Huawei returns, smart cars accelerate into the 5G era

In 2020, 5G technology and the automobile industry have intensively intersected for the first time, with Aion V, MARVEL R, and BYD Han all claiming the title of "the first 5G car."

But this intersection did not bring qualitative changes to the automotive industry.

In September 2023, the launch of Mate 60 Pro announced the return of Huawei 5G. In October, Huawei officially announced that it had achieved a breakthrough in 5.5G.

Perhaps consumers can start to imagine again: With the support of 5G technology, what kind of functions will be provided by a "big mobile phone" like a car.

In fact, in recent years, although the volume is not too loud, 5G technology has been silently penetrating into OEMs: 5G technology has already been realized in aspects such as human-vehicle voice interaction, cloud data backhaul, and intelligent driving data transmission. With the engineering implementation of the technology, the shipment volume of 5G communication modules has reached several million units a year.

Of course, this is not the end of the combination of 5G and automobiles. Technology has always been the first traction force of demand. In order to prepare before 5G officially breaks out in the automotive market, 5G technology also needs to continuously evolve itself.

01 Return to rationality, 5G is not just a gimmick

Three years ago, Aian V, R Auto MARVEL R and BYD Han were launched one after another, vying to grab the title of "the first 5G car". At that time, it was the second year that 5G technology was moving toward large-scale commercial use in the consumer market, and it was at the forefront.

In addition, 5G can bring an experience of downloading a movie in just a few seconds. Whether it is based on gimmicks or smart cockpit usage scenarios, this wave of 5G popularity is something that OEMs need to "take advantage of".

But unlike consumer products such as mobile phones, cars are a bulk consumer product second only to houses, and their driving attributes are far greater than those of mobile Internet.

When purchasing, it is impossible for users to be enthusiastic and pay a deposit just because the vehicle uses 5G technology. In addition, each model did not have 5G technology as standard equipment at that time. With the blessing of various factors, 5G and automobiles will be the first time. "Co-branding" has had little effect.

The annual insurance volumes of the Aion V and MARVEL R models in 2021 are only 16,000 units and 4,500 units respectively. BYD Han relied on the name of 5G. Although the sales volume of BYD Han in the first and second years of its launch were more than those of the previous two (30,500 units and 117,000 units respectively), its sales volume was not as good as that of BYD Qin series.

After this temporary failure to catch up with the technology boom, 5G technology seems to have disappeared in the automotive industry. No car companies use 5G to promote their own models.

On the one hand, this is because the title of "the first 5G car" has been taken by the above-mentioned car companies first, and it no longer makes much sense to use 5G as the main promotional point in the future. On the other hand, in the automobile market at that time, a model with higher battery life and larger space was more popular than a model that was faster for watching TV series and caching movies in the car. Naturally, 5G would no longer be actively used by car companies. mentioned.

But this does not mean that 5G technology will be separated from the automotive industry.

For OEMs, after the emergence of any emerging technology, it has to go through a process from gimmick to actual large-scale application. To shorten the time necessary for this process, one of the barriers that must be broken down is cost.

Zhang Kai, an industry insider in the automotive communications industry, said that the cost of a chip in a 5G module was more than 1,000 yuan two years ago, and now the cost has been reduced by about 50%.

Although there is still a certain gap in cost with 4G modules, the BOM cost price difference between the two is only a few hundred yuan. In terms of operation and maintenance expenses, which is the bulk of communication costs, the calculation formulas of the two are exactly the same.

In other words, as long as you pay a few hundred yuan more in BOM costs, car companies can switch their products from 4G to 5G. After reaching a certain sales volume, the costs can be shared evenly. Why wouldn't car companies do it?

This is also true. Zhang Kai told "CyberAuto", "About 40% of the company's designated project shipments this year are 5G communication modules." 5G vehicle communication modules in the entire industry have already reached a scale of several million. above.

Calculation of the global front-mounted vehicle terminal module market size. Source: Guolian Securities

After costs dropped and scale increased, car companies also returned to rationality and began to conduct more detailed exploration into the combination of 5G technology and cars.

Zhang Kai said that when OEMs purchase 5G communication modules in the past two years, they will put forward specific demands, not just to replace vehicle communications from 4G to 5G, "for example, put forward specific demands for the number and distribution of network outgoing nodes."

In the 4G era, there are fewer network outgoing nodes for vehicle communication. This results in that when a smart car sends data back to the headquarters, no matter where the car is, its data must first pass through the outgoing node in a fixed city and then be sent to the OEM headquarters, which is a cumbersome and inefficient process.

Nowadays, when purchasing 5G communication modules, car companies generally put forward requirements for the number and location of outbound nodes, such as establishing outbound nodes near their own data center headquarters to reduce the delay of data backhaul.

Not only that, OEMs will also make specific quantitative requirements for network uplink and downlink speeds and delays, such as requiring the uplink and downlink speeds of 5G networks to be no less than 100Mbps, and wireless air interface delays to be no more than 10ms.

The process from pursuing gimmicks to refining requirements has also happened in the lidar market. From "Please don't talk if there are less than 4 lidars" at the 2021 Guangzhou Auto Show, when purchasing lidars now, the purchase model and quantity are selected based on specific usage scenarios such as rain and fog weather identification and handling of large curvature curves.

Any new technology or tool will go through a similar process after it appears, and 5G is no exception.

As more and more vehicles are equipped with 5G technology, and OEMs’ demands for this technology continue to refine, the upper limit of 5G has also been stimulated.

02. 5G changes the underlying logic of cabin driving

If the transition from 2G to 3G mainly brings about a qualitative change in experience for C-end users (from feature phones to smartphones), then the impact of the change from 4G to 5G on the automotive industry is mainly for OEMs. Brings powerful empowerment.

Zhang Kai likens the current application of 5G technology in cars to "entering deep water". Although it does not bring about epoch-making experience improvements on the user side, it has truly affected the underlying design of smart driving, smart cabins and other fields. logic.

There are three main characteristics of 5G technology: low latency, large bandwidth, and wide connectivity. Among them, the two features of low latency and wide connectivity mainly meet the needs of car companies for data backhaul efficiency mentioned above.

In addition, the low latency feature also has a great impact on the smart cockpit experience. For example, the "Sentinel" mode is available in many models today. In the earliest Sentry mode, once it is turned on, it is necessary to ensure that the vehicle communication module and sensing module are activated and maintain a long-term connection with the cloud, which results in huge power consumption of the vehicle.

Since then, some car companies have used network heartbeat technology to reduce energy consumption by eliminating the need for vehicle communication modules to remain active for long periods of time. But in this way, when the vehicle senses danger signals in the surrounding environment, it needs to reactivate the communication module to send information to the cloud, and finally notify the owner of the abnormal situation. There is a high delay in this process.

After 5G is implemented in the car, this delay can be reduced to less than 10ms, and the vehicle and surrounding environment information can be recorded and fed back to the car owner in a more timely manner.

In addition, Bai Hua, general manager of the Solutions and Delivery Department of China Unicom Intelligent Network Technology, also revealed that 5G has also brought about major improvements in human-vehicle interaction.

At present, voice interaction, gesture interaction, and even future video interaction of many vehicle models, in addition to relying on the vehicle's own computing power , also need to upload the information to the cloud for recognition and processing, and then issue instructions to the vehicle for specific execution.

This usage scenario has extremely high requirements on latency. Otherwise, there will be an embarrassing situation where the vehicle only responds after a few seconds after the owner issues an instruction.

With the low latency characteristics of 5G, the latency of human-vehicle-cloud interaction can be shortened to the same level as human-vehicle interaction.

Under such a premise, car companies can realize "computing power offloading" and do not need to deploy more large computing power chips in the car . On the one hand, it saves costs, and on the other hand, it can also concentrate the limited computing power for processing. Functional requirements that are more important than human-vehicle interaction, such as driving safety-related functions.