Lead
April 28,
CARIAD, a new software company owned by the Volkswagen Group, officially announces its China strategy,
Marking the official establishment of CARIAD's Chinese subsidiary.
According to the strategy released, the CARIAD China team will promote the development of software products for Chinese consumers, including the development of a unified and scalable new software platform, advanced driver assistance systems and autonomous driving, and next-generation intelligent interconnection capabilities with headquarters.
Changqing Chang, CEO of CARIAD's China subsidiary, believes that the establishment of the Chinese company "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. ”
Evergreen, CEO of CARIAD's China subsidiary
The priority of CARIAD's China subsidiary is to develop and innovate in China. In this regard, Volkswagen Group further said that the Chinese team will promote the development of software products for Chinese consumers, including advanced driver assistance systems and autonomous driving, next-generation intelligent interconnection functions, intelligent cockpit and body design, big data and software operating systems.
In terms of the relationship between CARIAD's Chinese subsidiary and its European headquarters, Changqing believes that CARIAD's China subsidiary will work with the European headquarters to develop a unified and scalable software platform suitable for all brands of the Group to meet the specific needs of different markets. The entire technology stack will be launched around 2025 and will be pre-equipped with L4 level autonomous driving technology.
As for CARIAD China's mission, Changqing said that 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 and achieve group scale effects at the software level. ”
What is CARIAD?
CARIAD (Car I Am Digital) is an automotive software company owned by the Volkswagen Group. The company is developing a leading technology stack for the automotive industry, formerly known as the Car.Software Organisation, Volkswagen's software division established in 2020.
At present, CARIAD 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, an operating system developed by Volkswagen, and connect to volkswagen cloud VW.AC.
The new software platform will be released for the first time around 2025. In addition, CARIAD is developing the vehicle's digital capabilities, including ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems), standardized infotainment systems, software functions for connecting powertrains, chassis and charging technologies, and new ecosystems for vehicles and new digital business models. The company has established R&D centers in Wolfsburg, Ingolstadt, Stuttgart, Berlin and Munich, germany, as well as close cooperation with the Volkswagen Group's international R&D teams in the USA and China.
Dies & CARIAD
Volkswagen is very good at building cars; in the field of software software, it is another matter. The Volkswagen Group is trying to change that.
After the successful renewal of the contract between Diess and Volkswagen Group, it began to vigorously promote the construction of the car giant's software system capabilities. At the beginning of this year, Diess became the chairman of the Supervisory Board of CARIAD, and it is one of his important tasks to fully lead the Software Breakthrough of the Volkswagen Group.
It can be seen that software capabilities are the part that volkswagen is eager to strengthen. In fact, in November 2021, Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess made a profound criticism of Volkswagen's software capabilities: "We have almost no software capabilities so far", "Software will determine who can get how much market share", "In the new competition, competition becomes fierce, market share is redistributed, and old success is no longer important in the new car world", Diess reflected on the lack of Volkswagen software capabilities with these sharp words in a speech at the group headquarters.
A large number of ID.3s lie in the parking lot before the 2020 ID.3 delivery, waiting for a manual software upgrade
Diess is seriously concerned that the ID.3 pure electric vehicle, which he values so much, has been experiencing software problems since 2019, when more than 20,000 ID.3s could not achieve OTAs and had to manually brush the machine to repair previous software defects, which affected its delivery plans in the summer of 2020. As a result, the group as a whole was fined more than 1 million euros on the CO2 emission target.
CARIAD with neox
Relations in the Volkswagen Group
Back at the end of July last year, the Volkswagen Group formed a joint venture with TraceTronic, the world's leading provider of automotive software testing and integration solutions, called neox. Volkswagen Group and TraceTronic each hold a 50% stake in the joint venture. The new company will build a continuous integration/continuous testing (CI/CT) plant for automotive software development.
TraceTronic Group CEO Rocco Deutschmann and Volkswagen Electronics Development Head Axel Heinrich
At the inauguration of neocx in Dresden
It follows that CARIAD is responsible for building the Volkswagen Group's software platform, while neocx's mission is to transform the Volkswagen brand into a software-based mobile service provider, with the goal of integrating the digital functions developed by CARIAD into Volkswagen's vehicles, testing them in a highly automated process and accelerating product implementation.