Just this month, SuperCharger Station turned two years old.
In the two years since I started the company, one of the words I have learned the most is called on-demand upgrades.
"On-demand upgrade" can be further split into two meanings, "on-demand" refers to the continuous growth and deepening of user needs, and "upgrade" refers to the need for capable and affordable immediate solutions.
For example, when we rent an office, we rent the smallest one first, and then upgrade it to a large one when there are more people.
For example, we use the computer for editing, first buy a mainstream configuration, and then gradually add hardware.
When we buy it back, it is enough, and when we upgrade, the price of the product with the extra performance we need will be reduced.
If you agree with the above truth, then you can understand the following news.
Since the tour home NV, to make a car that can be upgraded on demand in terms of intelligent driving assistance, "intelligent can grow".
The first system-level hardware is upgradable
As we all know, the current intelligent assisted driving is on the eve of the imminent transformation of software functions and hardware capabilities, which can be said to be a completely different two steps and a watershed for technological leaps.
Since the tourer NV, it is the car that has its feet on two steps, no, more threateningly, it is a car that steps on both sides of the river.
When launched this year, the Self-Touring NV will use Horizon Matrix Mono monocular visual perception scheme of Horizon, which is based on the Horizon Journey 2 chip, and the perception system consists of 1 forward-looking camera and 5 millimeter-wave radars.
This system is characterized by maturity, stable functions, and the cost performance is also quite outstanding, and when the NV is launched this year, it can stably provide 24 functions including AEB (automatic emergency braking), ACC (full speed domain adaptive cruise), LCC (lane center control), LCA (lane change assist), BSD (blind spot monitoring), APA (fully automatic parking).
It needs to be emphasized that the entire system is standard for the entire NV series of self-travelers, and users do not need to face complex optional grades, and they can use these driving assistance and active safety functions without high costs.
And as long as people who care about smart cars and intelligent driving industries will know that the last two years are the transition period of assisted driving from "available" to "easy to use", from a fragmented part of the scene to a global scene, then I now buy a car, and it will not be obsolete in two years, right?
The solution given by The Tourer NV is very "hardcore": it supports a comprehensive hardware upgrade of the assisted driving system.
Starting in the third quarter of 2023, users will have the option to upgrade to a SuperDrive AAD system.
Although there have been car companies that have launched hardware upgrades for assisted driving before, this is also the first time that the whole system upgrade, including decision chips and all sensor systems, has been systematized.
The SuperDrive AAD supercomputing platform has two built-in Horizon Quest 5 chips, and the AI hash rate has been increased to 256 TOPS, which is equivalent to 64 times the computing power of the pre-upgrade plan.
The sensor system has also been pushed directly from the current single camera approach to 12 cameras, including two 8-megapixel front-view HD cameras, four surround view cameras, four side view cameras, one rear view camera and one driver perception camera.
Simply put, after the upgrade of the whole system, not only can it support more complex and advanced driver assistance functions, but even in the existing functions, due to the optimization of algorithms and the advancement of technical routes, there is also room for further optimization of user scenarios.
The patchwork era of smart cars
When we experienced the automotive system of the Youjia NV before, we were impressed by the term "building block insertion", if it was still a software concept of the integration upgrade at that time, this auxiliary system became a hardware-level "building block".
This shows that the solution of The Self-Traveler is not a passive technical response after changes in the industry, but at the conceptual level, subjectively finds a way to use it in the face of technological change.
From the materials published, we can find that the self-touring NV has embedded interfaces in the car to meet the gigabit Ethernet communication and high-computing power integrated domain controllers, which means that the upgrade no longer requires a large hardware adjustment to the vehicle, and also supports the upgrade of higher-power controllers and sensors.
We might as well discuss the advantages and value of this approach.
How to deal with the upgrading needs of high-end driving assistance, the industry is in a general anxiety, but also came up with a variety of solutions.
Some companies want to use the simplest possible sensor to solve the problem, the upgrade pressure all comes to the software side, some companies will be buried in the hardware at the beginning, but also need consumers to pay the price of the optional in advance.
Although these methods can eventually work, some car companies need to do excess R& D investment in the early stage, and some need consumers to pay a high premium, which belongs to the method of relying on upfront advances in exchange for later benefits.
The solution of the self-traveler is undoubtedly a fair exchange scheme that is more in line with the needs of consumers from the perspective of thinking.
For users who prefer to drive themselves without the need for advanced self-driving capabilities, they do not have to pay for additional hardware, but at the same time retain the full benefit of fully upgrading to the next generation of autonomous driving capability hardware.
For those users who are sure that they want to upgrade, they do not need to bear the hardware cost premium from the order to the function delivery, and even enjoy the dividend of hardware reducing costs under Moore's Law, at the same time, they also do not need to bear the uncertainty of algorithm research and development, and can wait until the function development is completed, and reasonably choose the time and program of the upgrade according to the actual test situation.
It can be said that the cost of consumer upgrades is really spent on the functions that can be used, not on the computing power of the hardware.
Consumers do not need to take the risk of future uncertainty when buying a car, but always retain the right to choose and progress together with the times.
Upgrade on demand, intelligence can grow.
This may be a kind of "self-travel" brought by the self-traveler.
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