With the development of the times, the car, a means of transportation in the traditional sense, has become more and more intelligent, and even the system is iteratively upgraded like a mobile phone, and there is a new concept of "software-defined car". And with the blessing of the electronic control system, the driving experience is getting better and better. More and more car companies are transforming into technology companies, especially Volvo Cars, which was the first to propose a comprehensive electrification strategy, introduced its definition and planning for future cars in the new era of electrification in the form of an open class, including the most concerned smart cockpit, autonomous driving and other aspects of the planning.
It's all about safety
"Technology is not storytelling, we say, it must be owned by consumers; Safety is also not a concept, we promise, must let consumers rest assured. Yuan Xiaolin, Senior Vice President of Volvo Cars Group and President and CEO of Volvo Cars Asia Pacific, has said.
Past, present and future, Volvo has always insisted on putting safety first. "Zero Casualties" is Volvo's vision of safe mobility, which has driven technological progress in products and enterprises and saved many lives. In the era of electrification, safety has been redefined, not only limited to collision safety protection, but also the new power battery has brought new challenges to major enterprises.
With the arrival of summer, more and more vehicles spontaneously combust in hot weather, many of which are pure electric vehicles. In addition, under the conditions of collision or external force, the power battery may be damaged and short-circuited, and cause a violent fire, so it requires a very high "fire control" technology to leave enough time for the safe evacuation of the occupants.
Take Volvo's just-launched C40, for example, which received a five-star safety rating in the Euro NCAP safety test. Its battery pack adopts a two-layer stacked structure arrangement method, which will be safer in the face of a frontal collision, and the battery pack will be more secure against external strike forces. The reinforcing beams crisscrossing the battery pack divide the cell module into several independent areas, and the risk of battery damage in the event of a collision can be greatly reduced.
In addition, it is worth mentioning that the new pure electric C40 also has six core technologies of fire control temperature control such as "low heat conduction source barrier, automatic early warning, millisecond rapid power failure, intelligent cooling and cooling, barrier-free heat exhaust, positive voltage and oxygen resistance", which can further ensure the reliability of the battery and escort the drivers and passengers.
In terms of the core cells of the battery, Volvo will test each cell provided by the supplier individually to ensure reliability. This, despite the increase in workload, is maximum security for users.
In the era of electrification, Volvo still has "0 casualties" as its core goal. The "0 collision" is the only way for automatic driving to achieve truly safe travel.
The autonomous driving layout is a strong combination
In fact, in terms of autonomous driving, which is strongly promoted by new car-making forces, Volvo has been the first in the industry to promote the first mass-produced L2 automatic driving function in the industry - Pilot Assist Pilot Assist, so it seems that Volvo is still quite low-key.
Last year, Volvo announced that it would come standard with lidar and supercomputing platforms on the next-generation pure-electric flagship SUV platform, setting new benchmarks for its security.
Judging from the layout currently exposed, Volvo's layout in autopilot is not inferior to Tesla's, and even in many aspects it is leading. First of all, Volvo did not choose a pure visual method, but chose lidar, which has relatively high requirements for vehicle computing power.
Volvo's new generation will be equipped with a central computing platform composed of ultra-high computing power NVIDIA DRIVE Orin™ chips, while equipped with Luminar's Iris lidar, which has both 300 lines of high resolution and 1550 nanometer wavelength, which is far better than the current industry-wide 96/128 line + 905 nanometer wavelength, and the perception accuracy is higher and safer.
The software part of autonomous driving is provided by Zenseact, its self-driving software development company, and the core part is in its own hands. Volvo was also one of the first car companies to partner with Google to jointly develop a built-in native Android car system. At the same time, it has also reached a global strategic cooperation with the autonomous driving giant Waymo to jointly improve and promote the application scenarios and business models of highly automated driving.
In addition, Volvo is also exploring wireless charging, which can charge more than 40 kilowatts, which is four times faster than traditional slow charging pile charging. Volvo is also laying out the battery field, cooperating with Swedish battery manufacturers to create a new generation of high-density batteries with a range of more than 1,000 kilometers.
In general, from this "Elk Open Class", we can see that Volvo's future cars are on top of safety (that is, zero casualties, zero collisions), while equipped with lidar, super computing power, support wireless charging, endurance of more than 1,000 kilometers and other label features. It can be seen that Volvo's strategic planning is advancing in an orderly manner, and these new technologies will soon be deployed to a new generation of flagship electric vehicles, which are expected to meet consumers within the year!