Changes in smart cockpits in 2022: Tesla declines, Qualcomm dominates the world, Huawei cleverly defeats the enemy?

A few days ago, we took stock of the changes in the new energy vehicle industry in 2022. The continued rise in battery prices has made the relationship between car companies and battery factories delicate.

In fact, the changes in the smart cockpit field in 2022 are also very amazing. The Tesla myth has been completely shattered, and it has changed from a leader to a "underachiever." The "cross-border" Qualcomm has shined, almost dominating the world with its 8155 chip. Huawei, a latecomer, has occupied a place with Hongmeng and began to obtain "inspection-free" evaluation in the field of smart cockpits, and more domestic companies have begun to enter the game.

To what level has smart cockpit technology developed? Which company's technology can lead the way? Let Kung Fu Motors take everyone to see it together.

(1) Times have changed, Tesla was photographed on the beach

If we discuss how today’s smart cockpit landscape was formed, Tesla definitely takes the lion’s share of the credit. It is precisely because of Tesla's entry that car companies began to get rid of the limitations of projection software such as Carplay and carlife and truly entered the era of smart cars.

When Tesla began to be imported into China around 2018, the performance of its vehicle system was indeed shocking.

At that time, Tesla could be said to be completely leading the market. In terms of intelligent voice interaction, Tesla eliminates the rigid wake-up function of traditional cars and can easily wake up in a variety of ways, and then directly speak instructions. The recognition and semantic understanding of sounds are better, and the range of control is much wider than that of traditional car machines, and it initially has a humanized way of thinking.

Then there is the application of AR-HUD technology, which projects driving information onto the front window through clear 3D images, so that people can really ignore the existence of the instrument. Of course, there are also personal biometric information such as faces and fingerprints implanted in the car, making various types of unlocking more convenient and greatly improving the playability of the car.

It can be said that from function settings to interactive interfaces to operating logic, Tesla has created the first modern smart cockpit system and once led the trend.

But unfortunately, after entering 2022, Tesla has begun to go a little "off track." In 2022, Tesla upgraded the smart cockpit. The biggest change is that it is equipped with the latest AMD car system. Using an AMD Ryzen processor and even an AMD independent graphics card, the computing performance is comparable to Sony PS5. The result is that Tesla can play large AAA games such as "Cyberpunk 2077" and "The Witcher 3".

In order to "move" electronic consumer-grade AMD chips into cars, Tesla has done a lot of work. But the effect is not outstanding, because apart from a few young people, there are really not many people who play large-scale 3A games in the car. From this perspective, performance upgrades are of little significance. However, Tesla's shortcomings of poor stability and closedness have been increasingly criticized.

After switching to the AMD vehicle system, Tesla frequently experienced problems with the central control crashing and restarting. In particular, third-party software did not match the system and operations were stuck. Although restarting can solve most of the problems, the user's perception became worse. It's getting worse.

The most critical thing is that Qualcomm's "cross-border" entry has brought increasing pressure to Tesla.

(2) Qualcomm dominates the world, and Huawei defeats the enemy with clever tricks

When it comes to Qualcomm, many people's first reaction is the consumer electronics chip company, the "old enemy" of Huawei and Xiaomi. In fact, Qualcomm has begun to strongly enter the field of automotive smart cockpits in recent years. Among them, the SA8155P launched in 2019 has almost subverted the entire industry.

Especially after entering 2022, Qualcomm 8155 smart cockpit chip has almost become standard equipment for high-end models.

Qualcomm 8155 is actually a car-grade version of the Snapdragon 855 mobile phone chip. It uses TSMC's 7nm process technology and has a computing power of 8-10TOPS. It is not outstanding in terms of performance alone. However, its advantages are very obvious. It has comprehensive functions and excellent stability, which makes it the most popular smart cockpit chip at present and is rated as the "Generation God U".

To put it bluntly, Qualcomm 8155 can easily implement the smart cockpit functions defined by Tesla, and the stability is better. Coupled with better system scalability, the new cars it empowers directly surpass Tesla in terms of intelligence.

Entering 2022, new leading forces like Wei Xiaoli have basically made Qualcomm 8155 standard. Among them, the ideal L9 is equipped with two in order to demonstrate its flagship status.  Jikrypton 001  (  Parameters  |  Inquiry  ) spent 100 million to upgrade the 8155 chip for free to old car owners, which directly detonated the market reputation and put it in the position of monthly sales exceeding 10,000, which shows the charm of ShenU.

Tesla's smart cockpit has not been defeated by other car companies, but it is indeed a bit powerless in the face of a dragon like Qualcomm.

Then Qualcomm 8155 has no rival? Not really. Also in 2022, with the hot sales of the Wenjie series, Huawei's Hongmeng smart cockpit began to enter our field of vision.

Hongmeng Smart Cockpit uses the Kirin 990A chip independently developed by Huawei. Judging from the name alone, it seems to be the car-grade version of Huawei's Kirin 990 chip. But this is not the case. Because Huawei has suffered core breakage, it cannot obtain chip OEMs with processes below 14nm (Kirin 990 uses 7nm process technology). Judging from the photos released by Huawei before, the area of ​​Kirin 990A is about four times that of Kirin 990, and it is likely to use a 28nm process technology.

However, relying on relatively conservative technology and a computing power of 3.5 TOPS, Huawei has made a domestic first-line smart cockpit system. Taking Wenjie M5 as an example, the new car's smart cockpit not only has good stability and excellent smoothness, but can also achieve seamless transfer with Huawei's smart devices and has excellent scalability.

Of course, there are also disadvantages. The chip takes up a lot of space and consumes higher power than mobile phone chips of the same level. But this is a big problem on mobile phones, but it is not a problem at all on cars. It can only be said that Huawei has solved a big problem in a clever way.

What’s even more surprising is that the cost of Huawei’s system may not be that high. Unlike Qualcomm 8155, which "focuses" on the high-end market, Huawei's Kirin 990A has been installed on the 100,000-level BAIC Rubik's Cube and the 150,000-level Geometry G6/M6, and has even greatly contributed to the sales explosion of these cars.

Achieving excellent results at a relatively low price, Huawei's breakthrough is indeed of great significance.

(3) There are still yellow birds, domestic enterprises should work hard

In addition to Huawei, there are actually other companies that have begun to develop their efforts in the field of smart cockpits. The most prominent among them are Xinqing Technology and Rockchip Micro.

Xinqing Technology, like Yikatong, is a Geely-based technology company. Pushing forward two years, these two companies can be called the "two generals" in the field of smart cars. They have adapted some products to Geely, but the results have not been good. After years of hard work, the two companies seem to have been connected.

The second-generation system of JiKrypton 001 developed by Yikatong has been well received. At the end of last year, it was successfully listed on the other side of the ocean in New York. Xinqing Technology's Dragon Eagle 1 has also been successfully mass-produced. Its 8 TOPS computing power has also caught up with Qualcomm 8155, and the new car will be unveiled in the first quarter of this year.

This is the first domestically produced 7nm smart cockpit chip. If its promotion goes smoothly, Xinqing Technology is likely to quickly grow into a unicorn like Horizon. You must know that only more than a year passed between the launch of Horizon 3 and the joint venture invitation from Volkswagen of 2.4 billion euros. Today's automotive chip field is indeed full of opportunities.

There are more manufacturers entering the automotive field. A typical example is Rockchip, which has developed its own automotive-grade chips RK3588M/RK3568M and plans to cooperate with Zhongluan Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. to launch a more cost-effective domestic smart cockpit solution. .

Don’t be afraid of being slow, don’t be afraid of making mistakes, just be afraid of not doing it. As more and more domestic companies enter the market, I believe that the technical difficulties of smart cockpits will soon be overcome and gradually become popular for the masses.

(4) Kung Fu shooting

Changes seem to happen in an instant. Before 2022, most people still don’t know about Qualcomm 8155 chip, and they haven’t heard much about Huawei’s Hongmeng smart cockpit. But in just one year, Tesla, which had led the market for three to five years, was photographed on the beach, and more domestic manufacturers began to enter the game. The pace of change in the automotive world seems to be accelerating again.

But for us ordinary consumers, this is definitely a good thing. The stronger the market becomes, the more everyone benefits. The Qualcomm 820A (powered by Weilai ES8 and Ideal ONE), which was very popular the year before last, is no longer favored by anyone.

So looking forward to 2023, what surprises will car companies give us?