In December 2021, Voyah FREE delivered a total of 3,330 vehicles. Since the delivery began in August 2021, Voyah has delivered a total of 6,791 vehicles.
OTA stands for Over-The-Air technology, which enables remote management of software through the mobile communication interface. The common software upgrades of mobile phone systems belong to OTA.
At the first Voyah User Night held on October 16, 2021, Voyah announced the Voyah FREE vehicle OTA plan and promised to release it within the year. On December 27th, Voyah officially pushed the first remote OTA upgrade service for Voyah FREE owners (version number V1.1.0), and held an OTA upgrade experience exchange meeting at the Voyah factory in Wuhan on January 13, 2022.
Voyah officially summarized this OTA upgrade with four points:
- Entertainment: “Sing Along the Way”
- Interaction: “Say it to See it”
- Experience: “One-Key Access”
- Display: “Clear at a Glance”
“Sing Along the Way” implies that the OTA upgrade has added the popular car karaoke function, which, when combined with an external microphone, instantly turns the car into a private KTV box. It is understood that, like other new forces, Voyah’s KTV function also cooperates with Raishii.
The KTV function requires a dedicated microphone and receiver, which have now been listed on the Voyah online store.
“Say it to See it” refers to the added “speakable” voice assistant function for interaction. Users can use their voice to speak out the button names displayed on the car screen instead of touching them, thus improving driving safety. The above figure is an interaction example. When the passenger says “Daily Recommendation”, the car display automatically selects the Daily Recommendation button and starts playing.
“One-Key Access” also includes a host of comfort experiences, including:- Air suspension welcome logic is adjusted from triggered by Bluetooth key proximity to triggered by exterior unlocking;
- Auto window closure trigger scenario is adjusted from triggered by key moving away from the vehicle to closing and locking the window in any form;
- Tailgate opening is adjusted from long-pressing the key button to double-clicking;
- Added car machine negative one screen and quick shortcuts;
- During navigation, LanMap displays charging piles with free charging ahead;
- After parking, charging cover opening prompts, etc.
“At a glance” refers to optimizing the display of menus that were not clear enough before, making the presentation more intuitive and clear.
In addition, Lanmap stated that they will maintain the speed of quarterly mid-year version OTA updates in the future, and will make unscheduled minor version upgrades for holiday activities, minor bug fixes, etc.
Overall, this OTA update mainly focuses on optimizing user experience and does not involve major new features. However, we can still see that the emergence of OTA technology has brought about significant changes in both early-stage vehicle development and after-sales service.
It can be expected that the future application scenarios of OTA will be even more extensive. With the participation of a large number of users, vehicle functions will also become more user-friendly and practical, better meeting the real needs of users. For both manufacturers and consumers, OTA achieves a win-win situation.
This article is a translation by ChatGPT of a Chinese report from 42HOW. If you have any questions about it, please email bd@42how.com.