Text | Joey
Some people say that a year without being on the ice and snow is incomplete for any car circle worker.
Of course, this sentence is also true if it is expressed in a different way. For example, car companies that are not linked to ice and snow sports, especially the quadrennial Winter Olympics, will undoubtedly miss "one hundred million".
After all, today's Olympic Games is no longer an occasion to simply show friendship and compete in competition, but it is also an excellent stage to show scientific and technological strength and technological progress. This point has obviously been highlighted at the recent Winter Olympics in Beijing.
From a bed that can remotely adjust the angle of reclining, to a restaurant where robots can stir-fry and make cocktails; from a "cheetah" that can quickly capture every frame of high-speed movement, to a Band-Aid that can measure body temperature. The Beijing Winter Olympics have shown people the possibility that science and technology can bring great changes to people's future lives in every detail.
And such a stage that has aroused global attention, how can there be less cars?
Yes, the Winter Olympics have also become a competitive arena for automobile companies. I'm talking more than just signing up some gold medal athletes as spokespersons and showing off the corporate image. What the more targeted car companies have done is to build a blueprint for people's future travel with the power of science and technology, and to show their own product strategy and technical strength.
From this point of view, the association between car companies and ice and snow projects seems to be equally full of competitive meaning, and it can also make people shout wonderful
The battle over energy forms
Although Toyota "very reluctantly" began to actively participate in the star sea of electric vehicles, for a company with sufficient strategic determination, hydrogen fuel cells must not be given up and unwilling to give up. The Winter Olympics are obviously an excellent stage for hydrogen fuel cells.
For the Beijing Winter Olympics, which vows to implement the concept of environmental protection to the end, the selection of matching vehicles has first excluded internal combustion engine vehicles that cannot be broken in thermal efficiency and cannot be guaranteed emission performance. For reasons that are well known, pure electric vehicles are obviously not the first choice for Olympic work vehicles that cannot be used in an icy environment. Therefore, the hydrogen fuel cell vehicle, which has been suppressed by pure electric vehicles, has become a better choice.
For the first time in China, Toyota used the FCEV "Second Generation MIRAI" model on a large scale in China, and even developed a medium-sized commercial vehicle "Costa Hydrogen Engine" specifically for this Winter Olympics.
Compared with the first-generation MIRAI model released in 2014, the second-generation MIRAI model released in 2021 uses a new fuel cell stack. Therefore, in a smaller volume, it brings better endurance. More importantly, this form of energy that only discharges water is really more in line with the concept of environmental protection in the Winter Olympics.
However, how to measure the efficiency of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles? We can take Toyota's first domestic hydrogen kinetic energy car Costa hydrogen engine as an example. This medium-sized commercial vehicle powertrain consists of a 74kW hydrogen fuel cell and a 70MPa high-pressure hydrogen storage system. Its battery box stores 8KG of hydrogen, which can achieve an endurance of 600 kilometers.
Yes, for a medium-sized commercial vehicle capable of carrying more than 10 people, this energy efficiency is obviously satisfactory enough, not to mention the efficiency of the second-generation MIRAI, which is smaller and lighter. Therefore, as long as it is combined with sufficient convenient and safe energy replenishment measures, the stage of future hydrogen fuel cell vehicles is obviously not limited to the field of the Winter Olympic Games.
The better news is that at this Beijing Winter Olympics, the supply of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles is not limited to Toyota. Chinese brands, including BAIC Group, Yutong Bus, geely Interstellar Bus and other Chinese brands, have also undertaken the task of working cars for the Winter Olympics. Obviously, in the future battle over the energy form of new energy vehicles, Chinese car companies also have the opportunity to seize the opportunity again like the era of pure electricity.
The battle for smart driving
In addition to the form of energy, in today's era, the most important thing in the intelligent territory of automobiles is intelligent driving assistance and the research and development of unmanned driving technology. If in the field of hydrogen fuel cells, foreign brands such as Toyota and Hyundai can still stand in the leading position, then in terms of intelligent driving, the pace of Chinese car companies should go faster.
Who was the ceiling for smart driving before the Winter Olympics? Obviously, the L7 equipped with The Polar Fox Alpha S and Zhiji Automobile equipped with Huawei technology can undertake the task of intelligent driving assistance with minimal intervention in complex scenarios throughout the road. But don't forget, the domestic companies that develop intelligent driving technology and even autonomous driving technology are far more than Huawei, BAIC and Zhiji.
In the process of torch relay at this Winter Olympics, an "auto robot" from Baidu became the "relay hand" of the torch. In an 800-meter-long torch relay route in Beijing's Shougang Park, this product with L5 level autonomous driving capability achieved the world's first unattended torch relay process.
In such a transmission process, whether it is AI technology, or lidar detection technology, or remote control of the driver through a high-bandwidth, low-latency 5G network, and camera technology that can observe the road conditions around the body at 360 degrees, it is enough to complete this 800-meter, milestone torch relay task.
At the same time, in the process of torch relay, behind the car robot "torchbearer", there are two Baidu Apollo fifth-generation Robotaxi - Apollo Moon based on the Beiqi Polar Fox Alpha T modification.
It can be seen that what Baidu showed at the Olympic Torch Relay Ceremony is not only an important achievement of Baidu in the field of intelligent car research and development, but also the ambition and strength of future-oriented participation in the research and development of smarter car robots.
The battle between materials and aerodynamics
Energy and intelligence are already an important direction and path for the future development of automobiles, but never forget that the most important function of automobiles is to carry people and materials. Better material technology can not only make the car continue to develop in the direction of lightweight, further improve fuel efficiency, but also bring a harder body and improve the safety of drivers and occupants.
Just recently, the news came that Zhejiang has built a highway with a maximum speed of 150km/h. At the Winter Olympics, there is a sport that requires athletes to compete at a top speed of 160 km/h. The sport is just that – sledding.
As early as 2018, BMW began to develop sleds for the German bobsleigh team to prepare for the Beijing Olympic Games. Don't think that this sled is just a shuttle-like tool that can carry athletes to glide quickly on the ice track. In fact, the technological content contained in this is no smaller than building a car.
First of all, it should be maximally aerodynamically suited, that is, a lower coefficient of drag. Therefore, better construction and a lighter bobsleigh hull are the basis for ensuring that athletes can achieve higher driving speeds. At the same time, in high-speed sports, it is inevitable that athletes will collide with the sides of the ice track due to lack of operation. Therefore, while being as lightweight as possible, the sled also needs to be sufficiently strong.
For BMW, which is good at making sports cars, more keen on challenging wind resistance, debugging chassis and applying carbon fiber materials, it is undoubtedly the most suitable manufacturer for making sleds. In fact, this is not the first time BMW has made a sleigh to participate in the Winter Olympics. As early as the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, BMW's team in North America had designed all the competition sleds for the American team and helped the American team win the silver medal in that event.
Of course, the dispute between material and aerodynamics, if only BMW is alone, is obviously too boring. In fact, this time, the Chinese team also used a domestic high-tech sled. Our own sleds are jointly developed by the Chinese aerospace team and FAW Hongqi.
This domestic sled car uses not only ordinary carbon fiber material, but T800 carbon fiber composite material that meets the requirements of aviation grade. Through the application of this material, the sled car can be made to be in an environment of minus 40 ° C, without any deformation due to cold. The impact resistance and compression strength reach 350 MPa, achieving a load-bearing capacity of 3.5 tons per square meter.
At the same time, through a more aerodynamic design, the wind resistance coefficient of this domestic sled car is reduced by 8% compared with similar products, and it is expected to improve the performance of 0.3-0.5 seconds in actual competitions. This provides maximum equipment and technology for bobsleigh races with extremely fast speeds and very weak performance differences, in addition to pure sports technology.
For the future development of the automobile industry, all-round competition has become white-hot. Whether it is energy, technology, materials, aerodynamics, the car companies have completely stood on a new starting line.
The Winter Olympics, as a display platform for these new technologies, seems to be a new starting gun, and when these cutting-edge technologies leave the Olympic stage and truly enter the daily travel life of more people, it is obvious that a new era of the automobile industry will also come.