One of the most important principles in the IT field is rapid software iteration.
For technology products, the demand is always upgrading. After a technology or software system comes out, if it is not iterated in the future, the result may be disastrous.
For example, a few years ago, many readers may have bought some "nothing" smart consumer hardware. The products that were advertised at the beginning were very explosive. Once the manufacturer stopped upgrading the system, it became an ordinary home from a smart home.
Compared with smart homes, cars are replaced less frequently, and they are often not easily replaced once purchased. Therefore, in the new era of software-defined cars, if intelligent connected cars cannot continuously upgrade software and maintain a leading experience, the potential losses to users will only be greater.
In recent years, OEMs, Internet companies, and ICT companies have all aimed at upgrading the cockpit and launched a large number of new car-machine systems.
But unfortunately, compared to the rapid iteration of smartphones, smart home appliances and other systems, the software iteration of the car cockpit is too slow, and it is no longer suitable for the current rapidly changing user needs.
The main reason for this situation is that the rapid iterative software thinking must be combined with the hardware thinking of the automotive industry, and the integration and adaptation of the two is very difficult.
Huawei has brought the innovative solutions and evolutionary thinking of the smart consumer hardware industry to the automotive industry. AITO has not only incorporated a large number of innovations into the cockpit, but also can iterate quickly like the smartphone industry.
From July 15th, AITO Wenjie will start to push OTA upgrades in batches to car owners of Wenjie M5 Extended Range, Wenjie M5 Pure Electric Edition and Wenjie M7, bringing seven major function updates and more than ten experience optimizations to users.
The times and market demands are moving forward, and the development of technology will never go back. How far are we from the perfect smart cockpit experience? An upgrade in the world of AITO may help to understand the evolution direction of the "third space".
direction of evolution
Take a broad view first and then make an appointment
There is a joke that as long as it can say the words "demand" and "supply", a parrot can also become an economist.
However, a new type of consumer hardware is often born based on vague needs. Various manufacturers come up with solutions, and go through a stage of contention and brutal growth. Competitive and convincing product solutions win, and then technology is constantly iteratively updated, capabilities and user experience are steadily improved, leading the entire industry into a period of prosperity.
Huawei, which is well versed in the innovation of technological products, and AITO Wenjie are also walking on such a logical chain.
This OTA upgrade can be condensed into two principles as a whole:
The first principle is to read extensively first and then make appointments.
Satisfaction of user needs cannot rely on blind "stacking". On the basis of fully listening to the real demands of users, AITO asks the most important things in user experience to make a hierarchy, and differentiates and satisfies different levels of experience needs. This upgrade mainly focuses on two experiences:
One is the driving experience, the control is more calm. This OTA upgrade first aims at in-depth optimization of the driving experience of the whole vehicle. After the upgrade of Wenjie M5 Extended Range and Wenjie M7, all Wenjie cars will support Huawei's self-developed HUAWEI DATS® system (Dynamic Adaptive Torque System Dynamic Adaptive Torque System), which can control the vehicle in a more stable state in advance. , while effectively reducing motion sickness, lower energy loss, and more power saving.
(HUAWEI DATS)
The second is the entertainment experience, which is more satisfying. To bring a more extreme entertainment cockpit experience, this OTA has brought the audio equalizer function, through the way of personalized definition, so that the owner of Wenjie car can easily hear the exclusive music played only for him. Coupled with the industry-leading HUAWEI SOUND audio system, the space in the car can be transformed into the owner's private tuning room in seconds. At the same time, a variety of applications such as Kuwo Music, Sohu News, Nursery Songs, and Tuyou Chinese Chess have landed on the application market, further enriching the in-car audio-visual entertainment experience.
The second principle is to be broad and subtle.
Further expand the ecological boundaries. In this OTA upgrade, Harmony OS 3 is one of the most popular features of users, the super desktop, which supports login with different accounts, allowing a large number of mobile terminal applications to be seamlessly connected to the car. The mobile phone and car-machine ecology are further integrated and shared, and the in-car experience of drivers and passengers is not bound by the boundary of the isolated car-machine system.
At the same time, focus on the subtleties. For a large number of more detailed pain points, we will start to overcome them and bring a more extreme experience. For example, considering that users may need to leave the car for a short time, such as traveling with pets, AITO has added an in-car care mode. After the owner leaves the car and locks the car, the car remains at a constant temperature and the voice function is disabled, further improving the safety and convenience of car use.
Fundamentally solve the user's problem of "can't find the car", Wenjie M5 series models have added a smart car search function, which can identify the parking location and floor of the vehicle during parking, automatically record the parking space information, and synchronize the parking space information to the owner's AITO APP after leaving the car and locking it.
The human-vehicle dialogue is easy to be ignored. After the OTA upgrade, the interactive technology is more accurate, and Xiaoyi is free from wake-up. Users of the Wenjie M5 extended range version and Wenjie M5 pure electric version do not need to say the wake-up word "Xiaoyi Xiaoyi", but can directly issue instructions such as "Navigate to the AITO Experience Center on Bulong Road", and Xiaoyi's voice assistant can "hear, understand, and execute within seconds".
It can be seen that the special feature of AITO is that it is not only good at understanding the "small but important" pain points of users, but also has strong engineering capabilities and a talent team to promote the implementation of functions and ensure the product iteration cycle.
Technology bonus
Accumulate first, then thin hair
Nobel laureate Sydney Brenner famously said, "Scientific progress depends on new technologies, new discoveries, and new ideas. New technologies are better than new discoveries, and new discoveries are better than new ideas." Advanced technological tools are more important than a clever idea/invention.
If there is no digital technology and intelligent technology, then the networking and intelligence of automobiles will always remain in science fiction stories and cannot really happen.
It is precisely because of Huawei's accumulation of technology that AITO Wenjie can firmly and quickly grasp the anchor point of the upgrade and provide differentiated solutions in the midst of fuzzy requirements.
The first thing worth mentioning is driving-related technology.
A large part of the reason why it is difficult to upgrade the cockpit is that software innovation needs to be deeply coupled with the mechanical hardware of the car. However, the automobile industry has high knowledge barriers, and it is difficult for Internet companies and technology companies to understand it in a short period of time. The ability of AITO to stand out from the crowd is actually the result of a long technical journey.
Take the HUAWEI DATS™ system, the highlight of this upgrade, as an example. It is a dynamic adaptive torque system independently developed by Huawei. HUAWEI DATS™ solves two problems: one is to improve the battery life of electric vehicles, and the other is to improve the driving experience of electric vehicles.
Neither problem is simple. The battery life of electric vehicles is a problem that plagues the majority of users and the entire industry. HUAWEI DATS™ system adopts power linearization design, adjusts VCU (Vehicle Vehicle Controller) torque curve and torque MAP, realizes the improvement of kinetic energy recovery efficiency of M5 EV, and increases battery life by 10% under urban road conditions.
The problem of battery life is solved, but after the kinetic energy recovery is increased, when going through bumpy road sections and speed bumps, the control of force is lost, and the handling and driving experience are reduced. How to control the excess torque in a smooth and power-saving way and improve the driving experience has become the next problem to be solved.
(HUAWEI DriveONE electric drive system)
At the end of August 2022, the online confirmation of HUAWEI DATS™ will be completed. Thanks to the deep fusion design of the HUAWEI DriveONE motor and the vehicle, the motor resolver sensor senses changes in the road surface, and the DATS™ system performs adaptive torque adjustment based on the input of road condition change information. The VCU and MCU are coordinated to control the torque control link. The torque response time delay is reduced to 4ms, which can quickly complete intelligent identification and torque adjustment, and reduce shaking.
Compared with traditional fuel vehicles with a purely mechanical structure, the torque is adjusted through mechanical structures such as engine + gearbox + differential, and the torque response delay is about 400ms; for traditional new energy vehicles, the ESP algorithm control link of the chassis is long, and the torque response delay is about 100ms. The hard-core innovation of HUAWEI DATS™ has obvious advantages in experience and has become one of the most hard-core technological innovations in the AITO industry.
Of course, Huawei's technological moat is far more than that. For example, another killer feature is AI smart technology.
Why is the function of intelligent car search only realized by AITO?
The parking lot scene is very complex, and it is difficult to identify the parking space information. The pictures taken by ordinary technology are unclear, there are too many invalid pictures, and the cost of reading pictures is high. It is difficult for other manufacturers to make the smart car finding function available and truly implemented.
Compared with other car companies, Huawei has more abundant algorithm technology reserves, better internal coordination and bonding, and better technical control capabilities.
After optimizing the parking lot scene, Huawei's self-developed OCR AI algorithm uses millions of real parking lot pictures for multi-dimensional comparison training, which has a strong foundation for improving the OCR accuracy rate of car finding, jumping from 20% to 90% commercially available level.
In the car-finding scenario, another pain point is privacy compliance.
After people leave the car, they need to take photos to collect information such as floors, license plates, and faces. The use of these data must comply with relevant laws and regulations. Therefore, for the commercial implementation of the smart car-finding function, a privacy desensitization module must be added. AITO asked the world to introduce HarmonyOS's leading privacy and security capabilities, visual recognition brings the ability to perceive the external environment, and at the same time desensitizes private data.
It can be seen that AITO is an "OTA ceiling", and the smart car-finding feature is based on the capabilities of HarmonyOS, which is constantly iterating, allowing users to use it frequently and often new.
A similar experience, and the newly upgraded "Xiaoyi" wake-up free.
The vehicle scene is different from the home, which has a complex interference environment and performance requirements that must execute commands quickly. How to better complete far-field wake-up, dialect recognition, and special word order recognition when people are talking to cars requires high technical solutions.
The R&D team combined NPU computing hardware + precise speech recognition algorithm to achieve a more natural voice interaction and avoid the embarrassment of repeatedly calling the wake-up word.
The technical advantage of Huawei's software and hardware collaboration is the key for AITO to open up the gap in human-vehicle interaction experience.
As Yu Chengdong, executive director of Huawei, CEO of Terminal BG, and CEO of Smart Car Solutions BU said, "Huawei has the most advanced technology, and we will insist on upgrading technology to move towards the era of software-defined cars! Since the launch of Wenjie M5 and M7, we have undergone many OTA upgrades and continuous iterations, so that every Wenjie car bought by consumers is the starting point of experience, not the end of experience. The new era of software-defined cars is also a new era in which products must continue to iteratively develop."
In the final analysis, the rapid evolution of the AITO world lies in the inherent advantages of Huawei's technology, which can continuously release technological dividends.
innovation engine
Pass the sea first and then build the ferry
The upgrade of the cockpit is moving towards in-depth innovation, and the high requirements for self-developed technology and basic technology force manufacturers to focus on research and development and continuous breakthroughs. As a result, technology companies holding their technological cards have the opportunity to overtake traditional car companies in corners.
From the OTA upgrade of AITO Wenjie, we can see that Huawei's innovation engine has accelerated.
Compared with the direct improvement in experience, it should be noted that AITO's intelligent car selection mode has brought an innovative paradigm to the automotive industry:
First of all, innovation does not mean that if you dare to "create", you must be "new". Differentiated technologies can bring surprises, and there is a strong necessity. Based on the latest technology and underlying breakthroughs, AITO has opened up room for improvement in experience through sharp innovations when the cockpit experience enters the deep water area. Let more users begin to believe that the car machine can also be like a smartphone, with a particularly large range of innovation and continuous updating of functions.
Secondly, innovation must not be false, but must be practical and practical. No algorithms in the void, no gimmicks at press conferences, AITO's innovation in the world, close to real needs, committed to practical technology integration, has a complete industrial foundation and strict development links, and "what you see is what you get" for users.
At the same time, innovation has become a systematic project. "Innovation chain, industry chain, capital chain, and policy chain are intertwined and mutually supportive." Only in this way can the road of innovation be broader and the industry full of vitality.
Some experts have previously called for the importance of autonomous controllability of the car-machine system: 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 well the car is made, it will be a tall building on the beach.
Cars and machines can no longer repeat the mistakes of mobile phones, and the industrialization of domestic operating systems and ecological prosperity are the key.
AITO entered the world and became an important ecological force of Hongmeng system in the automotive field. OTA freedom based on the Hongmeng system can meet the needs of industry partners for independent and trusted bases, accelerate the launch of domestic applications and services, and also incorporate the wisdom of more industry partners and developers into the cockpit.
The autonomy of the underlying operating system is credible, and it also makes us believe that the days of imitating and catching up with the Western auto industry have turned the page.
We are in an era that calls for innovation and achieves innovation. The upgrade and transformation of the cockpit is far from complete. Huawei's iterative experience and innovation capabilities can just become an upgrade boost for the automotive industry. The continuous evolution of AITO has shown the world the unlimited potential of the smart car model. With continuous innovation, the user experience can grow without limitation.
Go through the sea first and then build a ferry. You may wish to witness the beautiful scenery along the way with AITO Wenjie.
