In the hands of car manufacturers, cars can never become mobile terminals. They use technology more as a marketing gimmick than as a driving force for genetic reorganization in the industry. Perhaps the real power of change comes from outside the automotive industry.
It is said that Li Shufu, chairman of Geely Automobile, is most interested in human-computer interaction, car interconnection and driverless driving. Li Shufu has collected a lot of data to do research, and is full of confidence in Volvo's future human-computer interaction, car interconnection and driverless systems.
I have to say that Li Shufu's sense of smell is sensitive enough. From CES to the Detroit Auto Show, and then to the recent Shanghai International Auto Show in 2013, car interconnection has almost become a hotspot that mainstream car brands must mention and spread. Of course, from the perspective of connotation, some are just communication gimmicks, while some are really trying to build an interconnected car ecosystem. At the same time, forces outside the automotive circle are also actively involved, such as the self-driving system created by Google, the electric sports car of Tesla's new human-machine interaction experience, and so on. In addition, Apple, Nokia, HTC, BlackBerry, etc. have also announced to enter the field of automotive interconnection. But can the car screen really become another open mobile terminal like mobile phones, Pad and even glasses?
In fact, the automobile has always been a slow-changing industry, and even if it is not in a hurry, it will not be quickly eliminated in the short term. The story of the sudden fall of superstars like Nokia and Motorola in the technology industry is hard to happen in the automotive industry.
Because of this, many trends in the automotive industry seem to be very close, but they are still far away. For example, under the impetus of science and technology, a moving story such as the reinvention of cars happened in the automotive industry, which is impossible to achieve in the short term.
The auto industry has not yet worried about life and death. The inertia of thinking centered on the car and the binding of interests on the chain doomed the car to become a mobile terminal. When most people in the automotive industry talk about Tesla, they are contemptuous and call it mortal. As a link in the automotive industry chain, it is difficult for any company in the automotive industry to break the inherent business model, and they cannot produce a promotion. The inner power of change.
Follow the Internet age
The iPhone demonstrated to people to the greatest extent how a piece of hardware can change the world through the Internet. It is also from the iPhone, that even the most conservative car companies in the traditional industry have recognized the power of the Internet and began to actively think about this power.
Compared with the era when U.S. GM launched Onstar 18 years ago and the era when G-Book was launched by Toyota Japan 11 years ago, the current technical environment has changed a lot, with higher-level wireless bandwidth nationwide network coverage such as 2.5G / 3G The industry ’s better business model to create and manage information has been repeatedly proven by companies such as Apple and Google. Many mainstream auto companies are actively planning TelemaTIcs strategy.
Consumers are already living in the digital age, and the Internet has become more and more important in people ’s daily lives. Drivers want to get real-time information in the car safely and conveniently, which is one of the driving forces for TelemaTIcs.
The development of the entire TelemaTIcs industry chain is becoming more and more mature, and it has spanned industries such as automobile production and services, mobile communications, Internet and CP content, and Internet advertising. The revenue of the entire industry will be greatly strengthened in depth and breadth. The next generation of TelemaTIcs will be designed as an open interface, so that a large number of third-party independent software developers will open more applications at a lower cost, which will benefit consumers.
Car-centric
"Continent's thinking on car interconnection is more willing to start from user needs, rather than first define a hardware platform, and then define a software for development." Jing Ming, Director of Asia Pacific Region, Continental Automotive Vehicle Communication System Division, Continental Automotive said. Such a sentence is very common under the Internet thinking, but it is different from the big car background. In each automobile industry chain, the OEM is the definer of the user experience, and the perspective of the OEM is always The user experience is centered on the car.
Continental Automotive Group did two very important things between 2006 and 2007: the acquisition of Motorola Automotive Electronics and Siemens VDO Automotive Co., Ltd. respectively. On July 30, 2007, Continental AG acquired Siemens VDO Automotive Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of Siemens, for 11.4 billion euros. This is the largest merger and acquisition transaction since 136 years since the establishment of Continental Group, and it has made Continental one of the world's top five auto parts suppliers, and has also become the world's number one automotive interconnect supplier. At present, Continental's domestic customers on the car interconnection include Shanghai GM, Shanghai Volkswagen, Dongfeng Nissan, Changan Ford and Daimler Benz.
More important than the transaction itself, a large part of the people from Motorola and Siemens VDO are in the background of communications, navigation, maps and electronic consumer goods, which makes this old auto parts company jump out of the car to see the interconnection of cars. One possibility.
Before the German Continental Group successfully acquired Motorola's global automotive electronics business in 2006, Jing Ming served as the former Director of the Engineering Department of Motorola Automotive Electronics Shanghai R & D Center, where he presided over the development of the software and hardware of the company's computer group embedded communications platform. "From the perspective of communication, cars can be more radical. Previously, it was difficult to understand why the automobile reform was so slow. After entering the auto industry, I found that this industry is very conservative and iteratively slow." Jing Ming described his feelings of entering the car from communications in this way. There are different backgrounds, so there will be different thinking and vision. "
Compared with the more than 100 years of history of the automotive industry and electronic consumer goods, it seems that it has never encountered a history like Nokia and Motorola that has been rapidly dying out in the sky, so most people in the industry think that it is difficult for the car to change in the Internet It is revolutionary, but progressive.
Integration with mobile devices
Three years ago, when Continental Motors and car companies communicated the key points of the user interface, car manufacturers insisted that HMI is the core value of the company. The screen of the car must be consistent with the brand-unique and belongs to the car company. They are very afraid of becoming the advertising platform of Motorola, Sony Ericsson and Samsung, so they are very resistant to MirrorLink's plan. Because MirrorLink is mainly an alliance of Motorola, Sony Ericsson, Samsung and HTC car networking projects.
However, starting from the second half of last year, automobile companies began to actively request MirrorLink related solutions from suppliers of automobile communication system components, that is, to directly map the screen on the mobile phone to the car screen. Because it turns out that if you stubbornly think that this screen on the car requires you to monopolize the resources of this car screen, it is clearly contrary to the Internet's open crowdsourcing thinking. The isolated result will only be abandoned by users.
"For Continental Automotive, the most important strategic goal in the future is the integration of automobiles and mobile devices." Jing Ming said when analyzing the content of its business segment. In the past three years, great changes have also taken place, and car manufacturers have finally actively requested parts suppliers to provide solutions for the integration of automobile and mobile device links.
With mobile devices as the center, it is currently mainly mobile phones. In the future, it may be products such as Google Glass. The screen in the car is just a supporting facility for mobile devices, and mobile phones are the center of communication. After determining this kind of thinking, the focus should be on the presentation of the interactive interface, how to make the car owner better call, surf the Internet, and navigate in the car, what content and usage habits people see at home and cafes Continue in the car.
To this end, the product framework given by Continental Automotive is mainly to promote Autolink as a whole brand service concept to auto companies and launch a series of products and services. But as a supplier, we still need to provide customized services for auto companies. In the process of promotion, Continental Automotive found that the App Stroe specifically for cars must not be the direction of Auto Connect, because the auto industry is still only good at car-related things, and the various products on the Internet must be done by professional personnel. Therefore, Continental Automobile gave up this practice some time after launching App Stroe.
At the same time, Continental Motors launched three levels of service. The first level is to use the mobile phone as an extension of the radio, so that the content of the radio is mapped to the screen of the mobile phone, and the car radio is used as the speaker of the mobile phone. "This is called complementary resources." This is mainly aimed at positioning low-end products. The higher level is to directly move the mobile device MirrorLInk to the large screen of the car to get a larger display, while the brain and computing are still on the handheld device. The ultimate goal is to make cloud-based applications for in-vehicle systems without relying on handheld devices or putting all applications on the in-vehicle system. Instead, in the cloud, the in-vehicle system only serves as a "cat" and the mobile phone as a link Network pipes. "We don't need to be particularly dazzling on the HMI. To simplify the operation of the vehicle-mounted system, driving is the most important." Jing Ming analyzed.
In a driving scenario, the best human-computer interaction at the moment should be voice recognition that keeps the hand away from the steering wheel. However, there is no very good solution to the problem of Chinese speech recognition. Jing Ming believes that the current level of Chinese speech recognition can be applied very well in the application. First of all, it is necessary to choose which type of words need to use cloud storage voice, and which part of words use local voice. For example, we want to navigate to Peking University, and people generally call it "Peking University", so if such data is in cloud storage voice, although the search time will be relatively longer, but through some big data algorithms can Get a more accurate answer, and the fixed road name can be stored locally, and the speed is fast.
Limitations of change
We can see that the automotive industry has to follow in the footsteps of consumers' Internet-based life, and recognize the interconnection of automobiles, and at the same time further recognize the integration of automobiles and handheld devices, but this still has limitations. In addition, elephants and elephants are destined not to merge.
After the iPad mini was launched, many people in Europe, America and China demonstrated how to embed the iPad mini in the car as a vehicle-mounted system. This aspect shows that this matter is feasible, while the other aspect also highlights people's extreme dissatisfaction with the vehicle-mounted system.
"In fact, there are companies that actually find us to embed the iPad in the car, but the problem here is relatively complicated. In fact, the life cycle of the car is 10 years, and the life cycle of consumer electronics products is much shorter. So far, no pure capacitive screen can reach the car level. "After analyzing the problems here, the car-level capacitive screen must be large enough, and it must be ensured that it will not crash under extreme high and low temperatures. And the life cycle is 10 years. In the course of 10 years, the hardware memory cannot be upgraded, so the software and speed that can really be carried will be more and more restricted. In addition, such a screen cannot be configured on all levels of cars. If a screen is shipped with millions of units, it is not attractive enough for screen manufacturers.
There are also auto companies and Apple talking about cooperation, but the auto companies and Apple that are accustomed to relying on their breath to survive cannot naturally be integrated, because both parties want to firmly grasp the right to speak. In fact, the magnitude of the car is not a market category for Apple that they want to open up.
As a supplier of automotive interconnect terminal solutions and hardware in the industrial chain, Continental Automotive's changes are very limited. First of all, they will not be revolutionaries. They have vested interests and need to service car companies to survive.
"We have always been caught between the tide and the safety car electronic parts, can not keep up with the rhythm of electronic fast-moving consumer goods, but are also trying to promote changes in the automotive industry. We have also been confused." Jing Ming said. Jing Ming clearly showed the sense of fragmentation of being in such an industry. On the one hand, he can see the direction and approach clearly, on the other hand, he has to adapt to and echo the rhythm of an industry and a system.
Jing Ming graduated from Yale University in the United States with a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering, and later studied at Rice University in the United States, where he majored in applied bioengineering and obtained a master's degree in electronic computer science. Although he saw the trend of the automotive Internet a few years ago and has a sharper judgment than people in the traditional automobile industry, in a system, it is almost impossible for a person to change an industry.
Now it seems that whether auto companies are really embracing technology, or just using technology to decorate brands and products in a short period of time, these endogenous innovations and changes in the auto industry cannot simply become a trend leader. The story of Continental Automotive, an international auto parts supplier, is the best example.
In the hands of car manufacturers, cars can never become mobile terminals. They use technology more as a marketing gimmick than as a driving force for genetic reorganization in the industry. Perhaps the real power of change comes from outside the automotive industry.
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