Recently, the Equipment Industry Development Center of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the "Notice on Carrying Out online upgrade filing of automotive software", which clearly further regulates the online upgrading of automotive software, and should file for the automotive vehicle manufacturers that have obtained the road motor vehicle production access license and their production of automotive vehicle products with OTA upgrade functions and the implementation of OTA upgrade activities.
Since the first car completed the software upgrade online, smart cars have become more and more like smartphones, with the ability to learn quickly and continue to grow, and have also transformed the single functional product in the traditional concept of the car into a service product. With the continuous improvement of regulatory measures, this blindfolded track has finally been put on a "tight curse".
Recently, the Equipment Industry Development Center of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (hereinafter referred to as the "Equipment Center of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology") released the "Notice on Carrying Out the Filing of Online Upgrades of Automotive Software" (hereinafter referred to as the "Notice") on the official website. The Notice clarifies that to further regulate the online upgrading of automotive software (hereinafter referred to as "OTA upgrade"), the OTA upgrade activities of the vehicle manufacturers that have obtained the road motor vehicle production access license and their complete vehicle products with OTA upgrade functions and the OTA upgrading activities implemented should be filed. The applicant should be a vehicle manufacturer.
Statistics show that in 2021, the average OTA update cycle of China's mainstream smart car products is only about two weeks. On the one hand, these OTA upgrades have brought users a new functional experience, making people's vision of "smart cars commonly used and often new" and "software-defined cars" a reality; but on the other hand, due to the previous regulatory measures are not yet sound, some car companies have secretly changed a number of parameters of vehicles through OTA upgrades, and even some car companies have "locked the power" without informing users.
Can the car OTA upgrade after wearing the "tight curse" still become the core selling point of smart cars? What kind of OTA upgrades do consumers and car companies need? At a time when all sectors of society are looking forward to further releasing consumption potential and promoting the sustained recovery of consumption, it is particularly important to answer the above questions in today's smart electric vehicles, where high hopes are placed.
Why put a "tight curse" on online upgrades of automotive software
OTA upgrades have gradually become the standard for new cars to go on the market, and new energy vehicles with more electronic control systems have formed a leading trend of OTA upgrades. It is predicted that by 2025, the assembly rate of China's passenger car front-loading OTA upgrade function is expected to increase from about 30% to 80%.
The Notice has five main requirements for regulating the upgrading of automotive OTAs.
First, enterprises implementing OTA upgrade activities should ensure that automotive products comply with relevant requirements such as national laws and regulations, technical standards and technical specifications to ensure the consistency of automotive product production; second, enterprises should complete the filing of enterprise management capabilities, models and functions and specific upgrade activities in turn as required before they can implement OTA upgrade activities; third, according to the impact assessment of upgrade activities, specific upgrade activities should be graded for filing; fourth, Enterprises are responsible for the security of OTA upgrade activities and product production consistency. Fifth, enterprises should identify the electronic control system affected by the upgrade activity and save the initial and upgraded versions (sets) of the software to support the implementation of retrospective management of the upgrade. The relevant ICP Filing information shall be true, accurate and complete.
"This move means that the regulations and standards for automotive software upgrades are gradually being improved." Zhu Shirui, a legal researcher and lawyer who knows how to do this, believes that the Notice is in line with the previous legal documents such as the Supplementary Notice on the Filing of The Technical Recall of Remote Upgrade (OTA) of Automobiles, the Opinions on Strengthening the Access Management of Intelligent Connected Vehicle Manufacturers and Products, and the Notice of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology on Strengthening the Networking Network Security and Data Security Of the Internet of Vehicles, all of which clarify the work and requirements related to the software upgrade of intelligent connected vehicles.
In recent years, with the accelerated popularization of new energy vehicles, the level of vehicle intelligence has been significantly improved, and new technologies and new phenomena such as vehicle OTA upgrades have emerged. With the continuous improvement of regulatory measures, car companies must recite the safety "tight curse", and the car OTA upgrade finally has a basis.
In Zhu Shirui's view, the Notice requires that "the upgrade can be carried out after filing", and requires the submission of a specific implementation report within 5 days after the completion of the upgrade activity, indicating that the implementation measures such as application for filing, review and evaluation have been continuously refined.
He told reporters bluntly: "This kind of strict and effective regulatory mechanism will regulate the software upgrade behavior of car companies." While protecting the rights and interests of consumers, this move will also have a positive impact on the development of the entire industry. ”
"In recent years, with the accelerated popularization of new energy vehicles, the level of automobile intelligence has been significantly improved, and new technologies and new phenomena such as vehicle OTA upgrades have emerged. In contrast, previous regulatory policies have lagged behind. Yang Xiaolin, a senior auto media person and automotive industry analyst, analyzed that automotive intelligence depends on a high degree of integration of software and hardware, whether it is crash safety testing or fuel consumption and mileage, the domestic regulatory measures for automotive hardware are relatively perfect, while the supervision of software is dwarfed.
"Needless to say, there were certain blind spots or gray areas in the previous supervision of automotive software and OTA upgrades." For example, he said, the time and frequency of software iterations after the listing of new cars have not been strictly regulated, which has led some companies to give immature products and services to users to use, "and even some consumers as guinea pigs to fix software bugs."
Yang Xiaolin reminded that although this method is not uncommon in the Internet field, the experience of repairing smart phone apps must not be transferred to smart cars. "If the mobile app is bugged, it will affect the fluency of the user experience at most, but every detail of car safety is closely related to road traffic safety, and it is also related to the life, health and property safety of every road traffic participant, which is not sloppy at all."
The reporter learned that OTA upgrades have gradually become the standard for new cars to be listed, and new energy vehicles with more electronic control systems have formed a leading trend of OTA upgrades. It is predicted that by 2025, the assembly rate of China's passenger car front-loading OTA upgrade function is expected to increase from about 30% to 80%.
Therefore, some analysts pointed out that the release and implementation of the Notice not only marks another solid step in the construction of the mainland's intelligent networked vehicle management system, but also is of great significance to promoting the development of the intelligent networked automobile industry and safeguarding the relevant social public interests.
In fact, no matter how intelligent the car is, it is still a commodity closely related to the safety of consumers and road traffic participants. From this point of view, ensuring the safety of products is not only the main line of research and development of car companies, but also the bottom line of car OTA upgrades.
Gray area chaos breeds, and whose right to know should be protected before escalation
Whether it is related to the performance parameters of safe driving of vehicles, or the mileage that users are very concerned about, only when each car OTA upgrade is filed in accordance with the law and can be checked, can the legitimate rights and interests of users be protected, and can we try to avoid rights protection disputes such as "locking electricity".
With the rapid development of the new energy vehicle market, in 2021, the number of new energy vehicle recalls and recalls increased by 31.1% and 75.9% over the previous year, and the growth rate was significantly higher than that of traditional fuel vehicles. Among them, words related to product software security and OTA upgrades are becoming more and more common.
"On February 20, I drove Chery Ants to the 4S shop for maintenance... As a result, after the maintenance upgrade, the fully charged mileage of the car is only displayed at 274 kilometers, and it can be charged to 305 kilometers before..." Netizen "Shenzhou No. 7" complained on a car forum that the 4S shop was suspected of using OTA upgrades to "lock the electricity" of its new car, hoping to restore to the previous software version.
Another owner of gac aviation AION S posted that in July last year, the manufacturer modified the vehicle's BMS system through an OTA upgrade without the owner's consent without any prompting. "After the upgrade, the original 58.8-degree capacity battery can only be charged with less than 50 degrees of electricity, resulting in a significant reduction in the vehicle's mileage, while the vehicle's power and acceleration performance are also significantly reduced."
"Judging from the recent frequent 'power locking' incidents, it is necessary to strengthen the supervision of car OTA upgrades." Cao Guangping, an independent researcher of new energy and intelligent networked vehicles, commented that in recent years, the domestic new energy automobile industry has developed rapidly, and there may be a situation of "turnips are fast and do not wash mud". If supervision is not strengthened, car companies may "secretly" fix product problems through OTA upgrades.
He explained: "For example, if you do not upgrade the 'lock power' through OTA, it may cause battery failure or even spontaneous combustion, but if you let car companies sacrifice OTA upgrades at will, it will reduce the mileage of the vehicle and change the original performance parameters of the product, which damages the legitimate rights and interests of consumers such as the right to know." ”
Previously, some car companies arbitrarily upgraded the "power lock" through OTAs, reduced the mileage of vehicles, changed the original performance parameters of products, and damaged the legitimate rights and interests of consumers. Some analysts said that the mandatory requirements of the Notice will make car companies more cautious when considering car OTA upgrades.
It is worth noting that the Notice requires that before the upgrade is implemented, the car company should inform the vehicle user of the purpose, content, required duration, upgrade impact, precautions and other information of the OTA upgrade, and inform the vehicle user of the upgrade result after the upgrade is implemented.
Yang Xiaolin told reporters that these mandatory requirements of the Notice will make car companies more cautious when considering car OTA upgrades.
"With the filing, it means that there is a mechanism for retrospective responsibility." Yang Xiaolin took the traditional automobile safety analogy that in the automobile production line of many factories, how many screws to be screwed, how much force, production data must be kept for at least 10 years. In this way, even if there is a problem with this automotive product in the future, it can trace the production process and check whether the behavior of the car company at that time is compliant.
In the software field that smart cars are most proud of, such a responsibility traceability mechanism is obviously not absent.
In his view, whether it is related to the performance parameters of safe driving of vehicles or the mileage that users are very concerned about, only when each car OTA upgrade is filed in accordance with the law and can be checked, can the legitimate rights and interests of users be protected, and can we try to avoid rights protection disputes such as "locking electricity".
"Software-defined cars" call for a more scientific management system
The Notice requires that before the upgrade is implemented, the car company should inform the vehicle user of the purpose, content, required duration, impact of the upgrade, precautions and other information of the OTA upgrade, and inform the vehicle user of the upgrade result after the upgrade is implemented. In the software field that smart cars are most proud of, such a responsibility traceability mechanism obviously cannot be absent.
If the automotive industry used to develop at the speed of the physical world, atoms, and industrial laws, then now, the automotive industry is developing at the speed of the digital world, bits, and Moore's law.
But it is undeniable that under the domination of Moore's Law, the life cycle of electronic devices is shorter, but the life cycle of automotive products is longer. This makes the smart car OTA upgrade doomed to fall into contradiction.
A software engineer who crosses from smart phones to smart cars told reporters that a smart phone only takes two or three years, but the service life of a car is at least more than 10 years, and the hardware of smart electric vehicles is difficult to iterate as quickly as smart phones, so the upgrade of old models cannot be limited to OTA software upgrades.
Originally, the upgrade of automotive products and the release of annual changes are normal things, but in the period of rapid changes in automotive product technology, the product density of the same level of models on the market has been very large, due to the frequent changes in related policies such as track congestion and new energy subsidies, in recent years, Tesla, Xiaopeng, Ideal and other intelligent electric vehicle companies have appeared to varying degrees of product listing plan chaos, which will undoubtedly have an impact on user psychology.
As an auto fan and the first batch of users of smart electric vehicles, Zhang Sheng can obviously feel the rapid changes in smart electric vehicles. He told reporters that in 2018 and 2019, it is still the mainstream or even leading hardware level in the market, "which has been slightly delayed now."
For example, in 2019, the standard computing power of domestic smart electric vehicles is 2.5TOPS and 1 camera with 1.3 million pixels, but by 2022, the standard computing power of everyone is 508TOPS, and the computing power of the matching central gateway controller has increased by hundreds of times, and even lidar may become standard.
Pan Helin, co-director and researcher of the Digital Economy and Financial Innovation Research Center of Zhejiang University's International United Business School, reminded that considering the long service life of smart cars, it is necessary to reserve enough space in terms of system hardware, such as chip computing power, to adapt to changes in future applications. "Smart cars should place more emphasis on data safety and driving safety technologies, seeking a balance between innovation and reliability."
As the competent authorities develop a more scientific management system, car companies must not only be more cautious in the development and manufacture of automotive hardware, but also more responsible in the iterative development of software. Standing on the emerging track of automobile intelligence, the car OTA upgrade is put on the "tight hoop". Everyone is looking forward to the fact that this is not a rule that restricts innovation, but a guarantee that the development of smart cars can be followed.
He said that if the car OTA upgrade is divided into software upgrade and firmware upgrade, then the main risk of software upgrade is information security, and the firmware upgrade is directly related to the performance of the car, "such as brake parameters, OTA upgrade may change the user's driving habits, but also cause safety hazards." Therefore, car companies must conduct safety assessments before upgrading and fully inform users. ”
"In the future, the firmware parameters of OTAs should be more mature before they can be mass-produced, rather than constantly adjusting the parameters after delivery to consumers." In particular, vehicle firmware system upgrades may require an assessment of the risk of the upgrade. Pan and Lin concluded: "The key to car OTA upgrades is still security issues. ”
Yang Xiaolin said bluntly that in the past, some car companies over-publicized the car OTA upgrade function, "In fact, car OTA upgrade is not a panacea to solve product problems, nor is the more the merrier." In order to truly and safely realize the intelligence of automobiles, it is more important to do a good job in the integration of software and hardware. ”
He said that with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and other competent departments to develop a more scientific management system, car companies must not only be more cautious in the development and manufacture of automotive hardware, but also more responsible for software iterative development.
Standing on the emerging track of automobile intelligence, the car OTA upgrade is put on the "tight hoop". Everyone is looking forward to the fact that this is not a rule that restricts innovation, but a guarantee that the development of smart cars can be followed.
Source: China Youth Daily (April 28, 11th edition)
China Youth Daily, China Youth Network reporter Xu Yajie
Special program of the 5th "Made in China Day"