[EV Vision Analysis] Once upon a time, when Xiaomi announced the official construction of cars, the most focused on everyone may be Huawei.
In fact, if you want to say whether Huawei has the ability to build cars, I think most people will not doubt. Remember that in 2018, Huawei launched extensive cooperation with FAW, SAIC, Changan, Dongfeng, GAC, BAIC, Mercedes-Benz, Audi and other automakers, and in 2019, it jointly established the "1873 Davidson Innovation Lab" with BAIC BJEV, mainly engaged in the research and development of cloud computing, Internet of Vehicles, energy Internet and intelligent networked electric vehicle technology. Not only that, in terms of drive systems, Huawei has also developed a DriveONE three-in-one electric drive system. It can be said that Huawei accounts for four of the batteries, motors, electronic controls, and radar systems that make up the new energy vehicle architecture, and it is really only one factory away from building cars.
But just like this, Huawei has stated that it does not build cars, and will not invest in, control and participate in any car companies, only focusing on ICT technology to help car companies build good cars. It can be seen that what Huawei really wants is to "inject soul" into car companies and become the most inseparable partner of car companies.
On December 23 last year, at the winter flagship new product launch conference held by Huawei, the AITO brand officially launched the brand's first model, the AITO Q&A M5. This new car equipped with HUAWEI DriveONE pure electric drive range extension platform and HarmonyOS smart cockpit, although it is manufactured by Jinkang Cerris, but AITO Q&I M5 is indeed Huawei's deeply polished product, a smart luxury SUV that contains Huawei's "family barrel", and its biggest selling point is the smart cockpit equipped with Huawei's latest HarmonyOS car system.
"One Finger Zen" car machine
One finger Zen is one of the seventy-two skills of Shaolin, and its practice is all in one finger, such as the famous Shaolin Jiangnan boxer Knee Kuroko, who has been practicing kung fu for forty years; however, one finger can roam the invincible hands of the north and south, which is also rare and valuable. But what I call "one finger Zen" here is not a kung fu, but Huawei HarmonyOS smart cockpit brings minimalist interactive functions.
In simple terms, Huawei HarmonyOS smart cockpit is more in line with people's habits for multimedia tablets than our common car-machine system before, through a series of minimalist interaction and unified notification and control centers and efficient multi-task operations, that is to say, Huawei HarmonyOS solves the three major pain points of traditional car machines "few applications, slow upgrades, and poor experience", and almost one finger can operate all of them.
As a carrier of the system, a 15.6-inch 2K HDR intelligent central control screen configured by the central control in the car carries the entire Huawei HarmonyOS system. The entire screen has a screen ratio of 90% (derived from mobile phones, referring to the proportion of screen area to the whole machine area), which belongs to a narrow side screen, so it has a better visual display effect.
In terms of the display layout of the system, you can see at a glance that Huawei's HarmonyOS is different. Unlike other brands of car machines that are densely packed on the main page as soon as they start, Huawei HarmonyOS is very concise, only setting a function menu called SmartDock at the bottom of the screen, while the previous part is empty and can only display wallpaper.
Specifically, this home page can be divided into three major functional areas, first located in the head of the home page for personal accounts, information, weather, Bluetooth, driving recorder and other control windows. The bottom of the home page is the application, settings, map, music and other interfaces, the bottom of the home button, air conditioning adjustment panel and sound adjustment, the layout is very simple, for Xiao Bai to get started quickly.
As one of the features of Huawei's HarmonyOS, the addition of the SmartDock function menu can be said to better simulate the smartphone menu that we are more familiar with, which will have some intimacy compared to other brands and be easier to get started. The menu bar resides at the bottom of the screen, and the left and right flicks are also very smooth, making it easy to open some of the system's application functions, such as navigation, music, and so on.
In addition, the SmartDock function menu supports custom editing, you can select the application card you need in the service center options bar, and drag it to the SmartDock menu bar. It is also worth noting that there are some applications that can be operated directly on the service card on the home page, such as playing/pausing music, etc., and there are broadcast services like weather that will also be updated in real time on the card, basically without having to do too many page switching to control the whole car, which will be convenient to the extreme.
At present, Smart Dock has a variety of service cards including Huawei music, weather, express delivery, Changlian, and battery cards, and will add more and more third-party application services in the future to meet the information and service needs of car owners in all aspects.
Just like the mobile version, the car version of Huawei HarmonyOS also comes with a "Xiaoyi Suggestion" function. This xiaoyi suggestion is a smart assistant that comes with HarmonyOS, which will provide car owners with intimate reminders based on the environment, location and different scenes of the vehicle, just like a personal assistant, always thinking about one more step for you.
Speaking of the application market, it is estimated that you who are used to using smart phones will not be unfamiliar with this aspect. Just like mobile phones, apps can be installed on Huawei's HarmonyOS car machine system, and the functions of these apps currently on board are also co-built with Huawei car machines, so there is no need to worry about compatibility.
I found a humanized highlight here, that is, among these apps, some of them will display a "P" logo on the icon, and it means that the APP with this logo must cut the vehicle into the P gear to open and use, avoiding dangerous driving.
Geeks make the details
After a general understanding of Huawei's HarmonyOS system, I personally feel that this car-machine system that is closer to the mobile phone has a high degree of practicality and ease, which can be said to bring such a user experience to a new dimension. However, there is a saying that "the details determine success or failure". After meeting the needs of users' vision and operation, Huawei HarmonyOS has also launched a lot of features for user use, which can be said to control the needs of users in details.
Remember that in 2019, Huawei's EMUI10 operating system was officially released, and the Huawei Unilink APP developed based on this system was also launched at the same time. This Huawei self-developed APP can video chat with any Huawei terminal, and the picture quality is optimized by AI algorithms to be clearer. Therefore, such a useful application function should naturally be installed in Huawei's HarmonyOS car machine system.
When the Changlian application is opened in the car, it can video chat with each other through the camera in the car, and the camera can also switch to the front screen of the vehicle in addition to displaying the picture in the car, so that the risk of direct operation of the mobile phone is reduced to a certain extent, so that it can report to its "leader" in real time.
In addition, the video dialog box of this function can also be displayed on the page as a small floating window, so that when you watch the car navigation, you will not be disturbed by the picture, which is more convenient.
Perhaps you who are accustomed to Baidu Maps and AutoNavi Maps will be unfamiliar with Huawei Petal Maps, which is a map application developed by Huawei itself, based on super GNSS and intelligent inertial navigation and positioning, supporting more than 140 countries and regions overseas, providing users with map positioning, map display, driving navigation, real-time road conditions and other services. However, the biggest highlight of this map is its first map interaction method.
Why it's the first, because the in-car map can share the destination with the mobile app. For example, we look for a restaurant for a dinner party in a life service APP on the mobile phone, and after sharing the destination to the M5 driven by the mobile phone, the car machine system will automatically receive and start navigation, and after arriving at the destination and getting off, the navigation on the car machine will automatically flow to the mobile phone and continue to complete the walking navigation. Greatly reduced the previous cumbersome way of finding, very fast. This function has not been seen on other brands of car machines, so it is not too much to create.
Another point to mention is that this car machine system supports a split-screen mode, which can open two applications at the same time in the central control screen according to the needs, so that the driver and the occupants do not interfere with each other in use, which is a very humanized function.
AiTO's HarmonyOS vehicle system of AITO M5 is equipped with a voice assistant called Xiaoyi, which adopts Huawei's self-developed end-cloud collaborative architecture, which can achieve continuous 60-second dialogue, and can achieve functions such as visible speaking and multi-command recognition.
Overall, I feel that both the response speed of the car and the recognition of voice commands are fast and accurate, and it can be said that the overall use effect is not inferior to brands such as "Wei Xiaoli".
As the concept of Internet of Everything brought by Huawei's Hongmeng system, it is for consumers to directly use one device to control all intelligent products, saving time and worry, and this is well reflected in the Huawei HarmonyOS vehicle and machine system of AITO Q&I M5.
The system can be connected to Huawei's mobile phones, computers, watches and other smart terminals, just like the mobile phone map sharing we mentioned above. And the car machine system can also remotely control the smart home at home, remotely switch the air conditioner, switch the light, switch the water heater and so on.
Finally, in addition to the 2K central control screen, in addition to the 2K central control screen, the inquisitive is also equipped with a HUAWEI Sound system with 19 sound units, including: dual voice coil subwoofer*1, woofer*4, surround unit*2, mid-unit*3, tweeter*5, and headrest unit*4. Low frequency can be submerged to 30Hz, 1000W plus peak power. Bring high fidelity, shocking bass, spatial soundstage, intelligent noise reduction and other listening experiences.
In addition, Huawei's sound system is tuned by Harman Kardon, 15 speakers can support 7.1 channel immersive sound field and active three-way technology, responsible for left front surround, right front surround, center surround, left rear surround, right rear surround five sound zones, so that the M5 has not lost the sound quality experience of the theater. Therefore, it can be seen that the in-car audio layout of the M5 is very reasonable, and no matter where you are in the car, you can enjoy the same sound quality experience.
Of course, Huawei's HarmonyOS car machine system is very good in terms of comprehensive experience, but because the whole system is deeply bound to Huawei's terminal system, if I am a user of Apple's mobile phone, it can only be a lack of luck for Huawei HarmonyOS car machine, and the items that can be operated are greatly reduced. In addition, the 2K screen equipped by The Central Control does not support 2K movies, which is not known how Huawei should answer.
New car review
The M5 is manufactured by Jinkang Cyris, while Huawei is deeply involved in the whole chain from pre-planning, design, research and development, to sales and service. Its exterior is created using a very sporty design language, the large air intake grille at the front of the car has a strong visual impact, and the rear of the car uses a slender through taillight design.
In terms of interior, the new car adopts an integrated wrap-around cockpit design, the center console is distributed in a "T" shape, and the left and right extensions are symmetrical wood grain decoration and hidden air conditioning outlets, which are naturally connected to the sub-instrument panel. The center console is equipped with a 10.4-inch curved full LCD instrument panel and a 15.6-inch 2K HDR intelligent central control screen, which makes the cockpit full of technology.
In terms of power, the AITO M5 is equipped with HUAWEI DriveONE pure electric drive range extender platform, using The Extended Range Hybrid System of KinconCelex. The range extenders of the three models are 125Ps 4-cylinder 1.5T turbocharged engines, in terms of detailed parameters, the four-wheel drive performance version of the front axle is equipped with an asynchronous AC motor, the maximum power of 165kW, the maximum torque of 420N·m, and the rear axle is equipped with a permanent magnet synchronous motor, high power 150kW, maximum torque of 300N·m, so the total power of the new car reached 315kW, equivalent to 428Ps horsepower, and the total torque also reached 720N·m. The official acceleration time is 4.8 seconds per 100 km/h.
epilogue:
On the whole, Huawei's HarmonyOS car-machine system is as it says in terms of use, and it is very smooth and fast in operation and use, which greatly reduces the familiar time required by the owner.
At present, Huawei Hongmeng's users have exceeded 30 million, which is a broad market prospect for aito Q&A M5, which has Huawei HarmonyOS car and machine system. However, I still hope that in the future, the terminals that can interact with Huawei's HarmonyOS car machine system are not limited to Huawei itself, but also accept more brand terminals and resonate with them, so that more consumers can experience the convenience brought by Huawei cars and machines.
Finally, look forward to the future performance of AITO Q&A M5!