What signal does Volkswagen's choice of Qualcomm chips reveal?

On May 4, CARIAD, a software company owned by the Volkswagen Group, announced that it will select Qualcomm Technologies to provide system-on-chips (SoCs) for the CARIAD software platform, aiming to achieve assisted driving and autonomous driving functions up to L4 level, allowing vehicles to handle a variety of driving situations without human intervention in most cases. It is understood that Qualcomm's Snapdragon Ride platform portfolio, SoC, will become an important hardware component of CARIAD's standardized scalable computing platform to support the models launched by Volkswagen Group from around 2025.

What does Volkswagen's decision to apply Qualcomm's chips to all cars of its own brand reveal?

"Justifying" the software business?

Starting in about 2025, volkswagen group's CARIAD software platform will be equipped with a system-on-chip (SoC) provided by Qualcomm. From the moment the cooperation agreement was signed, Volkswagen began to intersect more deeply with Qualcomm, a chip giant, in the field of autonomous driving, to further accelerate its own intelligent process.

A few days ago, Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess went to Qualcomm headquarters in San Diego to sign a contract. There, Diess agreed with Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon and Qualcomm Automotive CEO Nakul Duggal on the terms of future cooperation.

As the CEO of Europe's largest automaker, the 63-year-old Diess still chose to personally fly to the United States to negotiate a contract with Qualcomm, which further confirms the importance of cooperation with Qualcomm to the Volkswagen Group. After the signing of the agreement, Dis should have been very down-to-earth. He may finally be able to show his opponents that Volkswagen's software division is finally making progress in the future of autonomous driving.

The Volkswagen Group's software business has been criticized by insiders and outsiders for "procrastination". Internally, the resistance to the manufacture of individual Volkswagen brands is particularly large. According to sources, an insider at Porsche, a sports car manufacturer in Stuttgart and a brand owned by Volkswagen, revealed that he did not believe in the capabilities of Volkswagen's CARIAD software platform. More seriously, because Volkswagen's new models of software are often not ready in time, and various software projects have problems of one kind or another, the launch of Volkswagen software products is sometimes even postponed. According to German media reports, even suppliers who cooperate with Volkswagen for software development have been critical of the progress of Volkswagen's software business.

In the context of this "internal and external troubles", at the beginning of this year, Diess took over the operation supervision of the software department and began to serve as the CEO of the Volkswagen Group. Together with Dirk Hilgenberg, CEO of Volkswagen's CARIAD Software Company, he developed the company's software strategy.

Now, Volkswagen has chosen to join hands with Qualcomm to develop L4-level autonomous driving, a decision that may hopefully help the company make new progress in the software business.

Qualcomm is currently one of the most suitable partners for Volkswagen. A person who understands Volkswagen's process said that Volkswagen's contract with Qualcomm is not based on a "revenue sharing" model like Mercedes-Benz, but Wolfsburg pays by chip, which gives Volkswagen more flexibility.

Klaus Hofmockel, senior vice president of hardware development at CARIAD, also puts the "scalability" of software products first. "Finding the best balance between scalability, cost, and performance was one of the biggest challenges we faced in designing new high-performance computing platforms," he said publicly. Qualcomm Technologies' comprehensive and scalable SoC portfolio combines energy efficiency and cost-effectiveness while delivering extremely efficient computing performance. ”

It is worth noting that Volkswagen has also become a software partner with Bosch, hoping to jointly develop software and chip synergy to obtain maximum performance from the chip with minimal power consumption.

Pressure from inside and outside

Nowadays, smart cars continue to spread and conquer the traditional automobile market, and the AI of automobile companies is no longer a new thing in the automobile circle. Compared with many car companies that have long sung the tune of "software and hardware collaborative development" and "software-defined cars", and are only now cooperating with chip manufacturers that can significantly promote the intelligence of automobiles, Volkswagen's "hand in hand" decision seems to be somewhat late. Indeed, the Wolfsburg-based manufacturer has run out of time. In the face of the intelligent system that Tesla and other car companies have formed in the European market, as well as the intelligent software system competition from the new car-making forces in emerging markets such as Xiaopeng and Weilai, the competitive pressure of volkswagen is likely to be huge.

Chinese car companies have been equipped with large computing power chips, which may also put a lot of pressure on the public. Wang Lifu, a research analyst at Xinmou, told The China Electronics News reporter that taking Horizon J3 as an example, in the past year, J3 products have been shipped to new domestic forces and traditional car companies. In the future, with the use of more advanced process nodes for J5 and J6 products, the computing power of the products will be stronger.

In terms of driving car intelligence, Volkswagen may be somewhat lagging behind. Previously, Volkswagen's competitor Mercedes-Benz has signed a cooperation agreement with Nvidia to carry out in-depth cooperation in hardware and software; not long ago, bmw and Qualcomm's cooperation was further deepened, cooperating in L2-level advanced driver assistance systems, L3-level advanced automatic driving functions, etc., hoping to design the best autonomous driving functions across NCAP (New Car Evaluation Specification), L2 and L3 levels.

It is worth mentioning that bydir, Mercedes-Benz, Land Rover, Volvo, Hyundai, Lotus and other traditional car manufacturers have chosen NVIDIA Orin chip, the "star" in the field of automatic driving. It is reported that the Orin SoC uses a 7nm process, and the DRIVE AGX Orin platform launched based on the chip can achieve a maximum computing power of 2000TOPS, which can cover the needs of L2-L5 level automatic driving.

In 2021, Volkswagen Group vehicle sales reached 8.88 million units, which is still among the top in the world, but it is also showing a downward trend. In the face of the crisis of its own sales decline and the big strides of competitors in intelligence, Volkswagen is likely to hope to use its cooperation with Qualcomm to achieve a breakthrough in automotive hardware and software collaboration and automotive intelligence.

Of course, Dies still faces many difficulties within the Wolfsburg team. Previously, Audi had been working with Qualcomm's rival Intel. Back in 2017, Audi worked with Nvidia to develop a system for the luxury sedan A8 that supports L3-level autonomous driving. Allows the vehicle to drive independently at low speeds on the highway for long periods of time.

Today, Audi's developers have to choose to switch to Qualcomm chips, which means they have to abandon the "NVIDIA system" and re-adapt to another system that supports autonomous driving functions.