On October 23, 2021, the Extreme Kr ZEEKER 001 rolled off the production line and started deliveries.
If the delivery of traditional energy vehicles means the finalization of a car; for smart electric vehicles, delivery is often just the beginning. Because of OTA, after the owner gets the car, he will continue to experience the joy of upgrading in the future. Therefore, some people say that fuel vehicles are the most perfect at the moment of delivery, and smart electric vehicles will drive better and better.
In the face of the delivery of smart electric vehicles, people's mentality has also changed. Since you get a product that will continue to "evolve", then the starting point of this delivery is not "perfect". Of course, consumers always want this starting point to be as high as possible.
With the delivery, the extreme krypton official issued an announcement. For the Adaptive Cruise System (ACC) was not launched at the same time as the delivery, Kr said in the announcement that "the functional development of the ZAD intelligent driver assistance system has been completed, but due to the impact of the epidemic and the shortage of chip supply, functional testing and verification are still in accordance with strict standards."
As the announcement said, zaD's related functions will be pushed to users in stages:
Delivered with 360-degree HD panoramic imagery, dashcam, PAF front park assist and PAR rear park assist;
At the end of December, OTA pushed the core functions of the basic package, including ACCQA adaptive cruise with queuing function, AEB forward collision mitigation, LKA lane centering hold assist, etc.
The base package adds three additional features, namely direct in and out parking, FCTA front intersection arrival warning and RCTA rear lateral arrival warning, which will be pushed through OTA in stages and are standard throughout the series.
According to this schedule, enough to get the ZAD Basic Package, and in just two months, "it is late, but it will arrive soon".
Safety is no small matter. No normal vendor would dare to deliver functionality to users that are not fully tested and validated, especially for AEB, which is a matter of security. If the vendor is in a hurry and rushes to deliver, we have to question whether it puts the safety of users first. Paying a little extra time for safety is worth it anyway.
It is worth mentioning here that Extreme Krypton has done a very special operation - hardware embedding of the entire ZEEKER 001 series. What does that mean? Users who have selected the ZAD Intelligent Driver Assistance System Enhancement Package and the Full Package are currently not required to pay the relevant software service fees, and then pay the relevant fees when the actual OTA is upgraded. Purely from the user's point of view, it is not a loss.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="32" > the kryptonian OTA to look forward to</h1>
Unlike traditional cars, delivery is only the first step for almost all smart cars. As OTAs are gradually released, a vehicle will be in the process of continuous upgrade throughout its lifecycle. From the smart phone, we can see the future picture of the smart car: the gap between the same level of cars in hardware is getting smaller and smaller, and the distance will be software, ecology, which will rely on OTA to give continuous upgrades.
When it comes to OTA for cars, we have to mention two concepts: FOTA and SOTA. FOTA is the firmware online upgrade, to download and update the complete firmware image, often involves the vehicle body, power, automatic driving system and other important controllers, will affect all the applications in the car; and SOTA only updates part of the application. It can be seen that the depth of the two and the impact on driving and riding are not at all on the same level. SOTA is only a relatively shallow performance level upgrade, and FOTA is the key upgrade that determines the driving experience of the whole vehicle.
For example, ZEEKER 001's FOTA covers four major sections: chassis, intelligent driving, cockpit and body, and supports all-scenario upgrades of vehicle firmware.
However, in order to keep the vehicle in the best condition through FOTA and continuously improve the driving experience, it is also necessary for the OEMs to "plan ahead" in the hardware and do a good job of hardware embedding. In smart cars that rely on OTA iterations, it is necessary to reserve redundancy for hardware beyond the current system requirements. For example, this is like the latest version of the mobile phone operating system, which no longer supports overly old models. For products with relatively low replacement frequency such as automobiles, it is necessary to leave more space in hardware. Otherwise, it is difficult to support the high demand for hash rate after the system update.
ZeekER 001 uses Mobileye's pure vision solution for autonomous driving, equipped with two Mobileye Q5H chips. Compared with other solutions, Mobileye's advantage is mainly based on algorithms. The Q5H uses TSMC's 7nm process, which has functions such as automatic braking, animal recognition, traffic light recognition, global path planning, and drivable area identification.
This solution is one of the hardware foundations that ZEEKER 001 has embedded for users of ZAD enhancement packages and full packages. Based on this solution, ZEEKER 001 can gradually realize high-speed autonomous navigation, urban autonomous piloting and automatic parking in unmanned scenarios through OTA. With this hardware embedding, we have the opportunity to upgrade and use the relevant functions in the future.
Of course, these capabilities need to be implemented after the official OTA is launched. This is also something we absolutely cannot imagine in the era of traditional energy vehicles: buying a car back, driving to become a better car, the surprise is beyond our imagination. This is the benefit that technological progress has brought to us.
On the other hand, it will also revolutionize the business model of the automotive industry. The car is not only a thing that transports us from A to B, but also the applications and contents related to the life in the car have become increasingly important and necessary with the maturity of the large screen of the car and the software system ecology. Perhaps, in the future, OEMs will mainly rely on software subscriptions or platform ecology to make profits. None of this would be unthinkable without an OTA. Otherwise, like the "mobile phone download MP3" we saw in the street stall many years ago, driving the car back to the store and "installing me with the latest listening software"...
Fortunately, we are living through an era of intelligence today.