In the era of "software-defined cars", every OTA upgrade affects the hearts of users, and Weilai, as a veteran of the "first echelon" of new domestic forces, is somewhat inferior to other teammates in this regard, the update speed is slow and most of them have no highlights, which is jokingly called "squeezing toothpaste" by netizens. As one of the earliest entrants to the domestic new forces to build cars, each OTA upgrade of Weilai will bring a wealth of functional improvements, especially its FOTA upgrades, for the improvement of the performance of the vehicle hardware, allowing users to feel the full upgrade and change of the vehicle driving experience, so that those ES8 who have been 5 years old continue to maintain "physical strength".
This time OTA, is it still "squeezing toothpaste"?
WEILAI officially released the update of Aspen version 3.1.2, and recently began to push vehicles with the current version of 3.0.7 and above in batches through FOTA. This update mainly involves navigation map upgrades and other experience improvements.
The biggest highlight of this update is that Weilai finally equipped the car machine with Gaode map, breaking the situation of only Baidu map, after upgrading, you can enter the "navigation settings - map switching" to choose the map navigation you are accustomed to using; after the map switch is successful, the system will remember the current map selection, and the next time you use the car, you don't need to switch again.
There is a point in the map switching that is very user-friendly, such as: home & company address, route preference options, license plate restrictions and other personalized navigation setting information After Baidu Map and AutoNavi Map switch, this information can be directly synchronized to avoid the cumbersome re-entry. Map-related functions such as pilot assistance, group travel, and power-up assistant can also be used normally.
AutoNavi maps can provide rich and accurate basic information, including map data and real-time road information (such as road construction, road closures, etc.), increase the 3D perspective, the visual level is clearer, and the operation response is more fluent. On the basis of Baidu Map, you can give more choice space and meet the habits of users in all aspects. In terms of operation logic, it is more similar to the smartphone used, which is clearer and more intuitive.
Many users have their own habits of using map navigation, such as liking to use AutoNavi or Baidu, the vehicle to frame everyone, it is likely to disrupt everyone's habits, as a service to our products, rather than our "electric daddy", more should let the vehicle to adapt to us, get used to our daily practices.
In addition, AutoNavi has added the "Road Priority" route preference setting in the travel settings, and the "Road Conditions Ahead", "Electronic Eye Broadcast" and "Safety Reminder" options have also been added to the navigation voice broadcast, and the continuous intersections that are easily confused have increased the voice broadcast reminder synchronously, which can meet the travel setting needs of different road sections and different travel scenarios. It is necessary to remind everyone that in the navigation or NOP driving, the vehicle needs to exit the navigation and NOP first, and then switch the map to ensure driving safety.
At present, the SUV models sold by Weilai can update this new feature, and the current OTA update speed of Weilai, compared with Tesla, Ideal, and Xiaopeng, has been relatively slow, as a product that is close to 5 years, the current development has been relatively complete. Previously upgraded Aspen 3.0.0 system, mainly for vehicle auxiliary driving to add some safety features, after experiencing the previous upgrade of power performance, suspension soft and hard, charging speed and other FOTA upgrades, the current hardware on the basis of the current basis can be upgraded space has not been large, this upgrade in addition to the addition of AutoNavi map, but also on the air conditioning deodorization, gear shift prompt, NFC unlock and driving recorder and other experiential configuration has been upgraded, but the degree of surprise has been far less than Aspen Upgrade in the 2.0.0 era.
5 years old car, why is it still so able to fight?
As a product under the NT1.0 platform, Weilai ES8, ES6 was first fixed in 2016, and the project was established earlier than 2014, that is still a new energy company to get on the market, can not see the road ahead of the era, from then out of the model, to today there is still the ability to continue OTA, has been really not easy, to a large extent, thanks to the NVIDIA Tegra X1 chip used by Weilai, as the strongest chip released in early 2015, in performance, stability, We are very good at energy consumption.
The NVIDIA Tegra X1 appeared in NVIDIA DRIVE automotive computers at the time. The DRIVE PX, centered on this chip, is an automotive autonomous driving computing platform that supports processing video from 12 in-vehicle cameras for features such as surround vision and automatic valet parking. Surround vision provides a seamless 360-degree view of the car's surroundings, which enables true automatic parking. Another with this chip at its core is the DRIVE CX, a complete cockpit platform that uses more advanced graphics to meet the needs of an increasing number of screens. These screens are used in digital instrument clusters, infotainment, head-up displays, virtual rearview mirrors, rear entertainment, etc., and NIO's intelligent car machine system is based on this chip and intelligent cockpit platform, which fully guarantees its future ductility at the beginning of the design.
So how can this chip be more concretely displayed? Although the release date has been a little long, especially for the chip industry, but the car specification chip will generally have a certain lag than the same period of smart phone chips, let's compare the opponent of the Qualcomm camp that year - Qualcomm Snapdragon 810, which is also listed in 2015, the performance gap between the two is relatively small, but the energy consumption of the Snapdragon 810 processor has reached 20W, which is also the millet mobile phone that led to the fever of the year, serious fever, At that time, the Snapdragon 810 was mounted on the flagship version of Xiaomi Note, which was really not an ordinary hot hand. The basic performance of NVIDIA Tegra X1 is similar to that of Snapdragon 810, but the energy consumption is 10W, which is twice as low energy consumption and more stable.
In fact, Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 is not famous, famous is its evolutionary version - Snapdragon 820 chip, as a chip released in 2016, the general public may have long forgotten, but with the domestic independent new energy models "Extreme Kr 001, Ideal ONE, Xiaopeng P7" have "picked up" it, and let this veteran return to people's vision. From the specific performance test, Snapdragon 820 chip compared to 810, performance has hardly improved, only in terms of stability and energy consumption has been optimized, in essence, Snapdragon 820 and Nvidia Tegra X1 are the real opponents. And equipped with a stable Snapdragon 820 chip of the extreme krypton, ideal, Xiaopeng can continue to OTA evolution of intelligent cockpit, although the Weilai ES8 is older than the extreme krypton, ideal, Xiaopeng their models are older, but still can remain "old and strong", the reason is that it is here, equipped with The Snapdragon 820 chip can do, equipped with NVIDIA Tegra X1 can still accompany the run.
8155 finally becomes the protagonist, what about the old cars?
But Snapdragon 820 chip, has become about to become the past, the future Snapdragon 8155 will become the protagonist of the intelligent cockpit, the ideal L9 has been officially announced 8155 on the car, and the extreme Kr 001 has also been officially announced that the 8155 version is about to be launched, NVIDIA Tegra X1 and Snapdragon 820 have belonged to the competition of the last era, Weilai naturally will not be idle, the strongest NVIDIA car chip of the year is placed in 5 years later today, it is indeed a little weak, Its latest NP2.0 platform products ET5 and ET7 have used Snapdragon 8155 chips, and the new SUV model ES7, which has recently leaked spy photos, will also be equipped with 8155. The upgrade of chip hardware ensures that the smart cockpit can "live" longer and be more comfortable in the future iteration process.
For the current ES6, ES8, EC6 users, Weilai is also very clear about the importance of these users to themselves, many of them are loyal fans who are "suffocated" by Li Bin's dream, so they also revealed the upgrade plan of intelligent hardware: For vehicles that have been delivered, in the next life cycle, there will be paid upgrade solutions for smart cockpits and overall intelligent hardware, including Qualcomm Snapdragon 8155 chips, 5G networks, DVR driving recorder cameras and so on. After the upgrade, many functions such as network speed, APP operation, operation fluency, and NOMI recognition rate will be significantly improved. In order to ensure that these models are not left behind in future iterations of the intelligent cockpit.
You may ask, why are these SUV models in Weilai 5 years old, why can't they be changed, like fuel vehicles, 3 years a change, 6 years a generation? Do you look at the new forces to build cars, have you made changes to the model? Tesla's are more than ten years old, still maintain the same, the way of the new forces to change the model is mostly to directly send new cars, maintain brand vitality, expand the brand's product sequence, because they do not have the fuel car so many years of heritage, not so much historical accumulation, or "baggage", and it is precisely without these baggage, so that they can continue to innovate at a higher speed, bringing us more "surprises".
Limited by the current chip computing power and storage bottlenecks, Weilai this set of car machines will still have occasional Caton phenomenon, but Weilai has done its best to create a good car experience, with good software optimization and UI design, it can still be basically satisfactory in the actual experience, even in all new energy vehicles in 2022 are still not left behind, which will make us look forward to how these "veterans" will behave in the future after the new system equipped with the Snapdragon 8155 platform.