How will autonomous driving OTA develop in the future?

Compared with driving the vehicle to a car repair company for offline software upgrades, which takes a lot of time for the car owner and a lot of manpower costs for the car repair company, the Over-The-Air (OTA) upgrade method brings new possibilities for the future development of automobiles. Through network communication technology, the data required for car software upgrades is directly downloaded to the car and automatically installed to upgrade the car's functions. In simple terms, it is like delivering express delivery. The car delivers the functions that need to be upgraded to cars all over the world through the "express delivery line" of the Internet. Upgrading the software of the car through OTA can not only continue to provide more complete functions and services for the car, improve the performance of the car, and allow car owners to have a more convenient and smarter car experience, but also quickly repair the vulnerabilities in the car software, making the car safer to use. As the trend of automobile intelligence becomes more and more obvious, OTA technology has also become a hot word in the industry. OTA can repair bugs in the software to ensure the security of the software; it can also add new functions to enrich the playability of the product; it can also upgrade the software through OTA to provide users with more services, thereby increasing user stickiness.

OTA first appeared in the mobile phone industry. The emergence of OTA ended the need to connect to a computer, download software, install updates and other complex operations when upgrading mobile phone software. It allows mobile phones to automatically download installation packages and install them automatically when they are connected to the Internet, making mobile phones more convenient and intelligent to use. The OTA in the automotive industry can be traced back to 2012, when Tesla launched the Model S, which first used OTA technology to upgrade cars. The upgrade range included human-computer interaction, automatic driving, and power battery systems. At that time, Tesla could use OTA to complete key card vulnerabilities, improve mileage, increase maximum speed, and upgrade comfort, making the iteration of car functions more flexible and convenient. Tesla's OTA architecture is shown in the figure below. First, the CID of the central control system downloads the firmware package from the cloud through Tesla's private handshake protocol, and decrypts and verifies its integrity.

In addition to Tesla, traditional car companies such as Toyota, Volkswagen, Ford, and BMW have also begun to try OTA. Domestic new car manufacturers such as Xpeng, Ideal, and Weilai have also recommended OTA upgrades as key features when they release cars.

OTA technology can be divided into Firm Over The Air (FOTA) and Software Over The Air (SOTA). FOTA refers to the use of Internet technology to provide firmware upgrade services for devices with Internet functions such as mobile phones and tablets; SOTA refers to the use of Internet technology to upgrade the software. In contrast to mobile phones, FOTA is more like a system upgrade for mobile phones, changing the underlying system of the mobile phone. This upgrade method provides upgrades to the smart hardware itself, allowing the hardware itself to achieve more basic functions. SOTA is similar to upgrading the app in the mobile phone. This upgrade method upgrades the function of an app in the mobile phone, allowing this app to provide more services. FOTA is more difficult to design than SOTA, and it also brings greater functional and performance improvements to users.

In the automotive industry, Tesla is the representative brand of FOTA. Through OTA technology, all vehicle controllers, including domain controllers, except for the entertainment system and the central control screen can be independently upgraded through OTA, and even the performance related to power, such as endurance, acceleration, and braking, can be changed through OTA upgrades. However, more car manufacturers prefer SOTA, which is to upgrade some functions in the car and focus more on the software applications in the car, such as the upgrade of navigation maps, entertainment software, and human-computer interaction, which does not involve the core system upgrade and belongs to the upgrade of the smart cockpit field. Therefore, at this stage, the OTA promoted by various car manufacturers is more inclined to SOTA.

The emergence of automotive OTA has greatly facilitated the owners' need to upgrade some systems during the use of the car. For many car manufacturers, the concept of OTA is not only a technology for external publicity, but also for cost and time saving considerations. The emergence of OTA can greatly save the time cost of car owners going offline when upgrading their cars. They only need to place the vehicle in a place that can be connected to the Internet to quickly complete the upgrade. With the obvious trend of automobile intelligence and networking, and the continuous introduction of the concept of autonomous driving, software-related issues may become an inevitable part of future automobile development. The emergence of OTA can repair software defects by quickly downloading data packets remotely, and avoid danger in time.

Today's automakers still maintain a more rigorous attitude towards OTA technology. OTA can facilitate the software upgrade of the car and the convenience of the car owner, but there are still many drawbacks that cannot be avoided. Compared with the failure of mobile phone OTA upgrade, which only affects the use of the mobile phone, the failure of car OTA upgrade will affect the safety of the car. In January 2019, the "breakdown" incident of Weilai car on Chang'an Avenue in Beijing sounded the alarm for the popularity of car OTA upgrades, and also let us see that car OTA upgrades cannot grow wildly. Although OTA is the trend of future development, there are still certain safety hazards and technical difficulties in actual use. OTA upgrade, especially FOTA upgrade, is to import the vehicle from one state to another. In the traditional vehicle system upgrade, the main wired connection upgrade method is used, which has high information transmission efficiency and low error rate. OTA upgrade is mainly upgraded through wireless network. The whole process involves the data transmission process from software developers to car main car factories to individual cars. These processes require all data channels to be safe and the data to be encrypted, otherwise there will be a risk of network hijacking. If there is an error in the car OTA update, this requires the car manufacturer to be able to quickly complete the rollback measures to restore the vehicle system to the previous version, so as to ensure the user experience.

In order to regulate the development of the automotive OTA market, the country has also introduced relevant policies. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the "Opinions of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology on Strengthening the Access Management of Intelligent Connected Vehicle Manufacturers and Products" on July 30, 2021, pointing out that "enterprises that produce automotive products with online upgrade (also known as OTA upgrade) functions should establish management capabilities that are compatible with automotive products and upgrade activities, and have the capabilities of online upgrade safety impact assessment, test verification, implementation process assurance, information recording, etc., to ensure that the vehicle is in a safe state during online upgrades, and inform vehicle users of the purpose, content, required duration, precautions, upgrade results and other information of the online upgrade. Before implementing online upgrade activities, enterprises should ensure that automotive products comply with relevant requirements such as national laws, regulations, technical standards and technical specifications, and file them with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. Changes to technical parameters such as safety, energy saving, environmental protection, and anti-theft should be reported to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in advance to ensure the consistency of automotive product production. Without approval, new or updated automotive autonomous driving functions shall not be added or updated through online software upgrades." The improvement of laws and regulations also provides further restrictions on the development of automotive OTA technology, regulates the automotive OTA market, and enables automotive OTA to better serve consumers.

With the development of autonomous driving technology, the intelligent technology of automobiles will be further improved, and OTA technology will become the main way to upgrade automobiles. Under software-defined cars, OTA can bring more possibilities to autonomous driving, or more consumption models will emerge, such as purchasing some entertainment functions through OTA technology, and customizing some functions of autonomous driving cars to enable them to provide richer services. What do you think about the development of OTA? Welcome to follow the forefront of intelligent driving and leave a message to communicate.