What is the significance of CARIAD's visit to China?

Author | Jia Weizhong

Source | Car selection network

Volkswagen CARIAD entered China, officially declared to be to "enhance the strength of regional software development", how to understand this?

On April 28, just before the May Day holiday, Volkswagen announced through an online press conference that "CARIAD officially established its Subsidiary in China today" through an online press conference. Subsequently, the participating media received a press release entitled "CARIAD China Subsidiary Established to Enhance Regional Software Development Strength".

What is CARIAD?

As one of the world's leading automakers, Volkswagen, founded in 1937, has been "hard" for the vast majority of its 80-year history. The establishment of CARIAD means that the group has entered the era of software-defined cars.

According to reports, in 2020, the Volkswagen Group established the software division Car.Software-Organisation, which is referred to as CSO within the group. In March 2021, the Volkswagen Group's software division was officially named CARIAD, which is "Car, I am digital" (Car. I Am Digital). As a result, CARIAD became a new software company under the Volkswagen Group.

Public information shows that CARIAD established a Chinese subsidiary this time, which is the first subsidiary of Volkswagen Software Outside Europe. Why did Volkswagen open its first software branch in China?

Changqing Chang, CEO of CARIAD's China subsidiary, said: "China is leading the world in digital applications and innovation, and consumers are increasingly demanding new features and new experiences. The establishment of the China team 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. ”

From this perspective, "enhancing the strength of regional software development" to meet the needs of Chinese consumers is indeed an important task for CARIAD's Chinese subsidiary.

What does CARIAD come to China for?

The question is, how to achieve CARIAD China's goal of "enhancing regional software development strength"?

"The China team will promote the development of software products for Chinese consumers, including working with headquarters to develop a unified and scalable new software platform, advanced driver assistance systems and autonomous driving, as well as next-generation intelligent interconnection capabilities," the official source said. ”

At the press conference, Dr. Sun Wei, Chief Technology Officer of CARIAD China Subsidiary, introduced CARIAD China's future plans in detail.

In the first phase, a mass-produced software platform will be created for MEB platform models, and OTAs (Software Remote Online Update) will be implemented on specific models. The China team will lead the realization of the ID. family series of products OTA in China.

In the second phase, CARIAD is about to launch a high-end software platform, which will be available for PPE platforms and is scheduled to be launched within the next two years. It will support advanced infotainment systems based on the Android open source system as well as advanced driver assistance systems, and support remote online updates on select Audi and Porsche brand models. Currently, the Chinese team is leading the development of China-specific applications for both systems.

In the third stage, Volkswagen will develop a new and unified software platform, which will be suitable for all brands of the future group and support Volkswagen's self-developed operating system VW. OS, and connect to the Volkswagen Cloud VW.AC.

In order to successfully complete the above three-step plan, Volkswagen China is building R&D forces in Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu and Hefei, with the goal of doubling the current team of 600 people by 2023 and gradually building a national distributed R&D network, of which more than 90% will be local software talents.

CARIAD came to China to imagine

At the april 28 public conference, most of the time was talking about planning and technology, if you think China is just another software company? That would be wrong.

On April 29, the second day of Volkswagen CARIAD's visit to China, Changan Automobile held an online 2021 performance conference. At the meeting, during the strategic release and interpretation session, Chairman Zhu Huarong focused on Changan, Huawei, and Ningde Times to jointly create a high-end smart tram brand Avita. Objectively speaking, as a representative of Chinese brands, compared with Geely and Great Wall, which have already listed high-end brands, the high-end process of Chang'an is slightly slower. But from another point of view, even as a state-owned automobile group with an annual production and sales of more than 2 million vehicles, Changan also needs to rely on Huawei's strength to achieve software-defined cars on high-end brands.

In contrast, the purpose of CARIAD's entry into China is to achieve full brand coverage. "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 at the software level," Evergreen said at the press conference. ”

Industry knows: software-defined vehicles are the direction of the future development of the industry, so is there a difference between the small-scale testing of high-end products and the "realization of group scale effect"? The difference is big!

In communication with well-known software experts in the industry, "Car Selection Network" learned: "The world knows that Google is studying automatic driving, but compared with Tesla, Google can only be regarded as a traditional organization, and Tesla is a truly intelligent organization." Google's approach is to run on the road through the test car, send the code back to the headquarters when it encounters problems, and judge, modify, and improve the software through people's logic. However, Tesla already has a million cars running on the road, constantly uploading spatio-temporal data streams containing four-dimensional signals to the background, new problems encountered in different scenarios, being able to train and update the autopilot model in the cloud, and then through the way of OTA, millions of cars running on the road will be updated, Tesla's experience is data sharing and co-evolution. ”

In short, software defines the car, but data drives software evolution, and the larger the amount of data, the smarter the AI, which is an important reason why Tesla does not hesitate to treat consumers as "guinea pigs" and updates software through a steady stream of user data from all over the world.

Understanding this, we combine this with Volkswagen's 2030NEW AUTO strategy: "By 2030, the share of pure electric models is expected to rise to 50%. "Imagine how many new energy vehicles equipped with Volkswagen's self-developed software will be sold in China? Driving around the world?

Overall, although Chinese brand car companies started earlier in electrification, better understand the needs of Chinese consumers, and are more closely integrated with Chinese technology companies in terms of intelligence, there is still a certain gap between them and foreign brands such as Volkswagen in terms of the scale of data application.

Therefore, Volkswagen's establishment of CARIAD's China subsidiary to enhance regional software development capabilities means that the process of its software-defined vehicles has begun to accelerate. For Volkswagen, the aim is to consolidate its sales position in China; for the development of China's intelligent electrified vehicle industry, the future pattern is likely to be rewritten. This must attract enough attention from Chinese brands.

From this perspective, our understanding of the popular press release that "the establishment of the Chinese subsidiary is another important milestone for CARIAD" seems to be more profound.

(Image source: Internet)