"There's good news, there's bad news." I was just sorting through my recent WeChat chat history and found that the above passage has almost become a mantra for me to greet my colleagues every day. When a company is building a road from scratch or catching up with a goal, life often jokes with you in a sad and joyful way, bringing you a big meal, but when you are full of wine, you see a note on an empty plate that you can't bear to look at.
God is like this to us, and it is also true for large companies, and it is often said that the biggest special blow in the world at present is the masses. Volkswagen ID. Series, considered volkswagen's standard-bearer for future electrification and intelligence, from the beginning, OTA has been the top priority of the software part of the entire architecture.
The ID. series of OTAs has indeed succeeded in pushing themselves and the entire group to the top of the automotive industry several times, but none of them seems to be a good thing, for example, Volkswagen once had a black history of using more than 10,000 teams and failing to launch the first version of the software as scheduled, and the hundreds of ID.3s that had been produced at that time could only be used to "brush the machine" with cables one by one. Today, ID. The most important OTA in history is here, and what story will it bring?
Generous portions
If smart electric vehicles are hardware and software "walking on two legs", Volkswagen undoubtedly grows faster on the hardware leg. Let a platform mature first, and then launch more models on this mature platform, is the Best of the Volkswagen family.
So, the last time we discussed OTA IDs. It is only an ID.3 car, but now it has become a big family including ID.4 and ID.6 and ID.5 and ID.Buzz. And every time the hardware is added, the public will also come up with some software news.
In March 2021, we witnessed the ID. The first large-scale software update, but limited by technical conditions, when the update also needed to return to the dealership rather than the OTA, in July of the same year, Volkswagen upgraded the vehicle's lighting control and entertainment screen interface again, which is also the first time volkswagen owners experience the joy of aerial upgrades, and Volkswagen said that it will open an iterative strategy to implement a major update every 12 weeks, and in December of the same year, Dies announced on the LinkedIn that it will provide a 3.0 update in the "spring" of 2022.
Dees used a long essay about the value of the OTA, using a screenshot of himself laughing wildly with his mouth open as the cover of the video to argue that the software update was "very exciting," saying, "As an automotive engineer, it's so new and exciting."
"It will use cloud data collected by nearly 500,000 Volkswagen vehicles over a range of 1.2 billion kilometers to improve mobility assistance."
It was like changing a car
At a time when OTAs were not yet widely experienced, one of the favorite things evicted by EV owners after each OTA was "like changing a car." Later, there were more and more OTAs, and fewer and fewer people said it.
But Dis blew up this time with a 3.0 OTA that can really get your ID. It's like changing a car. First of all, for users who have opted for advanced driver assistance functions, this time will usher in the activation of core functions.
The new Travel Assist with Swarm Data feature allows the vehicle to intelligently remain in the center of the lane, including the fact that the vehicle actively adapts to the driver's driving style, can make the vehicle slightly left or right in the lane like you, and the system can automatically adjust the speed according to the speed limit and layout of the road.
This system also supports active lane change function, through the rear millimeter wave radar, when the vehicle reaches a speed of 90km/h, it can actively change lanes when conditions permit, to be honest I did not know the ID until now. The series is equipped with a capacitive steering wheel. Even on rural roads without central lane markings, the system can still be activated.
The second smart assistant is Park Assist Plus, which, as the name suggests, is mainly used for automatic parking, and common parking spaces are said to be supportive, and can also intervene in the middle of your parking process when the parking process has already begun. For more money, you can make the assistant stronger – the "memory function": with a speed of no more than 40km/h and a distance of no more than 50 meters, the car can learn up to 5 different parking routes on its own, which is only suitable for users with villas and private garages.
HUD、ID. The series' unique light bar under the screen, the car entertainment screen and the intelligent voice assistant have also been updated. Volkswagen also does not forget to show a "user co-creation", Volkswagen ID. Silke Bagschik, Chief Marketing Officer of the Digital Projects Division, said, "Many IDs. Drivers Club members all wanted to display percentage information, so we did."
If none of these things interest you, you can feel the power of this OTA even if you're just using it as a mobility vehicle.
Volkswagen will be equipped with a 77kWh long battery pack with the ID. The series's maximum charging power has increased from 125kW to 135kW, and although it seems to be only an 8% increase in value, the public has been extremely conscientious to increase the peak power for an extended period of time. As you can see from the chart below, Volkswagen has reduced the time from 5% to 80% from the previous 38 minutes to 29 minutes, which means that this situation reduces anxiety and waiting by 23%.
Volkswagen has also promised to bring plug-and-play and reverse discharge capabilities within this year.
The OTA that said yes is yellow again
Just two weeks ago, Volkswagen released the above 3.0 version of OTA feature points on its official website, and since then, there have been nearly 200,000 IDs worldwide. Users rejoice, waiting for a day when they'll drive home, tap a button on the screen to give their car a new look. But they still didn't wait. Today, the German veteran automotive media "Cars and Sports" posted that this time the OTA is going to change from online to offline...
The reason is that the function of this update is really too large, so it takes a long time. 3.0 OTA, even in two phases, the first phase, the installation of the packet takes 7.5 hours, you read that right, the unit is hours, and then to ensure that the update is complete, there is a second packet upgrade, the time is 4.5 hours. This time is not only long enough for people who have updated other products to understand, but even long enough to id. The 12V batteries that the series originally used to support OTAs did not survive.
You're also right that this time the software OTA will also come with hardware OTA that Volkswagen will have for all previous IDs. The model replaced the EFB+ 12V battery, which is more powerful and "better able to cope with the massive energy demands of electric vehicles".
Another concern of Volkswagen is that not all IDs have been delivered now. The vehicles have been upgraded to the latest 2.7 version, upgrading from other versions may have a variety of unknown problems, so Volkswagen simply decided to get back to the dealership for update, so as to save users from making a thousand strange problems.
The most interesting thing is that according to the regulations of the public, all IDs. Models should enjoy the service of scooters during the service period, and Volkswagen currently counts more than 200,000 vehicles involved in this OTA, which shows that the time process of this OTA will be unprecedentedly long. After all, I'm worried that all the scooters in the service system won't be enough...
Thomas Ulbrich, a member of the Volkswagen Technology Development Management Board, once said, "OTAs are a core function of digitally connected cars, and they will soon become the norm for our customers, just like their smartphones." Software development is iterative and fast, and we work in short cycles like a technology company." Even Volkswagen has positioned itself as "a software-oriented mobile service provider", but from the current point of view, the software leg still has to try to catch up. This is not bad news, and hopefully all the good news will follow.