An obvious feature of the extreme involution of China's automotive industry is that everyone's update and iteration speed is getting faster and faster. Among them, Huawei, which took the lead in uncoiling, is one of the leaders. In just one year, Huawei has come back with the latest smart car solutions.
On April 24, Huawei Car BU launched a new intelligent vehicle solution brand, Qiankun, bringing three new and upgraded solutions: Qiankun ADS, Qiankun Vehicle Control, and Qiankun Car Cloud. At the same time, the HarmonyOS cockpit has also ushered in a comprehensive upgrade. This time, ten major products such as Qiankun ADS 3.0, 4D millimeter-wave radar, Qianwu engine, iDVP2.0, and Qiankun audio were released at the same time.
What are the highlights of the three major solutions released by Huawei Car BU and the fully upgraded HarmonyOS cockpit?
Image source: Screenshot of Huawei's new product launch conference
One step closer to end-to-end
Qiankun ADS3.0 is the industry's first intelligent driving system that realizes the full-scene connection from parking space to parking space and the full-scene commercial use of parking and driving, making it a step ahead.
Looking back at the evolution of Huawei's ADS, the first generation integrates a bird's-eye view (BEV) network that can identify whitelisted obstacles, while the second generation was released in April last year, introducing a GOD (General Obstacle Detection) and a PCR (Road Topology Inference) network on the basis of BEVs, solving the core problem of "seeing things and roads" and enabling "nationwide access".
Image source: Huawei Car BU
The Qiankun ADS 3.0 released this year completely removes BEVs and adopts the GOD network instead, which can not only identify whitelists and special-shaped obstacles, but also perceive road structures and scene semantics, and have a more comprehensive understanding of the physical world. At the same time, with the support of the PDP prediction decision-making and planning network, the traffic efficiency of the scheme has been greatly improved, and the pass rate of complex intersections has exceeded 96%.
It is worth mentioning that Qiankun ADS 3.0 is equipped with 4D millimeter-wave radar, which increases the detection distance to 280 meters, the accuracy from 20 cm to 5 cm, and the delay from 185 ms to 65 ms. This makes the solution not only have a farther and more accurate field of vision, but also greatly improve the response speed, and upgrade the driving safety and experience.
Smart parking has also gotten better. Compared with 2.0, the parking speed is 20% faster, the average time of the intelligent parking assist APA is shortened to 38 seconds, and the scope of adaptation is also extended to narrower parking spaces and aisles. In addition, the VPD parking function is added to realize "car looking for people". At present, the function has been piloted in 48 parking lots and 43 communities, and it is planned to open 100 parking lots and 2,000 community and office parking lots by the end of 2024.
Image source: Huawei Car BU
Interestingly, the Qiankun ADS 3.0 solution will also launch an SE version, although it does not use lidar, it can also realize functions such as LCC + lane cruise assist in urban areas, and support intelligent assisted parking. The advantage of this version is that it is cheaper, but with Huawei's powerful algorithm capabilities, it can still cover more complex high-speed and urban road conditions.
Through the collaboration of software and hardware, the algorithm efficiency of Qiankun ADS 3.0 has been improved by 100 times, and the decision-making and hunch have been integrated, realizing the upgrade and enhancement from the four levels of architecture, safety, scenario, and parking. In the future, Qiankun ADS will also be upgraded to an end-to-end architecture to provide a more intelligent and safe intelligent driving experience. However, Jin Yuzhi emphasized that Huawei will still fully retain lidar in the perception hardware.
Image source: Screenshot of Huawei's new product launch conference
Some analysts said that in China, lidar is the mainstream solution for high-end assisted driving, especially now that the cost of lidar has dropped significantly. Based on this, domestic car companies adopt an end-to-end solution for the development of intelligent driving, and the fusion perception route will still be the mainstream, "LiDAR can make up for the disadvantages of algorithms".
In fact, the previous generation of ADS 2.0 has been evaluated by the industry as a "textbook" model, and its main advantages are that it does not rely on high-precision maps and continuous AI training to optimize the response to complex scenarios. The fully upgraded Qiankun ADS 3.0 is expected to further establish Huawei's leading position in intelligence.
HarmonyOS cockpit interaction is more intelligent
This time, the Hongmeng cockpit has made breakthroughs in the three major fields of human-computer interaction, audio and display.
After the Qianwu engine is integrated with the large model of the vehicle's thousand languages, the voice interaction becomes more natural and smooth, and it is closer to the experience of human-to-human dialogue. Therefore, the HarmonyOS cockpit version 4.0 can recognize "people" by listening to audio and realize personalized recommendations. At the same time, through the application of millimeter-level human eye positioning and centimeter-level full-cabin human positioning technology in the cockpit, the system can actively identify the driving position and accurately capture gesture operations, bringing users a more outstanding human-computer interaction experience.
Image source: Huawei Car BU
In terms of audio experience, Huawei has launched the "Qiankun Audio", which includes three series: vitality, excellence, and extraordinary, with 15 speaker groups, 23 groups, and 33 groups respectively, and supports functions such as all-round active noise cancellation, independent sound zones in the front and rear rows, and sound with painting. Among them, the sound energy isolation rate of the independent sound zone scheme is as high as 99%, far exceeding the industry average of 23%. At present, the Excellence series has been launched on the M9.
Image source: Huawei Car BU
Another black technology in the car is the XSCENE light field display, which brings an immersive visual experience with large format and ultra-high resolution, and can effectively alleviate the problems of motion sickness and eye fatigue. With intelligent headlight control, the outdoor projection screen size can reach 140 inches, adding fun to in-car entertainment. It is understood that the XSCENE light field screen has been fully listed, and there will be more than 1,000 stores across the country in the future.
Image source: Screenshot of Huawei's new product launch conference
In addition to human-computer interaction, software and hardware platforms such as Qiankun Vehicle Control and Vehicle Cloud Services have also been comprehensively upgraded. The next-generation Qiankun iDVP 2.0 automotive digital platform realizes high-performance computing, lightweight operating system VOS, service-oriented and personalized experience through modular design and layered architecture, greatly improving the efficiency of software iteration.
At the hardware level, the Qiankun vehicle control module realizes the integration of MCU, MPU, LSW, PHY, IO, etc., forming a five-in-one vehicle control SOC, which improves the communication capability by 4 times, reduces the delay by 10 times, and achieves reliability and security of more than 99%. The XMOTION 2.0 control system effectively improves vehicle stability and ride comfort, such as helping to alleviate motion sickness.
At present, Huawei's HarmonyOS cockpit has been installed in more than 200 in-vehicle applications, and 86% of the instructions are completed by voice control.
Jin Yuzhi said that Huawei wants to achieve "all-round leadership" in technology. At this stage, it is possible if Huawei maintains the pace of technological innovation.
The target is to install 500,000 vehicles within the year
At a communication meeting with Gasgoo and other media, Jin Yuzhi predicted that the cumulative sales of vehicles equipped with Huawei's Qiankun intelligent vehicle solution will exceed 500,000 units in 2024.
At present, the Qiankun plan has been determined to be applied to the models of 10 brands of 7 major car companies, in addition to the four members of the Hongmeng Intelligent Alliance, including BAIC, Celis, Chery and JAC, including Dongfeng Mengshi, VOYANT, Changan Deep Blue, AVATR and GAC Trumpchi and other brands. This fully demonstrates Huawei's influence in the field of intelligent and connected vehicles.
Image source: Huawei Car BU
After the Wenjie series was sold well in the market, the technical strength of Huawei's intelligent vehicle solutions has been recognized by more car companies. According to the data, as of January 2024, Huawei has shipped more than 3 million sets of intelligent components, launched seven strategic models, and worked with more than 300 ecosystem partners to cultivate the intelligent vehicle ecosystem.
The rapid iteration of a complete solution like Huawei's depends not only on continuous investment, but also on the support of a strong R&D team. Since the establishment of the car BU, Huawei has invested more than 30 billion yuan in R&D in the field of smart vehicles, with a R&D team of 7,000 people. As the only company other than Tesla to achieve full-stack self-development of software and hardware, Huawei has completed a comprehensive layout from the decision-making layer to chips to software.
Image source: Screenshot of Huawei's new product launch conference
In addition, Huawei's huge user base accumulated in mobile phones and smart homes, as well as its cross-industry "ecosystem" advantages, also empowers it in the automotive field. According to the data, by the end of 2023, there will be more than 800 million HarmonyOS ecological devices, more than 2.2 million developers, and more than 2,500 partners and 7,000 ecological products, respectively. This brings unique advantages to Huawei's construction of a moat for intelligent vehicle solutions.
Since the beginning of this year, Huawei's sales of Hongmeng Zhixing have reached 105,000 units, ranking first among new car companies. With the ramp-up of production and sales of the cooperative model Chery Zhijie S7, the launch of the BAIC Xiangjie S9, and the continuous increase in the volume of the Wenjie series, the sales volume of Huawei Hongmeng Zhixing Alliance is expected to continue to rise. Gasgoo Automotive Research Institute predicts that Huawei's Hongmeng Zhixing sales are expected to be around 600,000 units this year. As the scale of the business continues to expand, Huawei's car BU is expected to achieve profitability this year.
Some industry insiders joked that in the automotive circle, "Huawei is the real hexagonal warrior".