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Among the traditional car companies that hold high the strategic transformation, Volkswagen Group CEO Diess is a radical, and volkswagen he leads can be said to be the most radical of the traditional car companies to deal with electrification and digital transformation.
In 2021, Volkswagen released the NEW AUTO strategy for 2030, proposing three platforms for the future-oriented SSP platform + CARIAD software platform + electrification platform. For Volkswagen, which has deep roots in car manufacturing, if the hardware capabilities of the whole vehicle and the ability of the three electrics have been accumulated, the software is undoubtedly the most urgent part of the Volkswagen at present, and CARIAD has naturally become the most important piece of the puzzle for the strategic transformation of the Volkswagen.
From the official establishment of the Car.Software Organisation of Volkswagen Software Division in 2020, to the fact that Disy was personally responsible for the software department CARIAD in early 2022, and then to the establishment of CARIAD's Chinese subsidiary on April 28, CARIAD can be said to be running all the way forward and accelerating the completion of the software.
The advent of the new era will always be accompanied by some new "golden words", and this "golden jade good words" in the era of intelligent cars may be "software-defined cars". Intelligence makes the car a robot on four wheels, and software is the key to differentiating the car. In this way, if you master the software, do you also grasp the "definition right" of the car?
When software comes to the core stage of the masses
On April 28, CARIAD China was established as the volkswagen group's first subsidiary outside of Europe. The two protagonists of this matter, one is software, and the other is the Chinese market.
For the past hundred years, the automotive field has always been the world of machinery and hardware. When software, algorithms, and artificial intelligence gradually surround smart cars, software gradually embarks on the core stage of cars. For the public, on the one hand, this is a change in demand, and on the other hand, a change in business model. Previously, at the NEW AUTO strategy conference, Volkswagen announced that software has become the company's most important cash flow source alongside fuel vehicles and electric vehicles, and even by 2030, the rising star of software will surpass the other two parts and become the most important cash pillar.
To this end, CARIAD brings together developers, engineers and designers from several software divisions of the Volkswagen Group to work together with a common goal of developing a unified software platform and technology stack that will enable Volkswagen, Audi, Porsche and other beloved car brands to always attract customers with fresh digital experiences.
Today, CARIAD has a team of around 5,000 software developers, engineers and designers worldwide with a mission to transform the Volkswagen Group into a true software-driven automotive company. CARIAD aims to increase the proportion of in-house developed software to 60% by 2025.
After integration, CARIAD will develop a software platform and a new generation of end-to-end electronic architecture software stack 2.0 in 2025, responsible for software upgrades for the electric platform MEB and the on-board operating system VW. OS, as well as L4 autonomous driving technology. CARIAD's China subsidiary will also work with its European headquarters to develop a unified and scalable software platform for all Group brands to meet the specific needs of different markets.
People often think that for traditional car companies, hardware is the housekeeping skill, and software is the weak link. However, for such a highly integrated and standardized industrial product as the automobile, the software and hardware can be said to be "not out of focus, meng is not out of focus". Just as we can't copy mobile phone software to the car, car software can't exist independently of the hardware. Therefore, how to combine software and hardware to release software capabilities on a stable and reliable basis on the hardware is crucial.
In this regard, CARIAD does not rule out improving its software capabilities through cooperation. For example, CARIAD partnered with Microsoft to build the Volkswagen Cloud and is working together to develop an autonomous driving platform that provides a development framework for complex autonomous driving functions. Just a week after CARIAD's debut in China, CARIAD announced that it will join forces with Qualcomm to select Qualcomm to provide a system-on-chip (SoC) for the CARIAD software platform, designed to enable assisted driving and up to L4 level of autonomous driving functions. This close working relationship also allows CARIAD to be tailored on a hardware basis.
When China became a gladiatorial arena for smart cars
From Qualcomm chips to lidar, from short videos to in-car KTV, I don't know when it started, the Chinese market has become the most important arena for smart cars, and the collection place for the debut of intelligent innovative products. As the tide rises, China has also put forward higher requirements for innovation and adaptability.
In the past, a function was launched abroad and localized in the country, obviously unable to meet the needs of Chinese consumers, set up a software research and development center in China, integrate software talents, can be for the needs and functions of Chinese consumers, in the prototype period of the product with the headquarters to work together to develop, shorten the product time to market, but also more in line with the needs of domestic users.
How much time can this model shorten? "Cut product planning time in half." Dr. Sun Wei, Chief Technology Officer of the China subsidiary, described CARIAD's efficiency after its establishment in China. When smart cars enter the era of running forward, this ability to respond quickly also makes the systematization and flexibility of car companies no longer a contradiction that cannot be taken into account.
For a software company, software talents are undoubtedly a direct embodiment of R&D strength. 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. While recruiting, CARIAD China will complete the research and development of three major platforms in 2025:
The closest to us is the mass-produced software platform MEB, where the China team will dominate china ID. The family's OTA is expected to launch its first update in the second half of this year.
At the same time, ppE, a high-end software platform applied to Audi and Porsche, will support advanced infotainment systems and advanced driver assistance systems based on Android open source systems, and the Chinese team is leading the development of China-specific applications of these two systems; by 2025, Volkswagen will also launch a unified software platform for all its brands, which can support Volkswagen's self-developed operating system VW. OS。
At last
At the CARIAD China conference, we saw a software independently developed by the Chinese team - "Rainbow Composer": when the user enters the car, all the digital elements in the car will be intelligently matched according to the user's clothes, such as adjusting the desktop theme of the central control screen, the color of the mood light, greetings, music elements, etc., so that the cockpit becomes part of the user's "OOTD (Outfit of the Day)".
It sounds like a clothes-enabled SOA feature, which is similar to the theme of automatically switching phones, and seems to only add a little bit of cockpit playability. But behind the implementation of the "Rainbow Arranger" function is the need for a fine-grained, loosely coupled automotive service architecture, which requires modularization of the smallest unit of software, so that it can be called independently of each other without interference, and can be compatible with each other in various subsystems. This provides an achievable underlying architecture and imagination space for further creating different cockpit scenarios and functions.
Using software to create more imagination space for cars may be the "right to define" smart cars.