The theme of this forum is "Phoenix Nirvana-China Automobile Industry Growing in Challenges". In recent years, intelligent network technology has flourished in China market, and the 5G layout is also in the leading position in the world. The development of car networking has become a new opportunity for the development of China automobile industry.
In the "Frontier Outlook" session of the forum, Professor Tsinghua University Institute of Vehicles and Transportation, Director of the State Key Laboratory of Automobile Safety and Energy Conservation, He Wen, Deputy General Manager of Chang 'an Automotive Intelligent Research Institute, Yang Hongze, Chairman of Beijing Chelian Tianxia Information Technology Co., Ltd., and Zhou, the leading partner of Deloitte China Automotive Industry, participated in the discussion, and looked forward to the changes brought by 5G technology to the car networking and the profound impact on the future car value chain.
The Internet of Vehicles itself is not a new word. In the China market, it attracted much attention as early as 10 years ago. However, as Professor Li Keqiang said, the Internet of Vehicles always has opportunities and challenges, and hopes and difficulties coexist.
On the other hand, China automobile industry has taken many detours in its exploration in the past decade. Zhou said: "This industry is not bleak, but it has been under pressure to make profits."
However, the arrival of the 5G era may bring completely different changes and opportunities to the Internet of Vehicles.
5G brings about changes in the Internet of Vehicles
What is the Internet of Vehicles?
Perhaps for most ordinary car owners, a networked central control large-screen car-mounted machine can listen to songs and navigate in real time. This is the Internet of Vehicles. More advanced, you can check the status of the vehicle through your mobile phone, and even do some operations on the vehicle.
But this is far from the whole of the Internet of Vehicles.
Li Keqiang Li Keqiang, a professor at Tsinghua University Vehicle and Transportation Research Institute and director of the State Key Laboratory of Automobile Safety and Energy Conservation, said that the value of car networking should be placed in the relationship network with intelligent transportation systems and smart cars. At present, most smart cars with entertainment and service functions on production vehicles belong to "car networking1.0"; When the car network is connected to the intelligent transportation system, it can participate in intelligent transportation management and information service; In intelligent transportation system, intelligent vehicles realize collaborative intelligent vehicle control through intelligent networking technology, which is called "Internet of Vehicles 2.0".
Before the arrival of 5G technology, autonomous driving technology had performance bottlenecks, security problems and challenges of commercial operation, and the so-called intelligent transportation system also lacked fundamental efficiency improvement.
5G technology has the characteristics of low latency and high reliability, which meets the performance requirements of the Internet of Vehicles for low latency and high reliability. Therefore, the arrival of 5G will change the status quo of car networking and bring new changes to the automobile industry.
He Wen listed five major changes in the 5G auto time industry.
Firstly, the automobile attributes are redefined. Automobile has changed from a mechanical product equipped with some electronic functions to an electronic product equipped with some mechanical functions, and the product attributes have more room for expansion.
Second, the mode of travel is more intelligent, and people, cars and life are truly integrated. 5G technology closely connects people with smart homes, life entertainment, smart office and other scenes, and also makes life more convenient.
Third, promote the coordination between vehicles and roads and build an intelligent transportation system. Through technical means, reduce the possibility of traffic accidents, improve traffic efficiency, reduce congestion, and lay the foundation for building a smart city.
Fourth, bring subversive changes to the automobile industry. With the advent of 5G technology, it is possible to define cars by software, and software suppliers will be upgraded to "Tier 1" level suppliers. At the same time, some IT or information technology service providers will also enter the supply chain system of the automobile industry.
Fifth, bring revolutionary changes to the mode of production and lifestyle. It not only improves the traffic efficiency, saves energy and reduces emissions, but also can be integrated into the social environment, becoming one of the scenes of work and entertainment, and finally bringing innovation and change to the business model.
Of course, this process will take a long time to develop and mature, and many technical bottlenecks need to be solved, such as chips, big data, cloud computing and other fields, and it also depends on the construction and coverage of 5G basic networks. At the same time, this is also an area that needs cross-industry and cross-professional communication and cooperation, and needs the promotion and support of the state, society and industry.
He Wen, deputy general manager of Changan Automobile Intelligent Research Institute, changed the status quo that cars are not as "fun" as mobile phones in 2-3 years.
Yang Hongze first raised two questions:
Software defines a car. What is the basis?
I have been playing the intelligent network for more than ten years, why don't I have a mobile phone?
In fact, even if the intelligent networked car has developed for more than ten years, these two problems have not been completely solved. The core reason is that the computing power of cars has always lagged behind that of mobile phones.
In Yang Hongze's view, in the past exploration of car networking, many people focused on ecological construction and interactive experience, giving cars too many mobile phone functions, but found that they lacked excellent hardware support and ignored the difference between car scenes and mobile phone usage scenes.
Although it seems to have taken a detour, it has also made the industry discover the limitations of the traditional distributed control system. The traditional automobile control system adopts distributed layout, and there are dozens or hundreds of controllers for body, power, chassis and entertainment. In recent years, the development of entertainment interconnection and automatic driving assistance system has brought great challenges to the traditional control system.
Therefore, only the arrival of "domain controller" can help to improve the quality of automobile computing power, shorten the cycle of iterative upgrade, make it possible for software to define cars, and make cars "better to use" than mobile phones.
Yang Hongze, the chairman of Beijing Chelian Tianxia Information Technology Co., Ltd., integrated the controllers originally distributed in the whole vehicle into 4-5 domain controllers, which made the car surpass the computing power of mobile phones and brought about qualitative changes to the whole vehicle manufacturing.
Yang Hongze gave such an example. He said: "The wiring harness in a car may be several kilometers long and the connection is very complicated, which makes the cost of procurement and manufacturing very high. The domain controller can greatly reduce the number of wire harnesses, reduce costs and improve reliability. "
More importantly, the formation of hardware foundation makes it possible to "separate software and hardware" and more iterative software development. Cars can also achieve faster iterative upgrades and richer gameplay like mobile phones.
When will this day come? Yang Hongze thinks it only takes 2~3 years.
Write it at the end
As a market observer, Zhou said that the bus companies that get off the bus talk about 5G, but just imagine that in the future, when people, cars, roads and clouds form a complete system and realize the ultimate goal of autonomous driving and intelligent transportation, then the rules of the game in automobile business will also be subverted.
In the future, in addition to traditional automobile sales, financial services and outsourcing manufacturing, data will become an important support for automobile companies. Whoever can design his own business model in advance, build an ecosystem and build a brand-new business model will have a better chance to win the future in the long-term competition.
Zhou Kunling, Chief Partner of Deloitte China Automobile Industry