Apple is hiring automotive software engineers in China and will make a big move into the auto industry?

Apple's beginning to deploy car research and development-related businesses in China seems to indicate that Apple is preparing to enter the automotive industry as a supplier.

According to the information on Apple's official website, Apple is recently recruiting automotive experience partner engineers in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen. According to its job description, the position needs to provide integration support for automotive partners and assist developers in completing Apple's system certification.

Apple said the role is an intermediate role between technical engineering and project management, providing technical design and development guidance, handling certification records across the automotive experience program (including car keys in CarPlay, Wallet) and facilitating communication between Apple and automotive industry engineering worldwide.

It is worth noting that at the recent Apple Developer Conference (WWDC), Apple released a new generation of Carplay interactive system. Compared with the previous Carplay, which mainly maps the mobile phone screen, the new generation of systems can directly control the in-car functions such as radio, air conditioning, seat heating/ventilation, etc., and users can also adjust the dashboard information display interface including fuel/power, speed, and vehicle speed according to their preferences. In other words, the new carplay will be able to take over all the screens in the car.

Compared with Huawei's Hongmeng OS and other automotive intelligent cockpit systems, the new generation of Carplay is still based on mobile phone mapping, through the open software interface of car companies, to achieve optimization of some basic function control and in-car display effects, and Hongmeng OS, AliOS and other intelligent cockpit systems that directly integrate software and hardware are fundamentally different.

But this still attracts the attention of a considerable number of car companies. According to information released by Apple, fourteen car brands, including Audi, Land Rover, Mercedes-Benz and Porsche, will become early partners of the new generation of systems. Tesla and Wei Xiaoli, which have strong software capabilities, and Chinese car companies with early layouts in the field of intelligent cockpits and have made small achievements, have not appeared in the cooperation list.

Some people in the industry are not optimistic about such a cooperation model. The chairman of a car networking company told reporters that the new generation of Carplay system can display the vehicle's oil / electricity, driving speed, and can control air conditioning, seats and other related in-car functions, which requires car companies to open the underlying data to Apple, which is equivalent to car companies giving their "soul" to Apple.

From the partners announced by Carplay this time, it can be seen that important foreign brands such as BMW, Volkswagen, Toyota and so on have not failed to bet. The cockpit system is too important for automakers, and if it is not forced, automakers with some strength will still have the core in their own hands. A domestic car company executive told reporters that Carplay is unlikely to become the mainstream in China within two to three years, and domestic vehicle electrification and intelligence are now at the forefront of the world, and the cockpit experience of some Chinese car companies is very good.

The above-mentioned car executives believe that Apple's recruitment of automotive experience partner engineers in the three places in China this time may be to help 14 partners land a new generation of Carplay systems in the Chinese market. In addition, the intelligent demands of China's auto market and users have been at the forefront of the world, and Apple may hope to be able to get a piece of the Chinese auto market with Carplay.

Among Apple's first 14 partners, Audi, Porsche, Mercedes-Benz, Jaguar Land Rover and other car companies are prominently listed, and the Chinese market is the largest regional market for these car companies. However, in the face of the intelligent and networked transformation of China's automobile market and user demands, most of the new energy vehicles of foreign companies are still stuck at the level of vehicles that have changed from oil to electricity or replaced the powertrain, before, they did not understand the desire of Chinese users for intelligent equipment, and under the leadership of the Chinese market, cars are accelerating the transformation to mobile intelligent terminals.

Therefore, these car companies have not yet come up with good solutions, some products due to the backwardness of intelligence and networking, it is difficult to compete with Tesla, "Wei Xiaoli" competitors, this disadvantage has begun to affect the performance of related brand products in China.

At the same time, the current Chinese market electrification, intelligent process is still accelerating, the relevant car companies from the beginning to make up for the ability of intelligent cockpit is difficult to catch up with the speed of the Chinese market and competitors, an engineer who left Volvo once told reporters: "We have mass-produced cars are backward relative to competitors, and the products that are being planned and developed are still backward when they are officially mass-produced a few years later." ”

Accelerating the landing of a new generation of Carplay products can help relevant car companies quickly make up for shortcomings in the field of intelligent cockpits, and help car companies win a certain amount of time to make up for the previously missing capabilities.

Apple's fans in the domestic market will help Carplay become a competitive selling point. Apple said that in the North American market, 76% of car buyers in North America said that they would only consider models with CarPlay in-car interaction system.

Although most domestic car companies also have layouts in the field of smart cockpits, and even have small achievements, from the perspective of the market and users, the brand influence of the new generation of Carplay and Apple can enhance the competitiveness and differentiation of products. Therefore, it is not excluded that some domestic car companies will choose to cooperate with Apple, when Apple's newly recruited positions in the north will undertake the docking work with domestic car companies.

In addition, the car keys in Wallet are also mentioned in the job description, which may imply that Apple will open up its relatively closed ecology. Previously, Li Bin, founder, chairman and CEO of Weilai Automobile, said, "Apple is now very closed to the automotive industry, such as the car standard UWB of the second-generation platform of Weilai, apple does not open the interface, which makes us very passive." ”

UWB refers to hyper-bandwidth technology and is one of the necessary conditions for the current implementation of digital keys. However, Apple has not fully opened the data interface to car companies, so Apple mobile phones cannot be used as electronic keys to unlock most brand vehicles, and related users cannot enjoy the convenience brought by UWB technology.

According to public information, Apple introduced a digital car key in 2020, which was initially limited to some models of the BMW brand. Starting in 2022, Apple further developed the feature, but it was only extended to some new models of Kia and Genissys, which were basically semi-closed.

From the perspective of various layouts, Apple is hoping to increase its right to speak in the automotive field, and the new generation of Carplay system has also won the recognition of many car companies. But on the other hand, the full-stack self-development of software has become the consensus of most car companies, and it may be difficult to rely on Carplay alone to help Apple become a giant car supplier such as Bosch, Continental or Huawei. (Author: Wei Wen)