No one knows the first intelligent cockpit for Gen Z young people better than me!

Author: Xiong Ruifeng

Accurate positioning.

When it comes to “Hechuang Auto,” it may be the most low-key new force in the automotive industry in recent history. As an automotive editor, I am not familiar with their products at all. But little did I know that Hechuang is backed by Guangzhou Automobile Group, NIO, and Pearl River Investment Management, and its strength cannot be underestimated.

And the model that came to our Intelligent Cockpit Testing Center in this issue is the Hechuang Z03, a new compact SUV designed for the younger generation of Z era. Let’s take a look at what the intelligent cockpit of this trendy and intelligent vehicle is capable of.

Introduction

Digital Intelligence + ICBT-100 Intelligent Cockpit Evaluation System (click here for detailed standards)

Nowadays, intelligent cockpits have developed to a level where they no longer simply satisfy functional requirements. Traditional passive interaction (initiated by humans) is moving towards active interaction (where machines can initiate based on user needs). More natural and emotional features are quietly changing our driving habits.

In response, we have introduced the “Digital Intelligence + ICBT-100 Intelligent Cockpit Evaluation Standard,” which focuses on three main categories: intelligent hardware, interaction capability, and application ecology. Each category is divided into data and experience dimensions, with more than 30 sub-items for scoring. Let’s take a look at the true strength of the intelligent infotainment systems we use in our daily lives.

Hardware

The Hechuang Z03 intelligent cockpit continues the minimalist design concept. The combination of a suspended 14.6-inch central control screen and a 10.25-inch instrument cluster has become the visual focus of the entire interior. Most of the physical buttons have been removed, and the control of various functional areas has been realized by touch. In addition, the simple and elegant interior color scheme further highlights the technological attributes.

On screen, the 14.6-inch central control screen of the HECHUANG Z03 adopts a TFT-LCD screen from BOE named AV146FHM-N10, with a resolution of 1920*1080 and a measured PPI of 151 (RGB standard arrangement). Due to the relatively low PPI value, the jagged edges of the screen display are more noticeable. Additionally, the screen’s color accuracy is acceptable, with NTCS color gamut at 83.9%, and the peak brightness measurement reaching the highest value among all tested car models, which is 972.34 nit (exceeding the 927.7 nit on the previous generation AION V PLUS).

In terms of actual performance, although the HECHUANG Z03 central control screen has excellent peak brightness, the anti-reflective performance and viewing angle are not up to expectations due to the material of the external screen coating, especially under strong light, the reflection is serious. At the same time, the effect of the screen’s surface oleophobic layer is average, with obvious fingerprint residue.

For the cockpit’s basic hardware, the HECHUANG Z03 adopts the same low-end and entry-level Renesas R-Car M3 chip solution as the AIWAYS AION Y. The chip is designed with 6 cores (2A57+4A53), manufactured with a 16nm process, and the CPU processing power is 31DMIPS. The matched GPU is GX6250, with a working frequency of 600MHZ, but the GPU processing power is only 76GFLOPS, which is just enough to meet the requirements, and there are doubts about the stability of the later system OTA compatibility.

In addition, it is not recommended to install too many third-party apps on the HECHUANG Z03 car machine, otherwise it may cause system lag.

Regarding the interconnectivity module, the HECHUANG Z03 is equipped with Baidu Carlife, which supports Apple and Android phones, enabling navigation, multimedia, and other functions on the car machine.

Here’s a tip: as long as you have Carlife, you can find a lossless conversion Carplay module on a certain online shopping website, which will greatly improve the interactive experience!

Interaction

In the IT industry, there is a saying, “No matter how good the hardware is, without system optimization, it is useless.” This reflects the importance of the system. In the smart cockpit test, the interaction capability occupies a significant portion, and in this column, we divide it into three dimensions: system, voice, and others.

The in-car system of Hycan Z03 is based on Android and developed H-VIP smart driving system (secretly telling you, the kernel and EEA are one), with the whole interface using the current mainstream card layout, and the overall style is more functional. The main page defaults to map information as the core, and the left floating card layout supports map search, Bluetooth phone, multimedia music, radio, and energy consumption five fixed modules, but unfortunately, it does not support custom arrangement order and combination.

At the bottom, there are fixed functional options, including the Home key, application menu, vehicle settings, air conditioning temperature, and air conditioning direction, which are the most commonly used functions. Because of the convenient card + fixed options, the difficulty of getting started with Hycan Z03 has been greatly reduced and it can be quickly used.

In terms of system fluency, Hycan Z03’s logical test time is 1 minute 39 seconds 09, with slight lag.

In terms of voice system performance, Hycan Z03 is equipped with a self-developed voice interaction system, which supports default wake-up words (“Hi, Little CAN”) or custom wake-up words for wake-up, and has two independent microphones in the front row to ensure the recognition ability of the driver and passenger on both sides.

In actual experience, Hycan Z03 can quickly complete the basic functions of voice navigation, temperature, windows, music, volume, and weather, and supports advanced functions such as continuous dialogue (up to 90 seconds), directional reception, and natural dialogue. However, in the case of simultaneous input of multiple instructions, it can only complete one of them.

It is worth mentioning that Hycan Z03 can also control multiple ADAS functions of HYCAN PILOT 2.0 assisted driving through voice shortcuts, including turning on/off ACC and setting speed and distance, lane departure warning, lane departure suppression, and lane centering, which is rare among all tested models.In addition, in terms of wake-up rate and recognition rate, the Hechuang Z03 seems to be a bit “deaf”, often unable to recognize voice commands after waking up, and the probability of occurrence is not low.

The Hechuang Z03 camera system consists of one monocular driving perception camera, five surround cameras, one medium-long range millimeter-wave radar, and four millimeter-wave radars, and supports 360° panoramic imaging + 180° transparent chassis, 3D view, etc. It has been tested that the distortion control is good, and it can ensure accurate recognition of road information and front obstacles.

Application Ecology

However, looking through appearances and seeing the essence, we will find that to achieve a truly intelligent cockpit, it is not just relying on the in-car system itself, but rather adding a richer application ecology. After all, without sufficient application ecology, the system itself has little value, which is similar to the current hot IT industry.

The Hechuang Z03 maintains a high degree of openness and has added a variety of applications through multiple OTA updates, including built-in apps such as Bilibili, Kugou Music, iQiyi, Tencent Video and other multimedia software, and also supports application market expansion.

However, various multimedia software has not been specially optimized for the Hechuang Z03 interface, but directly copied the design of the universal car version. Therefore, the usability of each software still needs to be improved.

In terms of entertainment functions, its application store provides a variety of game experiences such as SingBar, Fruit Ninja, Fishing Joy, Landlord, and Chinese Chess.

Again, it is reminded that due to limited processor performance, it is not recommended to install too many third-party applications, otherwise, it is easy to cause lag.

Conclusion

Perhaps most consumers are not familiar with Hechuang Automotive, but the Z03 created by this car company, which was only established three years ago, can achieve such performance, which is really not easy.

In this test, although the total score of Hozon Z03 at 59.5 is not quite impressive, considering its positioning and price, it still surprised me a lot. Especially its self-developed voice system which can control the driving assistance system, which really amazed me. Meanwhile, its mature interactive experience is user-friendly and convenient. If its cockpit chip and screen coating can be upgraded, its score may be far more than this.