[Guide] Smart cars have always been regarded as revolutionizing the auto industry like smartphones disrupting the mobile phone industry, but more than ten years have passed, and smart cars that are disruptive and market-rich like the iPhone seem to have not yet appear. Tesla has always been hailed as the Apple of the automotive industry, but its market size is only the tip of the iceberg of the global automotive market, with a negligible share.

Smart cars have always been regarded as revolutionizing the auto industry like smart phones disrupting the mobile phone industry, but more than a decade later, smart cars that are disruptive and market-rich like the iPhone seem to have not yet appeared. Tesla has always been hailed as the Apple of the automotive industry, but its market size is only the tip of the iceberg of the global automotive market, with a negligible share.

Global car sales in 2019 were 90.3 million vehicles, and Tesla's global sales in 2019 were 367,500 vehicles, and its global share was 0.4%. From this point of view, Tesla, which is regarded as the most like a smart car, is still a product with circle attributes and has not been popularized, so it is impossible to talk about leading the trend. So, what kind of smart car can completely subvert the automotive industry and let the entire automotive industry enter the era of smart cars. The major prerequisite for realizing the above vision is, where are today's cars not like smart cars? Where is the core competitiveness of smart cars? On February 24, the Development and Reform Commission and other 11 ministries and commissions issued the "Smart Car Innovation Development Strategy" as an official The determination to "seal" smart cars: By 2025, the technological innovation, industrial ecology, infrastructure, regulations and standards, product supervision and network security systems of China's standard smart cars will be basically formed. The vision is beautiful, but the reality is not quite satisfactory. Following this train of thought, let's explore the major elements of smart cars.

New architecture

In December last year, Nihon Keizai Shimbun published a dismantling report of Tesla Model 3 and Model S. Industry insiders generally believe that Tesla’s electrical and electronic architecture is ahead of competitors. Toyota engineers even said, “Tesla We can’t do it for 6 years ahead of technology.” The reason why Tesla’s electrical and electronic architecture is leading is that with the development of the era of intelligence, connectivity, electric, and automation, the traditional electrical and electronic architecture is in data processing and data transmission. Can't meet the requirements. This is why Tesla is six years ahead of its competitors. When the Nikkei disassembled the 2015 Model S, it found that the number of ECUs in this car was more than 15. Although the number is smaller than other companies, the electrical and electronic architecture used is still a distributed architecture. However, in the Model 3 era, Tesla's electrical and electronic architecture has become centralized. Only three years after Model S and Model 3, Tesla completed the feat of electronic and electrical architecture from one era to another. The most significant change is that Ethernet transmission has been implemented on the Model 3 architecture. The length of the entire vehicle harness of Model 3 has been reduced by half compared with Model S, reaching 1.5 kilometers, while Model Y is even more so, only 100 meters.

Bosch's strategy map released in 2017 divides the vehicle electrical and electronic architecture into three stages: distributed electrical and electronic architecture, centralized electrical and electronic architecture, and centralized electrical and electrical architecture. At present, traditional cars are basically in the first stage, and Tesla Model 3 is in the third stage. It can be seen that Tesla's electrical and electronic architecture has been ahead of its competitors by two eras. At present, car companies are moving towards a centralized electronic and electrical architecture. Volkswagen’s plan is to reduce the number of ECUs in a car from 70 to 3-5 HPC. In May last year, General Motors released a new generation of electrical and electronic architecture. The new architecture not only supports OTA, but also increases the data transmission speed to 4.5 TB/hour, which is 5 times higher than the original architecture. This new architecture is also moving towards a centralized direction by reducing the number of ECUs. Huaren Express also has a forward-looking layout in the field of electrical and electronic architecture. Its HiPhi 1 even carries a set of exclusive HOA open electrical and electronic architecture. The decision-planning-control electronic components of the whole vehicle are mainly replaced by six centralized computing platforms, and the centralized control of on-board computers and area-oriented architecture has been realized. The architecture is connected by 1Gbps high-speed Ethernet, which meets the needs of massive data processing and high-speed data transmission of smart cars. Gaohe HiPhi 1 is expected to achieve global intelligence, truly enabling cars to learn to think and create richer scenarios. It can be seen that a more thorough smart car needs to continue to evolve in terms of electronic and electrical architecture.

New model

After the popularization of smart phones, the greatest value to the industry is to cultivate a stable commercial market, and a large number of APP development ecology and platform services related to people's clothing, food, housing and transportation were born. With reference to smart phones, smart cars also need to adopt new models to explore unimaginable commercial value. For example, the current travel needs to rely on platforms such as Didi to order cars, and rely on platforms such as Ctrip and Qunar to book hotels. But these platforms are completely unnecessary in the era of autonomous driving. When we reach an unfamiliar place, we can call a driverless car through the navigation platform. As long as we tell or enter the destination, the car can analyze your usual accommodation preferences through the big data platform, and drive you to people Satisfactory hotel. Scenes such as eating, shopping, and traveling can even be realized by driverless cars.

This is the true value of smart cars after they become driverless cars. At present, the commercial value of smart cars only stays at the stage of self-promoting APP by car companies, and can only realize simple remote control and some social functions. Cars have become the intelligent products that people really need, at least there is still a lot of homework to do in terms of the ecological developer system. At present, there are not many smart players with open platforms. Baidu’s Apollo smart car connection open platform and China Express’s new electronic and electrical architecture have open functions and can accommodate thousands of developers, working together to turn cars into The ultimate goal of being smarter.

Overall, there are no cars currently on the market that have new experiences, new architectures, and new models. Tesla is more prominent in the field of new architecture, but there are still doubts about new experiences, and new models are being explored. Traditional car companies are only good at one of these areas. A car that can meet the three new characteristics of smart cars at the same time, the HiPhi 1, which has not yet been listed under the Chinese Express, may be eye-catching. Vehicle-level personalized experience of “shèng”, exclusive HOA open electronic and electrical architecture, and autonomous driving hardware with 6 independent dual-redundant systems may enable HiPhi 1 to represent future intelligence The prototype of the car, Chinese Express may also be able to stand out.

New Experience

At this stage, the so-called smart car is called a smart car as long as the on-board system can be connected to the Internet, and most of the on-board systems are similar and have a thousand machines. Equipped with simple driving assistance functions such as reversing assistance and lane departure, they all claim to have reached the L2 level of automatic driving capability.

Such a smart car cannot give consumers the shocking experience when a functional machine turns to a smart machine. Consumers’ demand for smart car experience is that the cockpit is smart enough, the feedback of the touch screen should be silky, the navigation should be precise, and the interaction of voice gestures should be smooth, similar to the smart cockpit that is still in the concept stage; outside the cockpit, consumption The user’s need for intelligent experience is that the automatic driving configuration is no longer a tasteless one, it can bring convenience and peace of mind to the user from the psychological level. In a word, the ultimate experience users want in a smart car is: the joys, sorrows, sorrows, and various needs in the car can be responded to in a timely and accurate manner, making the car a caring little padded jacket for users.

At present, there are actually not a few car companies working in this area, and traditional car companies have conceived a beautiful picture of the interior of the car. For example, Audi exhibited a series of new technologies on user experience at CES 2019. For example, in order to solve the dynamic experience of passengers, Audi has developed a set of "immersive in-car entertainment system" to solve the problem of "make the car move". When the vehicle remains stationary, the vehicle body needs to actively swing and move with the picture seen by the driver and passengers. In addition, seat vibrations, background sounds and interior lights will also actively create a movie-watching atmosphere to make passengers feel more immersive. The effect is similar to the scene of watching a 4D movie in a cinema.

The in-car passenger entertainment experience systems that Audi exhibited at CES all have the ability to "turn boring journeys" into entertainment parties. At the same time, it also hides the understanding of user experience by automakers in the era of smart cars. Global brands such as Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen, BMW and Toyota are all developing in this direction. Chinese Express, a new force in car-making, also has some experience in the new experience of smart cars. For example, the new car Gaohe HiPhi 1 to be launched by Chinese Express will adopt a 9-screen interactive design for its interior. The number of screens alone provides the conditions for an immersive experience. Not to mention there are also intelligent configurations such as programmable intelligent interactive projection headlights, ISD intelligent interactive displays and side light blankets.

The experience brought by the smart cockpit is just physical and mental pleasure, but the car is a "living thing" running on the road, allowing users to sit in peace of mind is the top priority. At this time, autonomous driving technology may be the strongest weapon for smart cars in terms of new experiences. Tesla has always been a representative of the field of autonomous driving. However, as strong as Tesla, it has not been able to give users 100% peace of mind, and some people even criticized Tesla for this. Some reasons why Tesla has so many followers are the advanced iteration of its Autopilot.

Tesla Autopilot will add new features from time to time. In the early stage of the new function verification, Tesla will first open it to some users, collect a lot of data from them to improve the deficiencies of the new function, and then open it to all users step by step. In other words, Tesla applies immature self-driving technology to mass-produced cars, and treats the car owner as a mouse for collecting data. This approach has two distinct sides. Although Tesla Autopilot is ahead of all automakers and technology companies, the price is the security risks caused by imperfect systems, which will eventually lead to human disasters.

In two Tesla crashes recently identified by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), evidence shows that both the Autopilot system and the driver are responsible. There is also an overseas survey data showing that in 2019 alone, more than 50 people died in Tesla's safety accidents. It can be seen that Tesla Autopilot does not allow people to drive with 100% confidence. In addition to Tesla, another autonomous driving path is continuous verification and road testing. Most of the traditional car companies take this kind of road, relying on a limited number of test vehicles to run a little bit. Compared with Tesla's data, both in terms of quantity and effect, they are not in the same order of magnitude. . Moreover, the manpower, material and financial resources consumed are immeasurable.

At this stage, the autonomous driving strategies adopted by Tesla and traditional car companies have real problems, and they are unable to provide users with a safe and reliable driving experience. Then, if the car end and the road end are intelligent at the same time, the problems that plague Tesla and traditional car companies may be solved. This is another strategy of autonomous driving-vehicle-road collaboration.

The "Smart Car Innovation Development Strategy" also pointed out that China's smart car industry based on the coordinated development of smart transportation and smart cities is the future development direction. The emergence of vehicle-road collaboration technology may provide the possibility for the early commercialization of autonomous driving technology. On the one hand, road-side intelligent facilities can replace part of the car-side technology, reducing expensive costs; on the other hand, the vehicle-road collaboration technology can eradicate the perception obstacles and distance obstacles that exist in bicycle intelligence, and avoid autonomy similar to Tesla and Uber. Driving fatal accident.

There are many types of players involved in the field of vehicle-road collaboration. There are ICT providers like Huawei, China Mobile, and China Unicom, Internet players such as BBA, parts suppliers such as Bosch and China, and automobile companies such as Chinese Express. Even government departments are also important participants. However, many players have different ways of participating on this track, and their ultimate demands are also different.

For example, vehicle companies cooperate with players in other fields across borders, hoping to get a new understanding of autonomous driving. At the beginning of this year, Volvo Cars and China Unicom jointly promoted the V2X (car-to-outside information exchange) vehicle-road collaboration technology based on 5G next-generation mobile network technology. Volvo hopes to introduce V2X technology in order to be ready to interface with the intelligent transportation system at any time in the future, thereby enhancing the safety of autonomous driving.

Chinese Express took another path. Ding Lei told the media when the Shanghai Zhangjiang "Smart City" project was launched at the end of 2019, Chinese Express does not build roads or cities, but builds related businesses to become a smart city, smart transportation, and a whole system of smart cars Central hub. It can be seen that Huaren Express has stepped out of the thinking limitations of car-making companies and provided systematic travel solutions based on the coordinated development of smart cars, smart transportation, and smart cities. At present, the two parts of the business of "Road" and "City" of Chinese Express have already achieved income from projects. The personalized experience centered on the smart cockpit and the safe driving brought by vehicle-road collaboration technology may bring a new experience to smart cars.