In its Accelerat program released in March 2021, Volkswagen declared itself a "software-driven mobility vendor."
Along this line of thought, volkswagen's aggressive transformation plan, the importance of the software sector, within a year, was rapidly raised:
On June 28, 2021, Diess announced that it will resign as Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Skoda and Seat and will devote itself to software construction;
On December 7, 2021, Diess succeeded as CEO of the Volkswagen Group and will be fully responsible for the software division CARIAD from this year.
Because Dies believes that "by 2030, on the basis of BEV (pure tram) and ICE (internal combustion locomotive) sales, software-backed sales will increase the entire mobility market from about 2 trillion euros to 5 trillion euros today."
On April 28, Volkswagen held the "CARIAD China Strategy Conference" in China, and for the first time, Volkswagen showed the work content and situation of CARIAD's Chinese subsidiary to the outside world.
01
What is CARIAD?
In fact, Diess's layout of the software department began in February 2019, when he formed a software division called "Digital Car & Service" and put bmw's old division, a bean-like "power" - Christian Senger - in charge of the entire software department.
In many court battles, the department was buffeted by the unionists due to the radical reforms, and finally became the CARIAD company independently, and the head of the department was taken over by Dirk Hilgenberg, who also came from BMW's IT technology department.
CarIAD, as the software department of Volkswagen's entire group, has the top IT talents within the group, coordinates the underlying software development of all brands, and can be said to have higher authority and status than traditional functional departments. CARIAD is responsible for a very clear business definition: "to develop a unified, scalable new software platform, advanced driver assistance systems and autonomous driving, and the next generation of intelligent and connected functions." My understanding is that it mainly contains: E Electrical and Electronic Architecture (contains VW. OS) and VW. AC, two large plates.
And
The E 1.1 version is already in use, such as Volkswagen's ID.4, Skoda's Enyaq or CUPRA Born. OTA is allowed for the MEB portfolio in this release.
Version E 1.2 will be launched in 2023, based on Android-built Infotainment (car machine), there will be third-party app stores to provide a variety of software options. The focus is on supporting VW. AC is also a Volkswagen cloud service, and vehicle data will be migrated to the cloud.
In 2025, version E 2.0 was launched, dubbed "game changer" by Silgenberg, and will bring VW. OS is brought into the new world, and all volkswagen group models will use this system to maximize synergy. Volkswagen says it will ensure a differentiated brand and user experience at the same time.
Audi's Artemis project will demonstrate E 2.0 for the first time in 2025, along with Volkswagen's fully autonomous driving capabilities as well as the capabilities of the SSP platform. In 2026, these technology dividends will be delegated to the Volkswagen brand's Trinity project. Volkswagen optimistically predicts that by 2030, the Group will have 40 million vehicles driving around the world, and software will become one of the most important profit pools!
VW. AC
The end of the continuous centralized evolution of the domain control architecture is the "cloud". Volkswagen chose to work strategically with Microsoft, which Diess even called "a key factor" in Volkswagen's development as a software-driven mobile service provider.
In addition to cloud data management, OTA, and very important AI computing for private vehicles, I think VW. Another important significance of AC is that it will also play an important role in the commercial operation of Volkswagen's autonomous vehicle fleet.
THE ULTIMATE GOAL OF CARIAD IS TO HAVE THE TECHNOLOGY STACK DEVELOPED BY CARIAD RUNNING ON MORE THAN 40 MILLION GROUP VEHICLES WORLDWIDE BY 2030. To achieve this goal, Volkswagen had a very ambitious talent program for Volkswagen when the software division was just beginning planning: to assemble 10,000 IT talents. So far, CARIAD has about 5,000 IT talent, halfway through the program. In the European headquarters where CARIAD is located, the Internet atmosphere is not strong, and the biggest problem they face is the shortage of IT talents, so CARIAD must "go out".
02
CARIAD China subsidiary
CARIAD's first stop was China. China is not only the largest single market for volkswagen, with a complete and mature industrial system, but also has a large number of talents and resources in software.
THE EARLIEST FORMATION OF CARIAD'S CHINA SUBSIDIARY WAS IN 2021. One of CARIAD's co-founders, Evergreen, serves as CEO of CARIAD's China subsidiary. Evergreen is an "old-man" who joined Volkswagen in 1990 and since 2018 has been responsible for planning and building the Group's unified product portfolio of expandable electrical and electronic architectures.
In less than a year from last year to now, CARIAD's China subsidiary has assembled a team of 600 people and expects to double by the end of 2023, with more than 90% of them being local software talent. Meanwhile, CARIAD's China subsidiary is building R&D capabilities in Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu and Hefei to build a nationwide distributed R&D network.
We know that Volkswagen currently has two pure electric platforms, for different platforms, CARIAD matches different software, and the task of CARIAD's Chinese subsidiary is software development and adaptation of different platforms:
The volume software platform ( volume ) , suitable for MEB platform models , will enable remote online updates of software on specific models , i.e. OTA. The Chinese team will lead the implementation of ID in China. Family series OTA. The first update is expected to take place in the second half of 2022.
Premium, for PPE platforms, is scheduled to be available within the next two years. It will support advanced infotainment systems based on The Android open source system as well as advanced driver assistance systems, and support remote online updates on select Audi and Porsche brand models.
The Chinese team is leading the development of China-specific applications of these two systems.
The new unified software platform (unified & scalable) will be applicable to all brands of the future Group, supporting volkswagen's self-developed operating system VW. OS and connect to volkswagen cloud VW. AC。 This part, we can understand, is Volkswagen's SSP platform exclusive software, will be launched around 2025, and pre-equipped with L4 level autonomous driving technology.
Among them, the Chinese team will lead and participate, involving 70% of the research and development of the new software platform technology stack and product line, including local research and development and adaptation. At the same time, the Chinese team will also develop a data backend that meets the data compliance requirements in the local area, namely volkswagen cloud VW. AC, and implement a range of interconnected services.
The CTO of CARIAD's China subsidiary is Dr. Wei Sun, who joined Volkswagen in 2017 as Senior Director of R&D for Its Smart Mobility Division. He quickly assembled a team of more than 150 software development engineers, provided software systems related to intelligent vehicle connectivity for a number of Volkswagen companies in China, and delivered a number of software projects for intelligent travel for the Volkswagen Group, including providing charging services for The Mobile App for Camson New Energy Technology Co., Ltd. (CAMS) and piloting a self-driving taxi service platform in Hefei. Previously, Dr. Sun Wei worked at IBM China Research Institute for 16 years and had extensive experience in software research and development and smart mobility.
At present, the Chinese team has been doing "optimization" work in less than a year, and I believe that people who are exposed to software should be very clear about the importance of optimization for the entire software system.
In order to speed up the iteration of R&D results, CARIAD's Chinese subsidiary has carried out an innovative initiative called "Forward" to quickly roll out product innovation planning and R&D methods by frequency on a quarterly basis. This quarterly metric requires the integration of tools.
Rainbow arranger
PMT (Process Methodology Tools) is a complete set of development processes, methods and tool integration platforms. With more than 50 customized and self-developed tools, engineers can seamlessly switch between automotive operating system platform development, vehicle application development, and cloud service development, and achieve a certain degree of automation to enhance efficiency.
In 2022Q1, the initial initiative of "Forward", CARIAD China subsidiary presented a total of more than 80 innovative ideas, selected 6 applications, covering different areas such as advanced driver assistance, intelligent cockpit, remote services and infrastructure, and will further develop them in the next 3-6 months.
At the press conference, CARIAD's Chinese subsidiary showed us one of the functions - OOTD (Outfit of the day): Simply put, it is to get the color information of the driver's clothes through the camera in the car, and then match the atmosphere lights, greetings, and UI themes.
Yes, it looks a bit chicken ribs and is not stunning. But Rainbow Composer, the development software showcased by CARIAD's Chinese subsidiary, is the focus.
On closer inspection, the toolbox displayed on this interface contains a range of vehicle-related features, including mood lights, air conditioning, seat settings, artificial intelligence, and infotainment services. Developers can use this tool to quickly customize new customer experiences for specific scenarios and create "personalized touchpoints" for users in the car.
To tell the truth, the information presented on this interface is not complicated compared to Tesla's "light show", and it is all Chinese. I personally have the confidence to customize the entire system, and Tesla's "light show" open source tutorial has also been on the first place on the GitHub daily list, and this DIY fun is not a niche, I think you can leave a message to communicate. But CARIAD's China subsidiary does have the potential to open up this feature to consumers.
This matter, many new forces in China are doing, which is a good direction for the real landing of the SOA architecture. But the limit of vehicle hardware and software decoupling is the upper limit of this functional gameplay.
V2X
The V2X, a smart connectivity solution led by CARIAD's China subsidiary, was another highlight of the launch, with a total of three functions and already deployed in the latest Audi models on the Chinese market:
Traffic Light Information (TLI)
This function will obtain traffic light information accurate to the second on the driving road, and give the recommended speed based on the traffic light information at the intersection in front of you to ensure the green wave traffic of the vehicle. Owners of some Audi models have been able to obtain all the traffic light information in the city.
Hazardous Information Warning (LHW)
The hazard warning function, implemented based on C-V2X connected car technology, has introduced six different use cases. Taking "accident warning" as an example, when a vehicle with this function encounters a traffic accident, the vehicle will send relevant warnings to the surrounding vehicles in real time through the C-V2X protocol, and the over-the-horizon prompts the vehicles behind.
Hazard Warning (LHI)
The hazard information prompt function, based on networking technology, provides more specific and timely information on the dangers of the surrounding roads. Traffic hazard information can be instantly captured by all vehicles equipped with this feature on the road and sent to the display of the relevant vehicle in an orderly manner, allowing customers to know in advance of real-time dangerous traffic events up to 40 kilometers.
These V2X-based features will be combined with ADAS in the future.
03
Write at the end
Volkswagen has an entire group of 660,000 people. That includes factory workers, software coders, and tens of thousands of middle-level executives. Half of them are still engaged in the production of conventional cars.
Diss innovation has been promoted from hardware to software, CARIAD as the vanguard of volkswagen software reform, every year Volkswagen will give CARIAD 25-3 billion euros of financial support.
In this reform, it is obviously impossible to train employees in ICE positions to adapt to software, and the number of IT talents in Europe is difficult to meet the ambitions of the public in intelligence. As a first step towards going global, CARIAD's Chinese subsidiary has provided a lot of substantial functional output in less than a year.
But this top-down change will take some time to spread to consumers through actual OTAs. Let's wait a minute, after all, CARIAD's Chinese subsidiary is still expanding its hands.
Written by: Liu Guangzhen
Editor: Liu Guangzhen
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