CARIAD's China subsidiary CEO Chang Qing shoulders the heavy trust of volkswagen group (Image: Volkswagen)
Titanium Media APP April 28 news, Volkswagen Group's new software company CARIAD set up a subsidiary today, CEO Chang Qing said: "We will develop, update and iterate our products at a Chinese speed based on local customer experience." ”
Gather the strength of the public to build a unified software platform
CARIAD, formerly known as the Car.Software Organisation, Volkswagen's software division established in 2020, currently has about 5,000 engineers and developers worldwide, and its main task is to build a unified software platform for all brands of the group, including a unified and scalable architecture, support VW.OS, Volkswagen's self-developed operating system, and connect to volkswagen's cloud VW.AC. The new software platform will be released for the first time around 2025.
Chang Qing, CEO of CARIAD's Chinese subsidiary, introduced that CARIAD transferred all the software, electronic framework, digital and autonomous driving developers in the Volkswagen Group together, and merged 15 software companies to have CARIAD. CARIAD is committed to developing three software platforms: mass production, high-end and unified scalability. The development goal of the three platforms is that by 2025, 60% of the full-stack technology can be developed independently, and by 2030, more than 40 million vehicles around the world will use CARIAD products, equipped with Volkswagen's self-developed operating system VW.OS and Volkswagen Cloud VW.AC.
CARIAD's China subsidiary is CARIAD's first subsidiary outside of Europe, and Dirk Hilgenberg, CEO of CARIAD, said: "China is one of the most dynamic and promising mobility markets in the world, and the establishment of the China subsidiary is another important milestone for CARIAD, demonstrating CARIAD's strong commitment to the Chinese market and local consumers. Together with the Chinese team, we will work towards the same goal and use software to 'weave' the future of mobility." ”
"China is leading the world in digital applications and innovation, and consumers are increasingly demanding new features and new experiences," Chang said. The establishment of the China team allows us to respond more quickly to the needs of the local market. Based on local customer experience and expectations, we will develop, iterate and continuously improve our products at Chinese speed. In addition, the China team will work closely with the Group's various brands in China and three joint venture partners to provide consumers with software-defined mobility solutions to achieve group scale at the software level. ”
The display at the press conference made people see a different Volkswagen (Image source: Volkswagen)
In China, for China, from China to the world
When talking about the future mission of the Chinese subsidiary, Evergreen firmly believes that "in China, for China, from China to the world" is an important part of it. Innovating Chinese products in China centered on customer experience and market demand, and applying China's innovative products to the world, this is the focus of CARIAD's Chinese subsidiary.
Dr. Sun Wei, Chief Technology Officer of CARIAD China Subsidiary, said: "By accelerating the pace of R&D iteration, creating innovative software development concepts, and introducing a new technology system for Chinese consumers, we will more efficiently meet the diverse needs of local consumers and continue to provide them with a fresh, intelligent, interesting and safe travel experience." ”
At present, CARIAD China subsidiary also has three software platforms: mass production, high-end and unified scalability. The mass production platform has already achieved initial results on MEB models, and will be launched in the form of OTAs this year. The high-end platform mainly serves Audi and Porsche PPE models and is expected to be available in 2025. At present, the China team is mainly responsible for the research and development of advanced infotainment systems and advanced driver assistance systems based on the Android open source system, and the research and development of these two systems will make an important contribution to Volkswagen's global development.
"On the unified scalable platform, we will change the development process that was previously launched abroad and then localized in China. In the future, all cars in the entire Volkswagen Group will use this unified scalable platform. For the products and features that consumers in the Chinese market need, we will first work with the headquarters to develop them, and Dr. Sun's team will then join the daily product design, including optimization, improvement and testing. This can shorten the time to market and better meet the needs of the Chinese market. "Evergreen has a clear plan for the next step of cariad's China subsidiary.
OIC will become a new concept for CARIAD's China subsidiary (Image: Volkswagen China)
The number of teams has doubled, and more than 90% of them are local software talents
CarIAD currently employs more than 600 people in China and expects to double by the end of 2023, with more than 90 percent of them being local software talent. At the same time, CARIAD is building R&D forces in Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu and Hefei to gradually build a national distributed R&D network.
In addition to its headquarters in Beijing, CARIAD's China subsidiary will also establish branches in Shanghai, Hefei and Chengdu to develop a unified and scalable software platform to help the Volkswagen Group transform in China. At the same time, CARIAD's Chinese subsidiary will also strengthen its cooperation with the brand in China and the three joint ventures, which have been launched on the mass production platform and will be further deepened on the unified scalable platform.
In terms of MEB platform research and development, CARIAD China subsidiary will launch the function of OTA in the second half of the year, and at the same time continue to push innovative features with Chinese characteristics and products that bring new customer experiences to the mass production platform at the appropriate time through the capabilities and infrastructure of OTAs.
Software research and development for high-end platforms is currently in the middle stage of research and development, and the China CARIAD team is making some localization and digital products with Chinese characteristics, one of which is the advanced driver assistance system. The system under development has a very powerful sensor solution, as well as a hardware and software system with powerful AI computing power, which can provide intelligent driving assistance systems including highway navigation, urban driving assistance, parking and other functions.
On the high-end platform, the Chinese CARIAD team has focused its work on the smart cockpit. Combining the unique needs of the Chinese market and basing themselves on Android's operating system platform, they have introduced an open application ecosystem to create smart cockpits and intelligent infotainment system applications that Chinese users love, including online media applications such as online navigation and AI assistants, as well as other new customer experience-oriented features such as games and instant messaging.
In addition, the CarIAD team in China has started full speed around the development of a next-generation unified and scalable software platform (SSP model) that will be available after 2025. Based on the experience of mass production software platform and high-end software platform research and development, the China CARIAD team will make every effort to create software products that support VW.OS and connect VW.AC these two major platforms. VW. A very important concept of OS is the loose coupling of hardware and software, so that it can turn software-defined cars and software-defined customer experiences into new ways of developing future vehicles. VW. The OS will integrate a variety of different types of hardware for the in-vehicle electrical architecture, including cockpit domain controllers, ADAS domain controllers, and area controllers, create a new operating system under the framework of SOA, and provide a very rich and extensible API, so that future applications can dynamically define new smart car applications through the combination of APIs.
China strategy will be the focus of Volkswagen's future for a long time (Image: Volkswagen)
R&D of new strategies to enhance the competitiveness of software products
According to Dr. Sun Wei, the new strategic initiatives of CARIAD's Chinese subsidiary in the R&D organization will help it become more competitive in its software product development in China.
First, CARIAD's Chinese subsidiary will be more agile in research and development. The current market changes very fast, and the demand for smart cars by young consumers is constantly changing, which requires that product development needs to be more rapid and more sensitive to capture the changes in user needs and needs, and timely launch new products that meet their expectations and can surprise customers.
At present, CARIAD's Chinese subsidiary is promoting several initiatives internally: the substantial optimization of the product planning process will shorten the planning time that used to take half a year to a year in half; the subsidiary launched a new project "Forward" the month after its establishment, iterating on a quarterly cycle, constantly exploring new innovation topics that users need in the Chinese market, or can lead users to need, and then through appropriate prioritization and product planning approval, continuously start pre-research research and development, and even promote mass production research and development.
In order to be more agile, CARIAD's Chinese subsidiary and CARIAD's German team have jointly created a very powerful toolchain "PMT". It covers more than 50 different types of tools, through automation, intelligence to make the tools into an end-to-end highly intelligent and automated tool chain, from requirements design to development, testing, verification, simulation and other aspects of the integration.
The second is sun wei's repeated emphasis on more innovation. Around innovation, through continuous attempts in all aspects of the past few years, CARIAD China subsidiary has sorted out a new set of innovative ideas, called OIC. OIC is an abbreviation for originality ("O" riginal), "I" mpressive, and rooted in "C" ar.
O is originality. At present, the applications around smart cars in the market are very rich, but it is not enough to do these from an innovative point of view. Therefore, CARIAD China needs to combine the global resource advantages of the Volkswagen Group to come up with innovative products with original concepts. This is also a direction that CARIAD Attaches great importance to after its establishment in China - emphasizing the originality of product research and development. Sun Wei believes that only through originality can we become a driving force leading the development of the industry on the new track.
I is attractiveness. For young users in China, the product must be attractive to catch them, so that they want to use it after use, and want to share it with family and friends, and feel that there are small surprises after use. "If the product is unattractive, it may become a product that is not very differentiated, feels OK after use, but has no characteristics." In order to be more competitive and capture the favor of young users, our products must be more attractive. There are so many ways to do it, and one of them is creativity. ”
C is the degree of vehicle continuity. At present, users are accustomed to using the APP on the mobile phone after getting on the car and putting the mobile phone on the bracket. The software products provided by CARIAD need to be able to fully exert the advantages and capabilities of the vehicle and make a product that relies on all aspects of the vehicle's functions. Sun Wei hopes to use the software-defined functions and experience provided by VW.OS to provide users with very high vehicle connectivity, attractive, original and competitive products based on the vehicle's rich configuration functions.
The third aspect of the new strategy is to be more autonomous. Independent research and development can truly help CARIAD's Chinese subsidiaries achieve agility and differentiation, and can also help them establish core competitiveness and intellectual property rights, which is the foundation of market competition.
The last change is to be more local. At present, the age structure of Chinese consumers, the growth environment and the vigorous development of China's digital economy have all made great changes in the Chinese market. Only more local, CARIAD China subsidiaries can accelerate the speed of research and development, ensure agility, more keenly capture the real needs of the market, and define the Chinese market and the digital software products that Chinese consumers prefer.
In order to further promote the localization process, with the support of the Volkswagen Group, Volkswagen's HMI (Human-Computer Interaction System) development function was transferred from Germany to China for the first time in history, and cariad China subsidiary was responsible for research and development.
It was a highly iconic event, and CARIAD's Chinese subsidiary made a near-perfect start.