Who will reap the benefits of the automotive electronic architecture revolution led by Tesla?

This is a competition for automotive electronic architecture that starts with luxury cars.

Audi, led by new CEO Markus Duesmann, leads research and development at the Volkswagen Group;

Ingolstadt, Audi brand headquarters, will become the core of Car.Software's organizational structure, with the goal of increasing the proportion of self-developed automotive software to at least 60% by 2025.

The two decisions released by Volkswagen Group once again let the outside world see its actions to adjust its organizational structure: (1) The responsibility of R&D was transferred from the group to Audi; (2) Audi integrated hardware and software R&D.

After basically completing the development of the MEB and PPE electric vehicle platforms, Volkswagen Group has focused on software development. The luxury brand, Audi, has become its leader. Audi has always been a pioneer in autonomous driving within the Volkswagen Group.

Looking around the world, in addition to Audi, overseas luxury brands such as BMW, Tesla, and Cadillac have begun a new round of reconstruction and configuration of electronic and electrical architecture.

Volkswagen's new electronic architecture faces challenges

Volkswagen's main department responsible for software-defined cars is Digital Car&Service. Its goal is to reduce the existing eight electronic architectures to one to support the future digital fleet of 15 million vehicles.

In terms of organizational structure, Car.Software belongs to Digital Car & Service. Car.Software obtains software requirements from different brands, and then provides software platforms and services, charging licensing fees.

Moreover, the new E3 electronic architecture has only just begun to emerge with the release of ID.3, the first electric car based on the MEB platform. The combination of electric cars and the new electronic architecture interprets the concept of Volkswagen's smart electric cars.

vw.OS car operating system, a blockbuster product of Car.Software, is the core of the underlying interaction of Volkswagen's new electronic architecture. vw.OS provides users with an entrance to control the vehicle through the central control. Above it is Volkswagen's new electronic architecture, the purpose of which is to achieve OTA for the entire vehicle. The implementation method is to build an end-to-end electronic architecture, create its own software stack, and transmit data through the cloud system.

Why electric cars based on the MEB platform instead of existing fuel vehicles? Volkswagen's consideration should be that the new platform is more suitable for the redivision of the network architecture. According to information released by Volkswagen, its plan is to transform the past 70 ECUs into 3-5 high-performance on-board computers and safety-related function ECUs.

According to information obtained by automotive electronics design blogger Zhu Yulong, in the electric vehicle system, Volkswagen integrated the LCD instrument system into the entertainment system, which is ICAS3 or MCC. Finally, the entire ICAS3 system integrates navigation, multimedia, air conditioning adjustment, and seat heating status adjustment functions.

One of the most important features of the E3 electronic architecture is that it can realize the iteration of functions and real-time update of software. ID.3 carries the public's expectations for OTA.

However, a report in German media Manager Magazin in December last year showed that Volkswagen's E3 electronic architecture still needs to be further improved.

The thing is, ID.3 cannot complete the automatic software upgrade smoothly during production. It is likely that engineers will find it difficult to find the problem in the short term, and can only choose to manually upgrade the software.

The ID.3, which was originally endowed with intelligent technological attributes, will showcase the achievements of the Volkswagen Group in the past two years, and now it also allows everyone to see its pain points.

Volkswagen responded to the software problem of ID.3 at the time, saying, "Building a powerful new electronic and software architecture may be difficult or even face delays. We are currently addressing this issue."

When engines and gearboxes, which represent the technical background and strength of car companies, were abandoned, electric drive became highly homogenized and difficult to differentiate. Car companies generally regarded intelligence as a new competitive advantage. However, exploring intelligence also requires time to accumulate. Volkswagen's self-innovation has taken the first step.

Luxury brand first

I personally think that Volkswagen is now handing over the responsibility of software development to Audi precisely because it has this experience.

Car.Software was established on the basis of Audi Electronics Venture GmbH, a subsidiary of Audi. It covers five major organizations: connected vehicle & device platform, smart body & digital cockpit, autonomous driving, vehicle operation & energy, digital business and mobile travel. The heads of smart body & digital cockpit and autonomous driving are Klaus Buttner (Executive Vice President of Audi CarIT Electrical/Electronics Division) and Thomas Muller (formerly the head of R&D of Audi's electrical and vehicle information technology department) from Audi.

Audi has applied the central driver assistance controller. It integrates the controllers of various driver assistance functions into the central system zFAS on the L3 A8. It integrates the Mobileye EyeQ3 vision chip, NVIDIA K1 processor, Intel Cyclone V system chip FPGA, Infineon Aurix microcontroller, and TTTech real-time Ethernet.

For traditional fuel vehicles, it is too expensive to redesign the electronic architecture, and ADAS/AD functions are newly added functions, so they are more likely to become the first choice for OEMs to try domain controllers.

Similar to Audi, GM's new electronic architecture was first applied to the Cadillac CT5. They also have similar ideas on the construction of the autonomous driving domain controller.

From the information released by GM, we can know that the new electronic architecture is suitable for electric vehicles and fuel vehicles. For example, CT5 is a fuel vehicle. This means that it can be deployed on a large scale across brands and platforms.

The new electronic architecture can perform OTA upgrades on the entire vehicle, including most ECUs used for the engine, transmission, in-vehicle communications, in-vehicle entertainment, driving control, and body control.

It has fast and efficient communication capabilities and can process up to 4.5TB of data per hour, which is five times the current data processing capacity. With the support of 100Mbps, 1Gbps and 10Gbps high-speed Ethernet, the electronic architecture can achieve faster in-vehicle and external communications and improve system operation efficiency. High speed prepares for the massive data transmission of autonomous driving and vehicle networking.

The bandwidth and processing power of the new electronic architecture are mainly used in the Super Cruise super intelligent driving system and the intelligent network connection system. This should be the biggest role played by the new electronic architecture now.

By 2025, more than half of GM's global brand models will be equipped with this digital platform.

Will the intelligence led by Tesla be reaped by other car companies?

Tesla has taken a leap forward to the stage of the electronic and electrical architecture of the vehicle's central computer.

Because it does not have the complicated processes of traditional car companies, does not have to deal with conflicts with department employees and supplier partners when adjusting business, and does not have to consider the cost of electronic architecture in the era of fuel vehicles, Tesla has been building intelligent electric vehicles from the beginning.

According to the information presented by the WeChat public account Lengkuduigua, the transition from Model S to Model 3 has undergone a transformation from functional domain to location domain. The Model S domain is clearly divided into power domain, chassis domain, body domain, and low-speed fault-tolerant Body FT. These domain controllers are connected to the central computer via CAN and Ethernet.

The electronic architecture of Model X is not much different from that of Model S, but it has begun to show the concept of cross-domain: the central body controller spans the chassis, low-speed fault tolerance and body.

With Model 3, Tesla no longer uses the functional domain electronic architecture, but the position domain: right body controller BCM RH, left body controller BCM LH, automatic driving and entertainment control module Autopilot & Infotainment Control Module.

Tesla's automotive electronic architecture is designed for intelligence. Its Model S is indeed the first vehicle in history to implement OTA. Its three electric vehicles are also often pushed for upgrades via OTA, providing services such as fixing vulnerabilities and opening up new features.

Now, Tesla is accelerating the introduction of intelligence to consumers.

Traditional car companies are catching up. Although they cannot get ahead, they can reap the benefits. The global auto market is not something that can be taken over by a single car company.