Domestic cars and machines no longer lose their “soul”

It constantly refreshes the boundaries of industry cognition and once again expands its own boundaries.

Recently, Wenjie M5 Smart Driving Edition has launched its first OTA upgrade in batches. It is reported that this OTA upgrade covers major updates in five major areas including urban NCA, high-speed NCA, intelligent parking assistance and intelligent driving reporting. This also marks that Huawei AITO has once again made great strides forward in the field of intelligent driving.

Obviously, with the advancement of intelligence, today's cars have evolved from mechanical devices to smart terminals. The era of software-defined cars has arrived, and the car operating system has become the "soul" of the car.

However, for cars that are related to the personal safety of users, it is difficult for the intelligent logic to completely follow the past experience in consumer electronics or the Internet track - it is necessary to ensure data privacy and security issues, but also to solve the problems at the software and hardware level. Conflicts and constraints make it difficult to guarantee the efficiency of automakers’ intelligent iterative upgrades.

Looking at Wenjie again, the reason why it can continue to iterate in a short period of time after OTA in mid-July may be closely related to the autonomy of its car-machine operating system. In other words, autonomy and controllability not only play a key role in China's technological breakthrough, but are also a symbol of the innovation initiative and innovation efficiency of domestic technology companies. It can be predicted that in the era of software-defined cars, the first player to achieve independent control of the operating system will surely take an advantage in the second half.

Domestic cars reject "less soul"

"Breaking through" is an issue that cannot be avoided in the domestic science and technology context now that the technology game is intensifying.

Looking at the development status of China's technology industry, from the self-developed chips in the early years to the current hot large-scale model competition, domestic technology giants have taken the lead in launching technological breakthrough battles in the face of many technical barriers and potential crises. While rushing to the forefront, we also gradually refined the true meaning of technological innovation - independent and controllable core technologies.

However, the well-known chips and large models are actually just the tip of the iceberg in this battle. There are still huge mountains hidden under the water, such as industrial software or operating systems that are often ignored.

At the end of last year, at the Global New Energy and Smart Vehicle Supply Chain Innovation Conference, Miao Wei, deputy director of the Economic Committee of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference and former minister of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, raised the issue to a higher level: “The lack of mobile phone operating systems has made us deeply We deeply understand that in the process of converting functional products to smart products, if there is no operating system, no matter how powerful the chip is, no matter how good the car is, it will be a high-rise building on the beach.”

In other words, the core pursuit of technological innovation is not to set a specific goal by "relying on others", but to develop a continuous innovation path under the premise of independent control. In the field of intelligent connected cars , the demand for autonomous controllability of the vehicle operating system is even more urgent. After all, it is not only a key anchor for the "intelligence" of cars, but also plays an important role in driving, information security, hardware adaptation and other aspects.

A simple example is that a car, as a highly private scene, is likely to record the user’s private conversations with family and friends in the car, or sensitive work information. If there is a security vulnerability in the car operating system, it is likely to aggravate the situation. The risk of personal privacy security leakage may even cause the vehicle to make misjudgments, endangering driving safety.

However, because domestic manufacturers generally start late in the field of operating systems, there are still many problems that need to be solved in domestic vehicle operating systems.

An industry insider told Photon Planet that currently most domestic vehicle operating systems are customized and developed based on mature systems such as Google Android, BlackBerry QNX, and Linux. "Like Android, although it has a rich application ecosystem, it is not a real-time operating system, and its security and stability are also insufficient, and it often requires secondary development; although QNX is a real-time operating system, its security is acceptable. But the application ecosystem is too barren and can only be supplemented by installing Android into its virtual layer.”

You cannot build a huge building on someone else's foundation. This is especially true for the automobile industry with extremely high safety factors.

Based on the balance between cost and benefit, there is nothing wrong with some car manufacturers choosing to graft off-the-shelf operating system solutions. After all, this is a long-term project that requires continuous trial and error and precipitation. With the acceleration of new energy vehicles, not all players have the same So patiently taking root step by step. Limited by differences in systems, hardware and technical architecture, such vehicle operating systems often face challenges such as multi-system integration, software and hardware compatibility and adaptation, and cross-domain collaboration.

In contrast, Huawei, which was the first to achieve "breakthrough" in the fields of chips and operating systems, has naturally taken on the responsibility of producing domestic car operating systems. It is reported that as early as the birth of the Hongmeng system, based on the characteristics of the vehicle scene, the vehicle and machine functions were incorporated into the bottom layer of the system. Independent research and development has largely bypassed the above-mentioned cumbersome and independent software and hardware architecture, thus gaining agile and rapid iteration capabilities.

Huawei's recently released HarmonyOS 4 fully demonstrates its ability to rapidly transform cutting-edge technologies in the context of core competency independence. It is reported that HarmonyOS 4 can not only easily achieve multi-device and multi-scenario collaboration by relying on its powerful distributed capabilities; Huawei's AI large model capabilities will also be used to upgrade vehicle voice to make it more intelligent. Coupled with Hongmeng’s vast ecosystem and multi-layered safety protection mechanisms, it naturally takes the lead on the track.

Obviously, the autonomy of core capabilities is not only the macro-context’s expectation for the domestic technology industry to break through, but also contains infinite possibilities in many dimensions such as safer continuous iteration capabilities and deeper breakthrough innovations.

"Dual intelligence" ceiling to "intelligent driving safety", intelligent safety is the real safety

Before drawing our attention back to this OTA upgrade, we need to realize that both the industry and consumers have a different understanding of cars than before.

On the industrial side, domestic new energy competition has quietly entered the second half. Traditional car companies and a number of new forces have realized that the focus of competition is the level of intelligence. On the user side, according to the "2023 China Automobile Consumption Report" released by McKinsey, intelligence has become an important basis for users' decision-making, and they have high expectations. For example, in scenarios such as high-speed and automatic parking, users need a better experience.

It is not difficult to understand that the content of AITO's first OTA push to the Wenjie M5 Huawei High-end Intelligent Driving Edition (hereinafter referred to as the "Inquiry M5 Intelligent Driving Edition") points to the intelligent driving experience.

The Wenjie M5 Intelligent Driving Edition is equipped with the HUAWEI  ADS  2.0 high-end intelligent driving system (hereinafter referred to as "HUAWEI ADS 2.0"), which will be the first to realize high-speed and urban high-end intelligent driving that does not rely on high-precision maps (NCA Intelligent Driving Navigation Assistance) function, which will significantly expand the scope of smart driving. On the other hand, improvements in system safety and reliability will make driving safer and smart driving easier.

OTA capabilities are the best criterion for evaluating a car-machine system. Compared with the previous generation, HUAWEI ADS 2.0 has made great progress in driving experience and smart driving safety.

The Wenjie M5 Smart Driving Edition has added Navigation Assist (NCA) for smart driving in the five urban areas of Shanghai, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Hangzhou and Chongqing. Although many car companies have claimed to enter the city this year, the experience has been uneven. In terms of the most basic aspects such as lane recognition, speed control and ramp entry and exit, the M5 smart driving version is completely indistinguishable from a skilled driver. Especially in the on-ramp and off-ramp scenarios, stability and efficiency can be considered when driving into curves with large curvatures. Acceleration and deceleration on and off the on-ramp and merging into the main road are all smooth and reliable.

In addition, users can not only experience the efficient car following, autonomous start and stop, and steering at intersections of the Wenjie M5 smart driving version for multi-objective mutual games and anthropomorphic driving decisions; in open areas, the Wenjie M5 smart driving version can actively avoid various types of vehicles. Road-occupying vehicles and alien objects can effectively deal with scenes such as "open door killing" and "ghost probe". Previously, Autolab and Bitauto compared a number of current hot-selling models in the AEB Daheng Review, and the Wenjie M5 smart driving version won the first place in the AEB active safety test.