How will the “smart cockpit” be industrialized?

The smart cockpit is a concept that can bring people endless imagination.

If we put aside the maturity and feasibility of technology, almost everyone can imagine a futuristic smart cockpit. For example, in a fully driverless cockpit, people can rest, entertain, hold meetings, and travel at high speeds without any feeling. Cars will become people's second living rooms, offices, temporary lounges, and so on.

However, we must return to the reality of the "smart cockpit". It will take some time for fully autonomous driving to become popular, and the driver's seat and steering wheel are expected to remain the mainstream configuration for about ten years. The so-called "smart cockpit" mainly solves the problem of the "smart driving cabin".

With the rise of technologies such as mobile Internet, Internet of Vehicles, 5G, and artificial intelligence, the smart cockpit, as a complex concept, has gradually become popular in the past two to three years.

At present, there is no unified definition or clear standard for "smart cockpit". This concept will involve the car's own functions such as assisted driving and travel planning, as well as new experiences such as in-vehicle communication, human-vehicle interaction, and intelligent network services.

Now almost every car manufacturer has to install a "Hello, Xiao XX" intelligent voice system in the car, and then the car manufacturer will immediately announce the grand blueprint of the "smart cockpit". A car company CEO said that at the company's internal brainstorming meeting on "smart cars", employees envisioned too many functions, and in the implementation process, some functions had to be removed reluctantly to maintain the user experience. It can be imagined that the concept of the smart cockpit is a big barrel, and all kinds of technologies may be installed in it.

So, is there a reasonable evolution logic for the functions of the smart cockpit? Is there a focus and priority for user experience? Is there a clear judgment on the current problems facing the smart cockpit and the next step of development? These may be what automakers need to fully demonstrate and continuously practice.

Mixed experience and pseudo-demands: the current situation of smart cockpits

If you want to quickly understand what a "smart cockpit" looks like, we can immediately present a large technology platter: Internet of Vehicles, full LCD instrument panel, HUD, in-vehicle infotainment system IVI, advanced driver assistance system ADAS, voice recognition, gesture recognition, AR, AI, hologram, ambient light, smart seats...

But perhaps after you understand these technical concepts one by one, you may become even more confused, and you may even ask: What kind of "smart cockpit" do we really need?

If a new test paper comes out and none of the students in the class have a standard answer, then the easiest way to get a high score is to copy the answer of the best student in the class. As for how to make a smart cockpit, since there is no established standard now, we can learn from the most advanced car manufacturers.

Some car manufacturers have adopted large central control screens, so the following car manufacturers have also begun to adopt the large-screen route, or even the multi-screen route; some have launched in-car voice assistants, so the followers have also begun to launch their own smart assistants, and then add gesture recognition; some have launched in-car navigation planning, and the followers will recommend restaurants and cinemas to you; some use card unlocking, so the followers will use fingerprint unlocking, facial unlocking, and mobile phone APP unlocking; some have launched fatigue detection, and the followers will start to install cameras to obtain as much physiological data of users as possible...

The patchwork of smart cockpit functions has excited the imagination of car companies and made consumers excited when purchasing. However, in real-life usage scenarios, many redundant functions may become like traditional TV remote controls, with 90% of the buttons not being used, and the cost is increased in vain.

In addition, there are many pseudo-demands in these various smart experiences. There is a huge leap in thinking between the technical engineers of the car manufacturers and the large number of ordinary users. That is, the car manufacturers think that the feasible technology is the demand that users will definitely use.

For example, in the hot summer or cold winter, you can start the vehicle air conditioning and heating in advance through the mobile phone APP. This is a very practical demand, so controlling the home in advance through the car is a bit too "advanced". I have seen a function that can cook rice remotely before. Although the rice cooker can be turned on remotely, someone has to put rice in it first.

Another example is human-computer interaction while driving. Under the existing semi-automatic driving conditions, if the driver frequently uses intelligent services to make a large number of decisions such as selecting restaurants, seats, and payments, it will inevitably increase the risk factor of driving.

In addition to technical feasibility and cost control, car companies must also fully consider the driver's cognitive load and driving safety experience. It can be said that any cockpit function that is out of touch with the actual use scenario of the car may be a useless "pseudo-demand".

In addition, the key to the so-called "smart cockpit" lies in "intelligence", and intelligence is inseparable from the iteration and evolution of software and hardware. As a consumable product that will be used for several years, the smart cockpit service carried by a car will definitely not be formed in one go, nor will it remain unchanged. If a smart cockpit cannot be truly upgraded via OTA (Over-The Air), it is basically a pseudo-smart cockpit. But what is a true OTA? If it is just to upgrade the UI and interactive design in the central control system and add some multimedia functions, it is an incomplete OTA; if it is possible to achieve software upgrades for the intelligent assisted driving system ADAS, optimize the vehicle control experience, and make the vehicle "newer and newer", it is the so-called true OTA.

The practical problems that arise in the development of smart cockpits are closely related to the fact that they are in the early stages of development. However, this does not mean that car manufacturers can let their own technology "wanton" and "add bricks and tiles" to the concept of smart cockpits without planning. After all, car companies are not having an easy time now. If consumers do not pay for excessive pursuit of novelty and speed, it will obviously be a loss.

Step-by-step and panoramic planning: the advanced logic of the smart cockpit

Unlike autonomous driving, which has clear grading standards, the concept of smart cockpit itself is complex and non-standardized. There are currently two main definitions on the market.

The most futuristic definition of a smart cockpit is a smart mobile space. The industry sees it as a new product category that is a combination of cars and rooms. Cars are divided into private passenger cars, commercial vehicles, and freight vehicles, and houses are divided into living rooms, hotels, offices, and shops. The combination of different types of car products and house spaces with different functions will form a new product category.

Toyota's e-Palette has already had a prototype of this kind of new product, and the space inside the car can be used for passenger transportation, meetings, retail, etc. As an aside, the "breakfast buses" that have been parked at Beijing subway entrances for a long time no longer have to be so "awkward" parked at subway entrances. In the future, they can operate during peak hours and then drive to office buildings and other places to continue operating after peak hours.

Another definition is to start from user needs and regard the smart cockpit as an intelligent service system that can understand and meet the needs of passengers. Some people call the highest stage of the smart cockpit under this definition "senseless comfort", which means that passengers do not have to worry about driving and traveling in the smart cockpit, but can also get corresponding services and comfortable experience from this space.

Regardless of which one, the mature form of the smart cockpit is related to fully autonomous driving. So how should the smart cockpit develop before autonomous driving is realized? Although detailed standards are difficult to formulate, we can try to establish some "gradual" upgrade principles and key planning for various full scenarios for the smart cockpit.

In general, the service experience of the smart cockpit should be improved along with the popularization of different levels of autonomous driving.

For L2-level assisted driving passenger cars, the most important smart cockpit experience is still driving assistance and travel planning. Driving data prompts, AR real-life navigation and timely road condition reminders through HUD, LCD instrument panel, 360° driving images, etc., reduce the risk of driver's attention diversion and increase driving safety. These will become the focus of smart services. When it reaches the L3 level, it can provide drivers with more non-driving services, such as handling calls, emails, browsing information, and making shopping reservations for more human-computer interaction experiences; when it reaches the L4 and L5 levels, people no longer need to drive, so they can have a complete smart cockpit experience.

Secondly, different smart cockpit services can be provided according to the usage scenarios of different types of cars. For example, private passenger cars are different from shared travel and commercial vehicles. The former pays more attention to personalized user experience and preference settings, collects more user data dimensions, and provides more service experiences. Shared travel and commercial vehicles, on the other hand, pay more attention to the basic stability and safety of the vehicle. Since there are more passengers, they pay more attention to the smell, air circulation and disinfection in the car, and also pay more attention to personal privacy.