Image source @ Visual China
Text | Talking about AI, the author | Zheng drove
Among the new car companies, Tesla is definitely the most radical car company, because it has repeatedly applied the "black technology" that dares to be the first in the world in the car, and its side effect is that it will also cause the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to intervene in the investigation many times.
On February 18, NHTSA issued an announcement asking Tesla to recall some domestically produced Model 3 and Model Y electric vehicles produced between December 28, 2020 and January 15, 2022, for a total of 26,047 units. The reason for this is that the electronic expansion valve of the heat pump of these vehicles will move slightly when positioned, which may cause the heat pump compressor to stop working in the long run, which will lead to safety hazards in low temperature environments.
Perhaps such a large-scale recall is a troublesome thing for traditional car companies, however, Tesla officials once again calmly said that they will upgrade the software for vehicles within the scope of the recall through the car remote upgrade technology (OTA), which means that the recall can be completed without the user visiting the store.
I have to admit that under the leadership of Tesla, OTA, as a necessary technology in the intelligent driving system, has become a new product promotion point for car companies, and even rose to the height of product strategy.
However, any technology has two sides, and the OTA that runs all the way is no exception, especially in the domestic market where new energy vehicle brands are piled up, and the fish in muddy waters has leaked out one after another, and even Tesla's OTA has been questioned by users.
OTAs are growing savagely
As we all know, Tesla Motors is at the forefront of electrification and intelligence, and its advanced vehicle OTA has made many car companies envious and jealous. But soon, the "smart" OEMs found a mystery, their own OTA will be immature for a while and a half does not matter, "master the OTA play" is quite simple, since the OTA technology brings the possibility of "common use and constant new", it simply for the user to boldly "draw the cake", so it leads to the entire automotive industry OTA chaos frequently.
First, manufacturers cover up product disadvantages with shoddy charging and infringe on users' right to know.
In July last year, GAC Toyota iA5 broke out the "lock electric door" incident, when many car owners found that the vehicle had the problem of charging speed decreasing, power attenuation and endurance shrinking after the OTA upgrade. Coincidentally, just a few days before Toyota officially forced the power to be locked, an iA5 just spontaneously combusted while charging.
Many car owners therefore suspected that GAC Toyota had covered up the defects of the vehicle through OTA upgrades, and expressed strong dissatisfaction, and the continuous whistle-blowing letters once alarmed the State Administration of Supervision.
In fact, protecting the safety of the battery by locking the electricity is not the first time that Toyota has done it, as early as 2019, Tesla has been remedied by the OTA lock power after several spontaneous combustion accidents, and has also been punished by the Norwegian government.
In tan qing said AI view, under the trend of the Internet of Vehicles, manufacturers hype OTA has become a trend, and in the case of unequal information, car companies can easily skim the responsibility through invisible clauses, users do not agree to upgrade can not be used normally, and users have been indoctrinated OTA upgrade can bring better experience of common sense, encounter upgrade prompts usually habitually choose to agree all the way, few people will carefully read the user agreement.
If the car company is a little too excessive, it can even sacrifice the safety indicators first, by raising the book parameters to fool users into buying a car, and then through the OTA upgrade on the grounds of performance improvement, at the expense of reducing the user experience, secretly improve the safety factor. As a result, OTAs are becoming a fig leaf for some manufacturers to lack product power.
Second, there are grey areas in the "OTA recall".
Another question raised by OTAs is whether vendors have the right to handle some hardware glitches through OTA software upgrades. If you have the right to do so, you may pose a security risk.
For example, if there is a car with a key component that is not qualified, and the replacement cost is very high, the manufacturer may claim that it has solved the problem through OTA, such as no longer having an alarm sound, which is equivalent to covering up the problem with software, thus also sowing the seeds of safety hazards.
From a technical point of view, the problem of hardware is fed back to the data center through the perception system, and if the perception component is damaged, it is difficult to determine whether the hardware is defective. Therefore, for the Tesla remote repair of heat pump defects mentioned at the beginning of the article, it feels like a dashing thing for users, but there is actually a safety risk.
Those who are familiar with software engineering know that today's cars have huge software systems, and it is impossible to achieve zero bugs. If the OTA can solve the hardware and software problems of the vehicle, and the main engine factory has absolute control, then the product defect problem becomes a gray area by secretly fixing bugs under the pretext of upgrading.
Third, opaque black-box operations infringe on the rights and interests of users.
After the software-defined car, the manufacturer can still fix the defect through the OTA, and of course, the defect can be created by the OTA upgrade, so the OTA may become a tool for the black-hearted manufacturer to implement the "planned scrapping".
On tesla's official forum, some users posted that their Model 3 did not feel as fast as before after undergoing an upgrade, and some users even felt that Tesla lowered the performance of its Model 3 in order to sell a high-end performance version.
"Tesla just wants to eliminate the $35,000 base version of the Model 3 so that everyone can buy the $87,000 top version." One user wrote.
However, these users only suspect that the car is slowing down, and none of them have been able to come up with conclusive evidence.
The suspicion of these users can't help but be reminiscent of the "speedgate" scandal of the iPhone, which is called the iPhone's battery life, which is actually forcing users to buy a new mobile phone. Later, Apple finally admitted that it did do something to the system, compensating users with $500 million.
In Tan Qing's view of AI, the reason why there are so many cats around OTAs, the information asymmetry between manufacturers and users is the root cause. The purpose of the opaque upgrade makes the user passive, and the car company has the final interpretation right to the software system, it is difficult for the user to grasp the conclusive evidence, and often a large number of users collectively step on the pit in order to protect their rights through litigation.
So, since OTAs represent the conscience of a car company, why should manufacturers take the risk of offending users?
The white moonlight of traditional car companies
The chaos of OTA is related to the traditional car companies facing outdated competitive pressure, since Tesla created a precedent for car OTA in 2012, car companies and car owners have tasted the benefits of OTA, making OTA the standard of the car has become a consensus, but traditional car companies want to catch up with Tesla's vehicle OTA, in fact, there is still a long way to go.
First, policies have been tightened and vehicle models need to undergo stricter certification.
On August 12 last year, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the "Opinions on Strengthening the Management of Intelligent and Connected Vehicle Manufacturers and Product Access", proposing to standardize the online upgrade of software, to file with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology before the online upgrade activity, and also to inform vehicle users of the specific information of online upgrades, and the subsequent series of regulatory measures are equivalent to putting a tight curse on car companies.
In countries that refer to the UN legal framework, if the car company does not get the new certification, whether it is mechanical, electronic, analog or digital parts, whether manual changes or OTAs, it is not allowed to change the vehicle parts or systems at will.
Like Tesla's magical practice of fixing brake defects through OTAs in 2019, if you look at it according to the current OTA regulations, it is actually non-compliant.
Secondly, the automotive subsystem is highly integrated, and the software upgrade technology is difficult.
With the improvement of the degree of intelligence of the car, the subsystem is highly integrated, so the software upgrade is no longer an independent change, and the subsequent analysis and evaluation of the upgrade is indispensable. Software changes, for example, can compromise the quality of the lidar system, affecting the braking and steering performance of the vehicle.
Even minor differences in a changed component or system that differ from previous approvals can have serious consequences, which is one reason for the tightening of OTA-related regulations.
On the other hand, the electric architecture of intelligent vehicles is becoming more and more complex, and the requirements for reliability also pose severe challenges to OEMs. Due to the high coupling degree of each component, a seemingly simple OTA upgrade will involve remote upgrade security issues and upgrade strategies, as well as complex guarantee mechanisms such as rollback mechanism, anti-change brick, differential upgrade, and power outage.
Finally, from the user's point of view, the fresh experience may make the user uncomfortable, thus laying a security risk.
OTAs have brought experience upgrades to users, but they have also brought changes in operating habits and even driving styles. Can car owners understand exactly what OTAs are changing their vehicles and adapt their driving style to those changes?
In fact, once the system changes dramatically, drivers are likely to be unaccustomed to it, and in the event of an emergency, they will be busy and chaotic, resulting in accidents. Just like the owners of Japanese cars, after getting used to the more sensitive brake pedals in the initial stage, driving other models may cause accidents because the brakes are not deep enough. It is clear that OTAs should be cautious about upgrades involving driving operations.
In addition, the R&D and testing cycle of OTAs plagues car companies, and the requirements of customization and mass production also bring challenges to OEMs. Under the tactics of the sea of vehicles, the automakers hope that the OTA system can be applied to different models and platforms. How to design a unified OTA upgrade specification under the premise that there are huge differences in platforms and models is also a problem faced by the industry.
OTA services become independent tracks?
At that time, with the rise of smart phones, the app stores of mobile phone manufacturers were not yet mature, and third-party application platforms such as Pea Pod and 91 Assistant were all the rage.
Under the trend of intelligence and networking, the value that OTA providers can provide as Tier 1 is gradually becoming prominent. Since there are shortcomings in the software capabilities of traditional car manufacturers, can OTA service providers open up an independent track like pea pods? In Tan Qing's view of AI, it is entirely possible.
First of all, traditional car companies generally lag behind the new forces in the level of intelligence, and there are shortcomings in OTA technology. For example, the lack of relevant technology and experience, the lack of large-scale reliable verification and testing methods, and the high cost of OTA trial and error, are more inclined to adopt the packaging scheme of third-party OTA vendors.
Taking BYD's intelligent benchmark model Han as an example, according to some BYD riders, until August 2020, this model cannot achieve remote OTA, and can only be upgraded by the owner to drive the car to the 4S store to queue up or BYD to send staff to upgrade.
Second, the OTA operation capability has put forward a new test for car companies.
As mentioned above, the testing, evaluation and guarantee mechanism of software upgrade is a set of complex work, and in the process of software upgrade task execution, it is inevitable to encounter various problems.
As a simple example, who would charge a traditional car manufacturer to upgrade a skin theme through an OTA? In the traditional car factory may not be able to find a charging department, because in the past, it was charged through 4S stores, and now there is no operation department after direct OTA, and the software department is responsible for upgrading software and has no right to charge.
It is not difficult to find from here that traditional OEMs not only change their technology, but also adjust their departmental structures accordingly.
In fact, the OTA operation from the intelligent user experience as the demand is not a simple function delivery, but an important link through the online after-sales system, the software research and development capabilities alone is not enough, the need for IT, production, manufacturing, marketing system collaboration.
In 2019, some users mistakenly touched the upgrade program during the driving process, resulting in the WEILAI ES8 blocking Chang'an Avenue for an hour and attracting police attention. Allowing users to start the upgrade during the driving process is actually unreasonable in the software interaction design, which shows that as long as there is a detail of the OTA upgrade that is not done well, it is prone to unexpected errors.
If it is handed over to an Internet company with mature operating experience, such an accident can actually be avoided. So OTAs bring not only the evolutionary capabilities of cars, but also the operating model of the automotive industry.
Finally, after years of tinkering in the smartphone industry, software developers are already familiar with OTA upgrades, and now they are moving to the automotive industry with this experience.
For example, Baidu Apollo's automotive OTA platform provides automotive OTA solutions for CAR companies such as SAIC-GM and WM. Another Ellabi, which grew up in GB's Internet of Vehicles and Internet of Things business units, empowers car companies through cloud diagnostics and OTA operation services. According to a tianyan search, as of July last year, Erabi had received three rounds of financing.
All in all, buyers' demands, policy pressures, and peer competition have forced car companies with intelligent shortcomings to seek mature OTA suppliers. With the existing project experience, car companies can quickly build a stable OTA system across the digital divide of intelligent and connected cars, so the OTA industry may also become an independent track, developing and operating in the name of additional services, just like the SaaS providers in the e-commerce industry.
But at the same time, complete dependence on third-party OTAs does not allow car companies to sit back and relax, on the one hand, car companies' user data through a third party, there is a risk of data leakage and homogenization. On the other hand, car companies with ideas are developing their own OTAs.
For example, Tesla's Model S, which went public in 2012, uses FOTA based on technical support provided by HARMAN's subsidiary, Red Bend. Later, when the Model 3 was listed, Tesla completely adopted the FOTA program developed by itself.
It can be seen that the choice of third-party OTA is also a helpless move of car companies, after having market and financial strength, most car companies eventually want to choose self-developed OTA, which shows that third-party OTAs are likely to play a necessary role in the process of automotive intelligence like pea pods and 91 assistants, and after the industry's level of intelligence really reaches maturity, its market position will decline.
Write at the end:
In the past Winter Olympics, Gu Ailing was young and had already won gold and silver in the ice and snow arena through difficult actions, but for many players with slightly inferior strength, in order to have the hope of winning medals, even if they were not too sure, they had to try to challenge the difficult actions.
For car companies with lack of intelligent capabilities, OTAs also mean the cruel challenge of the Olympic competition. The era of intelligent and networked automobiles has arrived, and OTA has long been not only a tool, but gradually become a system, and even new business models are brewing.
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