What has YOUPA, “Help You Build a Car,” been up to this year?

On March 7, 2023, Youpao held the “UP DAY 2023 Youpao Experience Day” and officially released China’s first mass-produced fully line-controlled skateboard chassis.

If you are not familiar with this company, you can click on the link: “Hardware Android” Youpao, making car manufacturing more free?.

In short, Youpao is an enterprise that provides car manufacturing services to B-end vehicle manufacturers.

One year has passed, what has this skateboard chassis company done?

Line Control – Core of Software Definition

At this experience day event, Youpao announced that it is China’s first mass-producer of fully line-controlled skateboard chassis. The core of this is “mass-produced” and “line-controlled”.

Let’s first take a look at the line control part.

Digitize the position changes of the vehicle’s power, braking, steering, suspension, that is, the X, Y, and Z axis directions, so that the vehicle is no longer limited by traditional physical structures, which is the core purpose of line control.

Special advantages of line control include the pluggable hardware actuators, software OTA upgrades, and unified software interfaces that bring development convenience.

UP VMC, independently developed by Youpao, is the core of the UP super chassis control. It receives information exchange with ADAS, where ADAS is responsible for trajectory planning, and UP VMC is responsible for trajectory tracking.

It connects with each actuator in the chassis subsystem to enable interactive collaboration between subsystems. It can not only perform kinematic control on the vehicle in the lateral, longitudinal, and vertical directions, but also achieve unified collaboration among various actuators.

### Talking About Steer-by-Wire

The YOUPAO UP super chassis adopts steer-by-wire, which consists of two main components: a steering feel simulator and a wheel actuator.

The active steering technology includes core functions such as road feel simulation, steering angle decision, and steering angle control. It achieves a three-closed-loop control of steering angle, steering speed, and torque through feedforward and feedback control.

Steer-by-wire eliminates the mechanical connection between the traditional steering wheel and the steering wheel, eliminating the limitations of mechanical components and achieving steering solely through electronic control.

Steer-by-wire not only has all the advantages of traditional mechanical steering systems, but can also optimize the characteristic of angle transfer which is difficult to achieve by mechanical systems.

In the steer-by-wire system, the driver’s operation is turned into an electrical signal by sensors. After the signal is analyzed and processed, it is directly transmitted to the actuator through wires.

Brake-by-Wire

The brake-by-wire system of the YOUPAO UP super chassis is composed of the wet-type EHB (electronic hydraulic brake) on the front axle and the dry-type EMB (electronic mechanical brake) on the rear axle.

Compared with traditional brake systems, the main difference of this brake-by-wire system is that the connection between the driver’s pedal and the brake system’s electronic control unit has changed from a mechanical connection to an electrical signal, allowing the brake system to respond faster and brake in a shorter time.

In addition, the application of EMB technology can further release the freedom of arrangement of brake system components. The replacement of relatively complex hydraulic systems with wheel-end motors and calipers has simplified the assembly and maintenance process and reduced costs.

Of course, there are many advantages that come with brake-by-wire:

• Elimination of vacuum boosters, brake force output is not affected by vacuum degree (such as in high-altitude areas);
• Pedal feel can be adjusted, and the OEM can customize pedal feel;
• Quick and accurate pressure building response;
• Supports energy recovery function of new energy vehicles.

Concerning suspension and acceleration settings, most cars currently have wire-controlled systems that support OTA updates, so we’ll skip those details here.

Overall, the advantage of wire-controlled systems is that it is not limited by mechanical structure, allowing for flexible seat layout and driving posture, and fully unleashing the interior designer’s imagination.

The difference in driving feel brought by wire control is the core demand for differentiating driving feel in the future, specifically, the ability to switch between multiple driving modes with just one car.

## Where is the Upgrade?

At the “UP DAY 2023 Experience Day”, YouPao announced the upgrade of their research and development focus from the feature-based “EEA architecture” to the service-oriented “Communication Computing and Control Architecture (CCCA)”, which is more flexible and configurable.

Compared to the commonly used EEA architecture, YouPao’s CCCA focuses more on the transmission and calculation of big data and the movement control of the whole vehicle.

In terms of hardware, YouPao’s Silicon Valley team has developed an UP car supercomputing platform, which supports the two main functions of chassis domain control and intelligent driving domain control.

In the field of chassis control, the sensor captures the signals of vehicle’s power, braking, steering, and suspension. The full-line control technology ensures fast signal transmission.

In terms of intelligent driving, the transmission channel uses the PCI express technology, which theoretically supports ultra-high-speed data transmission of 32-64 Gb per second and can simultaneously transmit high-speed data from eight 8 million pixel cameras.

The Final Words

Regarding the product, their “UP super chassis” can be mass-produced and fully controlled. Finally, YouPao CEO Li Peng did not withhold information and announced two ongoing projects.

The complete vehicle product “Super VAN” has completed winter testing and can be delivered before the end of this year. Orders from home and abroad have been received, and cooperation with logistics companies, internet companies, and others is also sought.

Another one is UP Run and off-road e-family will build a series of vehicles and exclusive experiences based on the UP Super Platform.

2022 was a year of violent market fluctuations, and UP Run’s customer base has undergone dramatic changes from the range of companies like Rivian, Ford, and Amazon.

For some time, many car industry leaders forwarded a policy message on the tightening of domestic car-making qualifications. If the news is true, there are few domestic companies capable of making cars.

Therefore, it is logical for UP Run’s customer base to shift to companies that already have car-making qualifications.

“How to build an advanced intelligent electric vehicle from scratch in the quickest 12 months” plus the advantage of “remote control,” how many B-end users it will attract, we will wait and see.

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.