies in response to demand is the first priority of enterprise development.
Yiou Automobile believes that with the vigorous development of electric intelligent vehicles and the transformation of market user demand, in 2022, the intelligent cockpit industry will continue to maintain high-speed progress, and the C-end market will promote the further vigorous development of the intelligent cockpit industry.
02 Interaction is diverse, scene segmentation, and precision and refinement are aimed at promoting personalized upgrades of smart cockpits
"Experience, service" has become a cliché in the era of intelligent electricity, and the most intuitive connection between cockpit space and user experience is interactive experience.
Human-machine interaction in the cockpit connects the application with the driver and occupants, empowers the presentation of applications and services in the cockpit, and has become a decisive factor in improving the user's experience of applications and functions in the cockpit.
The transformation of display systems such as HUD will also bring about the update of interaction methods, accompanied by changes in the form of cockpit components, interaction has become the soul of intelligent cockpit experience.
Tian Yu, director of the intelligent cockpit product line of iFLYTEK, told Yiou Automobile: "At present, in the industry, we have not seen a benchmark for a more perfect interactive experience, and the industry still needs to continue to explore. ”
At present, voice interaction still dominates, and while its technology is becoming more and more mature, multimodal interaction is on the agenda. Visual solutions such as DMS, as well as various interactive methods such as gesture commands, have gradually become important selling points of models.
Echoing the diversification of interaction methods is the refinement of the interactive scene.
The boundaries of the mechanical properties of the car continue to expand, and gradually develop into a third mobile space with an anthropomorphic temperature.
While the user demand becomes more, various targeted subdivision scenarios will gradually get on the car.
Not limited to the driving environment, the interactive experience in the parking scenario will also become the focus of user attention, such as rest areas, KTV, office and other interactive modes in different scenarios need to be targeted development by enterprises.
Wu Tong, general manager of the cockpit product center of Zhongke Chuangda, said in an interview with Yiou Automobile that hardware is slowly moving towards standardization, software is moving towards platform, and if a group of enterprises want to carry out real differentiated competition, they may focus on refinement, focus on specific target groups, and make targeted efforts.
Personalization is also very important, thousands of faces represent different user needs, personalized interaction will become an important boost to create a different competition.
The continuous enrichment of interactive technologies and scenarios is actually to meet the diversified needs of today's users. While the methods are gradually diversifying, improving accuracy is a long-term route that cannot be ignored.
Wu Tong said that in the past, people were looking for services, and now services are looking for people, and it is necessary to accurately deliver the services or experiences that users really want, "The improvement of interaction accuracy actually brings about the improvement of user experience." ”
Yiou Automobile believes that in 2022, when multi-modal interaction and personalized interaction are vigorously developed, improving the accuracy of interaction will become the focus of many manufacturers.
03 Man-machine co-driving, computing power as the basis, based on high computing power to create cockpit differentiation competition
The reform and development of the display system, the "one core and multiple screens" has become the industry consensus, the interaction requirements are gradually enriched, and the transformation trend of the automotive architecture from distributed to domain controllers has also made the requirements for chips higher and higher.
Computing power is undoubtedly one of the foundations of intelligence, and chips are one of the foundations of intelligence in the automotive industry.
As the automotive value chain changes, the value space of core technology/parts providers and emerging services will be further expanded, including smart technologies related to smart cockpits, core chips and operating systems.
Xu Jian, chief ecological officer of Horizon, once said that in the process of collaborative innovation of smart cars, from chips to operating systems to automatic driving, as well as human-computer interaction and massive applications of smart cars, the differences gradually increase from bottom to top.
The strict requirements for time, funds, etc. of chip research and development force only long-termists to play with the chip industry.
Because of this, it is more difficult for core-making companies to create differences in the underlying chip industry.
Wang Kai said to Yiou Automobile: "I think the chip industry, in many cases, there is no so-called business model innovation, but technological innovation. ”
He believes that if you want to make the product truly competitive, the computing power must be basically guaranteed, if it does not reach enough computing power, then there is no comparison with some advanced products in the world.
In December 2021, Core Engine Technology released the first domestic 7nm intelligent cockpit chip "Dragon Eagle One", which will be installed in Geely's related models at the end of this year. Yiou Automobile learned that the "Dragon Eagle II" has also entered the design stage.
Choosing a chip from the 7nm process for research and development at the beginning is undoubtedly a challenge.
Wang Kai said that in the chip industry, it is necessary to start from the commanding heights, and only by making advanced high-end chips will it have a foothold in the industry. "The final competition must be between the masters."
This also reflects the current state of the industry. Compared with foreign veteran giant chip companies, China's chip industry started late, and there is a certain gap between technology and ecology compared with foreign countries.
It is not easy to achieve transcendence.
However, the rapid development of China's automobile industry has cultivated a fertile soil for the relevant supply chain industries and provided the "nutrients" needed for growth.
Yiou Automobile believes that in 2022, the computing power competition is still in progress, and chip companies are still deeply cultivating core technologies, but unlike foreign giants such as Qualcomm in the past, Chinese chips have sufficient potential, together with the underlying operating system that is deeply bound to it, etc., and gradually move towards the road of domestic substitution, so as to radiate the underlying operating system and upper-level software applications on the basis of high-computing chip, build a software ecology, and create differentiated competition.
04 Ecological integration, cross-border extension, with the main engine factory as the core to build an industrial network
"I think there will be such a situation of separation in the field of intelligent cockpits, interdependence and integration, which is an inevitable trend." Tian Yu said.
Different from the traditional Tier 2, Tier 1, and OEM supply chain linear structure, the smart cockpit involves the integration of software and hardware, so suppliers will combine the different product types provided, constantly switching identities, resulting in a continuous broadening of product boundaries.
Yiou Automobile believes that today, the automotive supply chain will gradually change from a linear structure to a network structure, and then the opportunity for industries to communicate and collide with each other will also increase, which will bring a certain role in promoting industry innovation.
Among them, traditional suppliers, Internet technology companies, etc., will build an ecology around the main engine factory and integrate competition.
Wu Tong said that as a center, the OEM needs to have higher capabilities than before, basically going up to a big level, which is a new challenge for OEMs.
The complexity of the intelligent cockpit industry has soared, and the main engine factory cannot cover all aspects, which needs to clarify its own brand positioning and product core competitiveness, establish a set of perfect screening mechanisms, avoid flashy and blind benchmarking, and need to deal with the relationship with organizations at all levels of the industry.
The focus of the integration competition of OEMs lies in the construction of ecology, including user ecology, content ecology, software ecology and many other aspects.
Tian Yu believes that giants with full-stack capabilities like Huawei may play an important role in the industry. Some enterprises that master the core key technologies and advantageous ecosystems may form certain advantages in the industry and grasp more discourse power.
They will also become the main partners and competitors of the main engine plant, such as Huawei and Jinkang Cyris to build the M5, FAW Besturn and PATEO To establish a joint R & D and operation center, and carry out in-depth cooperation in intelligent network product innovation, research and development and operation.
How to properly handle the relationship between OEMs and advantageous suppliers will be a long-term issue.
Integration has become a key word, and it is necessary to participate in industrial development with a more open and inclusive mindset, not only the integration and competition of the industrial chain, but also the users will also be deeply involved in the process of industrial change and play an indispensable role.
05 Conclusion
Yiou Automobile believes that one of the significance of the emergence of intelligent cockpits and automatic driving is to liberate people from boring driving experience and have a good prospect of real existence.
But the smart cockpit industry is still in the initial stage of development, and there is no shortage of crises under the grand scene.
"I think in the whole process of innovation, we need to be vigilant against the involution brought about by benchmarking thinking, our resources are limited, and we must focus on real innovation." Tian Yu preached.
2022 will be a critical year for the intelligent cockpit industry, and it will also be a time for a number of related enterprises to lay the foundation and seize the opportunity, avoid internal friction, and build a healthy competitive situation.
Wu Tong told Yiou Automobile: "I firmly believe that China is definitely a strong promoter of intelligent networking. ”
The first time the glory appeared, the feast came. In 2022, the industrial development will be on the right track, and the industrial scale will be further highlighted, which is at a time when there is great potential.