Automotive OS Research: Competition in automotive operating systems has entered the Warring States period

Car operating systems have always been complex and dazzling.

A year ago, Zoss Automotive Research Institute divided "automotive operating systems" into four categories:

1) Basic automotive operating system: refers to the underlying automotive operating system, such as AliOS, QNX, Linux, etc., which includes all underlying components, such as the system kernel, underlying drivers, etc., and some also include virtual machines.

2) Customized automotive operating system: refers to deeply customized development (including system kernel modification) on top of the basic operating system, and ultimately (Tier 1 and OEMs together) realize the cockpit system platform or autonomous driving system platform. Baidu's in-car OS and Volkswagen VW.OS belong to this category.

3) ROM-type automotive operating system: customized development based on Android (or Linux), without changing the system kernel. The most typical example in the mobile phone field is Xiaomi's MIUI. Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Weilai, Xiaopeng, CHJ Automotive, etc. generally choose to develop ROM-type operating systems.

4) Super car APP (also called mobile mapping system) refers to a large APP that meets the needs of car owners by integrating map, music, social, voice and other functions into one, such as Carlife, CarPlay, etc.

One year later, the field of automotive operating systems has undergone profound changes. In this year's report, we classified automotive operating systems from another perspective.

Cockpit OS evolves to vehicle OS

Many automotive OS manufacturers started with car OS, and their technology evolution path is: car OS-->cockpit OS-->vehicle OS. It is expected that they will move towards the vehicle OS stage after 2024.

In 2020, Banma Smart Driving proposed the AliOS evolution route, namely smart car OS, smart cockpit OS, and smart vehicle OS.

TINNOVE, which relies on Tencent's ecosystem, has also developed its technology route from cockpit OS to vehicle OS that integrates cockpit domain and autonomous driving domain. The figure below is the development roadmap of TINNOVE.

TINNOVE's in-vehicle operating system has brought Tencent's ecosystem down to system capabilities and OEMs through the "open" and "ecological" approach. It has currently cooperated with brands such as Changan Automobile, Audi, Chery Jetour, and Ford. TINNOVE has been installed on more than a dozen models including Changan CS75Plus, UNI-T, CS35Plus, and CS85 COUPE. TINNOVE has also recently reached in-depth cooperation with Qualcomm and CoreDrive.

The autonomous driving OS and domain controller are integrated into an autonomous driving computing platform

As software-defined cars and domain controllers become popular, everyone from vehicle manufacturers, Tier 1 to core chip manufacturers are making plans from the platform and ecosystem perspectives.

Autonomous driving computing platform suppliers not only develop autonomous driving OS, but also launch domain controllers and build ecosystems based on autonomous driving OS and domain controller computing platforms. Based on these autonomous driving platforms, OEMs and autonomous driving integrators no longer need to deal directly with the underlying operating system and chips, which can greatly simplify the development process and shorten the product launch cycle.

Neusoft RichAuto and AUTO Intelligent Control are typical representatives of autonomous driving computing platform suppliers.

Neusoft RichAuto's new generation of autonomous driving computing platform includes the software platform NeuSAR3.0, ADAS all-in-one machine X-Cube3.0 and autonomous driving domain controller X-Box 3.0. In October 2021, Neusoft RichAuto received a total investment of RMB 650 million from Guotou China Merchants and Dezaihou.

In February 2021, AUO Intelligent Control released the 1.0 version of the "Intelligent Vehicle Basic Brain" (iVBB for short), a smart driving computing platform for mass production, which includes an intelligent connected vehicle operating system (ICVOS), an intelligent vehicle domain controller (ICVHW), and vehicle-road-cloud collaborative basic software (ICVEC). It has the characteristics of rapid application development, platformization, networking, scalability, and automotive grade.

Investment in automotive operating systems is increasing, and market competition has entered the Warring States period

In March 2021, Evergrande Auto announced that it had signed an agreement with TINNOVE Wutong Auto Alliance to establish an operating system joint venture with a capital contribution of 60% and 40% respectively.

In July 2021, four old shareholders, Alibaba Group, SAIC Group, China Merchants Investment and Yunfeng Capital, jointly injected 3 billion yuan into Banma Smart Driving. The 3 billion yuan capital increase will be used to increase the research and development and promotion of smart car operating systems.

In June 2021, Guoqi Intelligent Control announced the completion of nearly 100 million yuan in angel round financing. In October 2021, Guoqi Intelligent Control announced the completion of hundreds of millions of yuan in Pre-A round financing.

Analyzing the background of the above three companies: Tencent is behind TINNOVE Wutong Autolink, Alibaba is behind Banma Intelligent Driving, and Guoqi Intelligent Control is backed by Guoqi Intelligent Connection (which has received investment from more than a dozen traditional OEMs and Tier 1s). Together with Baidu and Huawei, which are very active in the automotive OS market, each company is quite strong.

The competition for automotive computing platforms, including operating systems, is ultimately an ecological competition. Whoever can gain more support from software developers, component companies, service operators, and other parties will win the future of autonomous driving.