Entering 2023, the trend of "cost reduction" in the automotive industry will drive the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain to start thinking about intelligent and electrified input and output. In addition to the explicit hardware cost (continuing to stockpile materials, emphasizing cost-effectiveness, or reducing configuration), software and the development cost behind it are also one of the main expenses for car companies.
At the same time, starting from the computing platform, diversification (adapting to different brands and vehicle positioning) needs has become a mainstream trend. This means that software cross-platform migration and code inheritance capabilities will also be one of the key elements in evaluating the development cost of the entire life cycle.
According to the monitoring data of Gaogong Intelligent Vehicle Research Institute, in 2022, 7.9505 million pre-installed standard configurations of passenger cars equipped with smart digital cockpits (large screen + voice + Internet of Vehicles + OTA) in the Chinese market (excluding imports and exports) will be delivered, a year-on-year increase of 40.59% %, and the front loading rate is 39.89%.
At the same time, the hardware platform of the smart cockpit (for example, the electronic architecture of the vehicle) is also entering a cycle of change. From the traditional distributed ECU, to the integrated domain controller, to the future central computing architecture, this also puts forward higher requirements for HMI development.
For developers, the high requirements of the automotive OEM market (computing efficiency, safety, cost performance, and compliance) are another hidden cost . This means that what kind of development tools to choose is actually the key first step in reducing costs and increasing efficiency.
1. Reconstruction of multi-screen interactive development mode
The first thing to do is to develop a unified digital user experience across screens, which is especially prominent in the Chinese market. Multi-screen interaction is not exclusive to the automotive industry. In fact, similar applications are already very mature in many other fields.
"Whether it is a new force in car manufacturing or a traditional well-known car company, my overall feeling is that the thinking and demand for HMI has surpassed that of foreign countries by at least one or two generations." According to Luo Miao, product director of Qt Group's automotive solutions and design tools, this It is his most direct feeling from participating in this year's Shanghai Auto Show.
According to the monitoring data of Gaogong Intelligent Vehicle Research Institute, in 2022, 8.3104 million new passenger cars equipped with dual screens (LCD instruments and central control multimedia) will be delivered in the Chinese market (excluding imports and exports), a year-on-year increase of 35.61%. Configurations accounted for 16.62%; in addition, support for multi-screen interactive functions accounted for 43.41%.
Digital cockpit built with Qt: Outrun HMI demo
Behind this configuration change is the dramatic increase in the complexity of software function development .
But in the past, in the form of multi-screen independent ECUs such as instrumentation, central control, and rear-seat entertainment, automakers usually still choose different software development suppliers, and the code reuse rate is low. In the repeated development of code, especially in the development of the car entertainment system.
As the development cycle of new cars is greatly shortened and the iteration speed of hardware platforms is accelerated, "whether one code base can be adapted to multiple platforms, simple and concise APIs, and rapid migration of code bases has become a rigid demand of the market. "
In this context, Qt Design Studio solves the high-efficiency problem of simultaneous design and development, allowing designers and developers to use common design, development, analysis and debugging tools to share a project on different development platforms.
For example, multi-screen interaction. In the demo video below, the Qt design tool and development framework implement a three-screen digital cockpit with digital instrumentation, central control and co-pilot screens. Among them, a key link is the message push between the embedded Linux IVI and the AAOS co-pilot screen.
Qt software
In the past, similar functions were often realized through some third-party plug-ins.
The advantage of the Qt development framework is that it has its own domain-to-domain interaction and data connection. At the same time, it can also do some very subtle animations and special effects during the window dragging process to achieve a seamless experience.
2. Cross-platform requires a unified HMI framework
According to Xu Sheng, general manager of Qt Group China, the greatest value of Qt for various industries is cross-platform , including software and hardware. Whether it is QNX, Linux, or Android, we have solved the problem of compatibility.
At the same time, for the Chinese local computing platform that has risen rapidly in recent years, Qt has also done a lot of localized adaptation development in the first place, such as X9 (cockpit SoC) and E3 (MCU) for Xinchi.
The current mainstream trend in the industry is that various OEMs are trying to differentiate their positioning for different brands and models, and considering cost, they tend to choose different computing platforms.
Since Qt is applicable to any operating system and hardware platform , for example, Qt for Android Automotive also supports free switching to other underlying automotive operating systems in the future. At the same time, all applications and designs are componentized, reusable, and scalable across different projects and platforms.
At the same time, in order to support customers' purely visual UI creation, Qt Design Studio can automatically convert UI design into QML code for editing by more code-oriented technical artists and engineers. More importantly, by cooperating with Qt Framework, 2D and 3D elements can be used in a mixed manner, which is not supported by most traditional UI design tools.
Qt Design Studio interface
More importantly, with the upgrading of vehicle electronic architecture, especially the trend of decoupling software and hardware, traditional tightly coupled vehicle systems are often prone to chain reactions caused by any functional problem.
For example, a non-modular software stack needs to maintain a huge code base behind it, and an update of a function requires rebuilding and installing the entire system.
Only a few companies in the industry have such capabilities, and Qt is an object-oriented framework that uses special code generation extensions and allows real component programming . At the same time, a good encapsulation mechanism makes Qt highly modular and reusable. In addition, a modular C++ library class with rich APIs simplifies application development.
In the view of Gaogong Intelligent Vehicle Research Institute, behind the human-computer interaction of the smart cockpit, the hardware cost (mainly chips, screens, sensors) is relatively controllable, while the software is a variable factor: behind this, including user experience, development efficiency , return on investment and many other factors.
3. Why leading companies choose Qt
As we all know, whether it is a car company or Tier 1, the gross profit margin of software and hardware products in the automotive industry is not high. It is the general trend to develop in-car experiences with diversified needs.”
The choice of the industry's leading enterprises is undoubtedly a weather vane.
For example, last year, auto parts giant Bosch began to deploy Qt's unified cross-platform HMI design and development framework; among them, Qt for MCUs enabled Qt HMI to be deployed on the AUTOSAR CLASSIC platform for the first time. Automakers can maximize graphics computing efficiency and security while reducing bill-of-materials (BOM) costs.
In February of this year, General Motors, which transformed into a "software-defined car", decided to use Qt development tools and development frameworks to realize the design and development of its HMI, and complete testing and deployment on multiple brands and configurations of models.
On various models of a leading new energy vehicle brand in China, Qt is oriented to the application requirements of Android IVI. Based on Linux container technology, it replaces the Hypervisor to save complexity and cost, and the isolation between processes can be achieved between the two containers.
In addition, the classic case of Qt in the automotive industry also includes Mercedes-Benz's new generation of intelligent human-computer interaction system - MBUX, whose development team implements most of the UI experience and software based on Qt, including animations, screen transitions, widgets, etc. This is also the mainstream choice for most car companies who want to create a human-computer interaction system with a brand label.
More importantly, the software developed by Qt is reusable and extensible source code. Reduce time-to-market while increasing productivity.
"Due to the ever-changing customer demand for automotive digital experience, how to utilize hardware computing capabilities, save costs and improve efficiency," said Luo Miao, head of automotive solutions and design tools at Qt Group, representing the competitiveness of the HMI platform .
As a multinational company with more than 1.5 million developers worldwide, Qt Group's cross-industry and cross-platform deployment capabilities are regarded as one of its core competitiveness.
Looking at the market, under the background of the convergence of hardware platforms, the performance of different car companies on the HMI (Human-Machine Interface) is very different. This also reflects the neglect of user experience by most car companies.
"The interface is ugly and cannot be customized, the control response is slow, and there is no interconnection between multiple screens such as central control/dashboard" and other problems, which are also common comments of many car owners on the interaction of the smart car cockpit.
The central control interface of some new cars on sale, source: GGAI
Behind this, in addition to the user-centered function definition and design, what is more important is the efficiency of the development tool/platform, which is also the best comment on cost reduction and efficiency increase under the background of the industry entering a new cycle.