How can China’s basic automotive software win?

Li Xiang, the founder of Li Auto, recently posted online: "Li Xiang is proud to use a large number of local suppliers. If consumers dare to buy Chinese brand cars, we will boldly use Chinese local supply chain companies."

Li Xiang dared to make such a statement, which is inseparable from the rise of China's independent brands, and the strength of local brands is riding on the east wind of intelligent electrification of automobiles.

In terms of the application of intelligent automotive technology, Chinese car companies are basically in sync with international giants, and even have a slight advantage in some areas. In recent years, local models equipped with domestically developed technologies have competed favorably with foreign models.

However, the localization issue has always been a hurdle facing many automobile companies, especially in the field of basic software.

In terms of basic software platforms for safe vehicle control, many controller developments are still based on foreign solutions; in terms of basic software platforms for intelligent driving, there are yet to be sufficiently mature solutions and a lack of real-time secure kernels, middleware and virtualization products; In terms of basic software platforms for in-vehicle infotainment, there are many types of cores, and suppliers in the industry are fighting independently and have not yet formed a joint force.

Suppressed by factors such as foreign technology levels and market share, the promotion and development of basic automotive software in China is full of difficulties. If we want to remove the hand that is strangling our neck, the development and innovation of basic automotive software such as localized in-vehicle operating systems and middleware is a topic that the industry needs to think about together. The Chinese automotive industry is in urgent need of localized basic software ecology and standards.

The primary difficulty: core technology

The lack of mastery of the core technologies of basic automotive software is the primary difficulty facing Chinese automobile companies.

In the early years, most Chinese auto parts companies mainly focused on mechanical parts, and core auto parts were in a hard-to-break ice zone. Restricted by the protection of core technologies by foreign-funded enterprises, Chinese engineers know very little about basic software.

Fortunately, foreign companies such as Vector and ETAS have opened up basic software products that comply with the AUTOSAR standard. The Chinese automotive industry is not willing to be controlled by others for a long time. Many start-up companies have been born in the field of intelligent electrification to conduct independent research and development of basic software. According to incomplete statistics from Yiou Auto, two-thirds of the 18 automotive basic software companies on the market were established after 2010.

The automotive basic software track has also attracted the attention of the capital market. As mentioned in the previous article "Get started! According to "18 Automotive Basic Software Companies Taking on the Ten-Billion Blue Ocean", due to the characteristics of high barriers and long cycles, local companies in basic software research and development have not attracted many VC investors, but they will increase year by year after 2020. trend, and usher in the first year of basic vehicle software in 2022.

With direction and capital, China is moving forward steadily to conquer the core technology of basic vehicle software.

Backed by China Electronics Technology Group Corporation, Puhua Basic Software integrates the group's superior resources and has been deeply involved in basic software for 15 years. Now it can provide a full range of products, services and solutions such as IT basic software and OT basic software. By integrating IT+OT technologies, Puhua is constantly creating its own "unique skills."

Puhua Basic Software's automotive basic software was the first to pass the international highest functional safety level product certification, with a cumulative installed volume of more than 12 million vehicles and customers covering more than 200 mainstream car companies and parts suppliers.

Lingnian Technology, founded in 2021, focuses on smart car platform software. It is currently able to provide a complete SOA architecture CarOS including high-performance communication middleware, task scheduling management, functional safety services, and mass production services. At the same time, Lingnian Technology’s self-developed development tool chain can help customers generate customized platform software with zero manual coding.

Lingnian technology products can provide reusable and stable software support for subsequent automotive system services, and are highly adaptable to the rapid increase in the amount and complexity of automotive software code.

Chronic disease: vicious competition

Scattered resources, low concentration, and even vicious competition are chronic diseases of domestic basic software research and development, and automotive basic software-related companies are in the process of eradicating the old and launching new ones.

"Currently, my country's automotive basic software-related companies are working together to build an automotive basic software industry ecosystem with my country's independent intellectual property rights. Upstream and downstream companies in the automotive industry will collaborate in multiple ways to jointly promote the implementation of localized technical specifications." Neusoft's NeuSAR business line Product manager Lu Yiwei told Yiou Auto.

Gradually bidding farewell to the past of going it alone, companies related to automotive basic software have become one. Under the leadership of the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, the China Automotive Basic Software Ecosystem Committee (AUTOSEMO) came into being at the end of 2019.

AUTOSEMO brings together the strength of China's automobile industry, consisting of automobile manufacturers, parts suppliers, service providers, software developers, semiconductor manufacturers, etc., aiming to build a software architecture and interface specifications that adapt to new market needs, and strengthen China's local basic software. Promote industry openness and collaboration.

With the joint efforts of 37 automotive companies including Neusoft Reach, the car-side open distributed service framework ASF (AUTOSEMO Service Framework) was born. Through this specification, services and interfaces are unified, and efficient vehicle controller design and development can be achieved. Make cross-vendor integration more convenient and reliable.

Currently, Neusoft Reach serves as the leader of the ASF working group and continues to promote the writing of "ASF Technical Specification 2.0".

Lu Yiwei revealed to Yiou Auto that under the trend of multi-domain integration, how to improve the efficiency of collaborative development under the vehicle architecture and reduce software development costs has become an important issue of current industry concern. The upper-layer software builds a unified basic system service interface. The upper-layer software development can be independent of the deployment of the underlying basic system services on the controller. The main functional modules include storage, communication, logs, diagnosis, upgrades, clock synchronization, health monitoring, signal transfer services, etc. .

"New technology can simplify the application development process. User-developed applications can directly call standardized interfaces, greatly saving workload and improving software reuse. At the same time, it provides support for the dynamic combination and migration of car cloud applications." Lu Yiwei said.

Neither destruction nor establishment: ecological environment

"Currently, with the improvement of the intelligence level of self-owned brand vehicles and the rich and diverse configurations, local automotive basic software companies need to keep abreast of the development needs of OEMs, continue to iterate and innovate, and actively build a win-win ecosystem of open collaboration." Lu Yi Wei told Yiou Auto.

With the advent of the era of intelligent electrification of automobiles, vehicle development concepts have also changed. Automobile companies have changed from serving cars to serving people, and the development orientation of vehicles based on functional requirements has also changed to the development orientation of vehicles based on people.

Neusoft Reach NeuSAR business director Mao Haiyan also shared the current Neusoft Reach development model at the 2023 Auto Show Insight Report Conference and Auto Show Offline Seminar hosted by Yiou Automobile, that is, the R&D team continuously receives the needs of car owners and conducts continuous research and development. development.

Changes in the development model have reshaped the automotive industry supply chain. The automotive supply chain is transforming from the original chain to the current triangle model or circle model. Whether it is automobile manufacturers, software suppliers, chip and hardware suppliers, they have new positions and roles, and software suppliers have gradually moved from behind the scenes to the front.

As an OEM with a large amount of user data, it can integrate and propose business function requirements in a timely manner, decompose the requirements to corresponding suppliers, and coordinate supplier work.

Basic software suppliers provide corresponding service functions based on the needs of OEMs and application businesses, encapsulate common functions into standardized interfaces, provide a complete tool chain and development and debugging environment, and provide technical support for vehicle design, configuration and each node. and suggestions.

Chip and hardware suppliers design hardware circuits based on the business needs of each layer, assist car manufacturers in chip selection, and provide the required driver module support for the upper layers.