What is a Smart Cockpit? Different times, everyone has different answers.
A few years ago, the answer to this question might have been real-time navigation, listening to music without the help of CDs and USB sticks; touch screens and voice interactions in the cockpit; and convenience brought by the cockpit system at any time...
What about the future?
When the screens in the cockpit are larger and clearer, the application ecology is richer, and the sensors and AI brains are more "smart", is it these "hard powers" that constantly add to the cockpit that define the cockpit, or do they bring users a different experience?
Coinciding with Ford's Digital Experience Day, we visited Ford's Intelligent Networking and Digital Experience Team (ECDX) in Fortron Valley, Shanghai, with these questions in mind, to see how Ford is exploring the digitalization of smart cockpits and defining its own smart cockpits.
Perceptible intelligence, non-insensitive service
When it comes to smart cars, people often compare it to the evolution of smartphones. Just as mobile phones have evolved from the communication tools for making calls and texting to today's smart terminals, the development of smart cars has also allowed cars to derive more diversified functional attributes from simple means of transportation.
What is intelligence? In the eyes of the Ford ECDX team, intelligence is divided into two parts: ability and feeling.
For cars, those more open electronic and electrical architectures, more powerful perception and computing power, etc., are intelligent capabilities, which is the foothold of a smart car; but how to call these capabilities to serve users in a better form of cooperation is the intelligent feeling conveyed by a cockpit to the user.
Today, almost no underlying technology or function is unique and cannot be shared, just like the cockpits equipped with 8155 chips that mushroomed last year; but based on the same cockpit and underlying architecture, the experience created by each product cannot be replicated. These experiences come from the optimization of visual effects, the polishing of interaction logic, and the handling of product details. Together, they provide users with intelligence at their fingertips and thoughtful service.
Looking back at dozens of smart cockpit products that GeekCar evaluated in 2021, there is a long 1.1-meter-long screen that impresses me. Even in today's larger and more cockpit screens, such a long screen design still seems very bold. Compared with the common dual screen, the biggest difference of this 1.1-meter ultra-wide screen is that the main co-pilot can work together through the free switching of the ultra-long joint screen split screen and the whole screen. In this state, the main and co-pilots are equal to the acquisition of information and the control of the cockpit, and they are also mutually cooperative.
At this innovation day, we also saw optimizations for existing products in terms of voice interaction and in-vehicle application ecology.
The "visible and speakable" ability of voice interaction covers the whole scene, reaching third-party applications and mini programs with deeper interaction levels, and can also carry out wake-free multi-round interaction with the in-car voice assistant VPA Zhixing partner to achieve more accurate and smoother response. When driving, after opening some functions with voice interaction, it is avoided that you can only switch to manual operation; you do not need to remember special "commands" and "gestures", but operate with the most natural reaction in life.
In the medium-term planning concept of the smart cockpit, the 1.1-meter-long joint screen is transformed into a "long scroll", which not only lays 80% of the commonly used functions in the central control home page to achieve zero-level interaction; it also allows each function of the home page to come to the driver's hand and control in the most comfortable position.
After all, the design of the smart cockpit is to let the user use the cockpit, not to let the cockpit control the user.
From Smart Cockpit to "Smart Living Cabin"
"Third space", since the day the smart cockpit appeared, the word has been repeatedly mentioned, "sleeping space", "office space", "game space"... In imagining the future, the cockpit is given a different theme.
However, just as smart phones eventually replaced the "music mobile phone" and "camera phone" and other short-lived stage products, the functions and scenes of the cockpit are not a single theme, and people's demand for a car cockpit is not static. Instead of allowing users to adapt to different cockpit scenarios, it is better to provide users with an open and optional space.
When partying with friends, the cockpit can be connected to the intelligent microphone, gamepad, transformed into a mobile KTV, e-sports center, the intimate space of the friend's party; when traveling by car, connect the drone, Go-Pro and other intelligent hardware, the cockpit becomes an adventure partner; when camping in the suburbs, open the karaoke software on the central control screen of the car, connect the external microphone to sing a song, with the camera, mood lights and programmable smart headlights in the car, enjoy a full light show outdoors.
Just like Ford's imagination of the smart cockpit vision, maybe at that time we no longer need a huge touch screen, the system can provide services for us through voice, eyes, and even time reminders and call records in the notepad; the communication between people and the system no longer needs soft and cute anthropomorphic intelligent assistants to "match", and the smart car itself is an intelligent body.
The intelligent life cabin is like a new and open in-vehicle digital platform, through the software and hardware of the digital module, different themes can be created and the continuously upgraded intelligent cockpit digital experience can be created.
Intelligent full speed ahead
Recently, the biggest news about Ford may be the "division of the automotive business unit into three": Ford's fuel vehicle business, electric vehicle business, commercial vehicle and related services business will operate independently, and from 2023 onwards, it will be independent and self-financing.
I have to say that for traditional car companies with deep roots in the field of fuel vehicles, this is a decision to "break the boat", and it is also a determination for electrification and intelligent transformation. On the road of intelligence and electrification, an important position that cannot be avoided is the Chinese market.
"How do I localize?"
"How to cooperate with Ford headquarters and grasp the right to speak?"
For every car company that takes into account both domestic and overseas markets, this is an inevitable problem.
"Domestic customers have higher requirements for the digital experience in the car than foreign countries," said Fang Yuliang, vice president of Ford ECDX, describing the demand for smart cockpits in China's local market, and the demand for cockpits by domestic users and the market is faster, smarter and more flexible. The cabin experience itself is also different because of the usage habits of users in different regions.
It is precisely because of the change in demand that Ford merged the EC (Intelligent Networking) and DX (Digital Experience) teams, and from January 2021 set up a dedicated Intelligent Networking and Digital Experience team ECDX, focusing on the product innovation, development and delivery of the full link of the intelligent cockpit, covering the vast majority of Ford and Lincoln domestic models in China. In one year, the number of ECDX teams has increased by 3 times, and these members from different fields such as automobiles, Internet, and technology companies have added a more diversified culture and innovative ideas for agile development for the creation of smart cockpits and the intelligent transformation of traditional car companies.
These innovative design ideas will also feed back into Ford's other markets.
At last
I don't know when it began, in the wave of smart cars, traditional car companies have been divided into natural "conservatives": not rapid enough for electrification transformation, not flexible and agile enough for intelligent construction. However, Ford's understanding of the digital experience of the smart cockpit and the creation of a dedicated team, as well as the self-reliance portal of the electric vehicle business, have shown Us Ford's determination and ambition.
From cars to intelligent electric vehicles, when the simple form of functional benchmarking can no longer become the guiding ideology of product development, the understanding of user experience and use scenarios has become everyone's starting line, and even the track that extends out.
Of course, there are still many problems that need to be solved in this track: how to solve the system's increasing requirements for computing power? How to make the increasingly rich ecology in the cockpit be really used, not just the chicken ribs of "try it"? How to make the "inner roll" of the smart cockpit more effective?......
These are both challenges on Ford's path to defining the smart cockpit and opportunities to turn trends into advantages.