The Fourth Great Transformation of the Automobile Industry
Author: Roomy Zhou
Editor: Roomy Zhou
The automobile industry is undergoing its fourth great transformation in history. The first half is the electrification, and the second half is towards intelligence. In terms of automobile intelligence, the story can be traced back to 2014.
That year was the first year of the intersection between the automobile and the internet. Apple’s Carplay and Google’s Android Auto emerged, igniting everyone’s imagination about the connected car.
In China, people had yet to realize that the internet might bring disruptive innovation to the automobile industry. At this time, Alibaba was the first to cast its eyes on an unfamiliar field, joining hands with SAIC Motor Corporation to create the Internet of Vehicles, and jointly established Banma Network Technology Co., Ltd. the following year.
In fact, in Alibaba’s strategic layout, the underlying operating system was positioned as a platform for achieving the Internet of Everything, and it foresaw that the automobile would be one of the most important terminals. The chairman of Alibaba’s Technology Committee, Wang Jian, once stated in a speech that the Internet of Everything is an era of interconnection between things, and using automobiles as an example, its transformation is no less important than the shift from horses to internal combustion engines to power carriages.
Also in 2014, Chen Hong, the current chairman of SAIC Motor, proposed the concept of the “New Four Modernizations” of the automobile, sounding the horn of transformation towards “electrification, connectivity, intelligence, and sharing,” which later became a profound influence on the development of the entire automobile industry.
“SAIC-Alibaba once met and defeated countless others.” The fruit of their labor was born two years later. On July 6, 2016, Alibaba and SAIC jointly released the Roewe RX5, the first Internet-connected car developed based on AliOS.
As the first car jointly built by Alibaba and SAIC, the Roewe RX5 was named the “world’s first Internet-connected car,” and Banma internally defined this “battle” as the “Normandy landing” of the automobile industry’s century-long transformation and upgrading.
Shortly after it went on sale, the Roewe RX5 became a “web celebrity” of that year, with first-month orders exceeding 25,000 vehicles and sales exceeding 20,000 vehicles for several consecutive months thereafter, with over 70% of them being Internet-enabled models.
It was this model that first presented the on-board system in an unprecedented way, and Banma Network, which created the system, became a rising star in one fell swoop, becoming the undisputed benchmark enterprise in China’s connected car industry and the Huangpu Military Academy.
As a result, the concept of the “New Four Modernizations” began to become popular, and independently developed automobile operating systems emerged in the market, including Google’s Android Auto, Tesla’s Version, Volkswagen’s VW.OS, and Huawei’s HarmonyOS.The operating systems of domestic manufacturers such as BYD D-link, Geely GKUI, NIO OS from NIO, and Xmart OS from XPeng are based on Linux or Android (which is widely used in China) with limited customization.
In August 2019, Alibaba and SAIC restructured Banma, with Zhang Chunhui appointed as the Co-CEO of Banma Zhixing. Then, founding members who made great contributions to AliOS, such as Cheng Li, Huang Youyong, Xu Qiang, and Xia Lian, joined Banma and took on core management roles such as CMO, COO, CIO, and CFO.
After the restructuring, the original AliOS business unit was officially incorporated into Banma Zhixing. In addition, in terms of technology and ecology, Banma Zhixing has received full support from Alibaba.
To lead the future development of automotive intelligence, Banma Zhixing is becoming more open based on Powered by AliOS, and is adopting a multidimensional approach to technology, products, and cooperation.
A New Opportunity for Heroes
In early 2020, after conducting sufficient industry research and demonstrations, Banma Zhixing’s Chief Architect, Xiao Feng, led the team in thinking and planning to create an intelligent cockpit OS, and soon accurately designed the top-level architecture.
At this point, the company was optimistic about the new direction and began to expand the team on a large scale. In the eyes of the management team, there were two paths to choose from:
One way is to directly use other people’s existing technology, which can solve the current problems but bring long-term risks. Because the core technology is in the hands of others, there is a risk of being constrained by others, and existing technology may not be able to meet the needs of future product revolutionary changes.
The other way is to start from scratch, develop new technology, not to catch up, but to strive to take the lead. Only in this way can strategic opportunities be seized and innovation be achieved. This is like choosing to suffer now in order to avoid suffering in the future.
Banma Zhixing, who had chosen the “endgame” from the beginning, chose the second path.
In 2020, Banma Zhixing clarified the future development direction and formulated an OS strategy trilogy, namely “Intelligent Vehicle OS – Intelligent Cockpit OS – Intelligent Vehicle OS” that will be gradually upgraded.
Li Xiaohua, the Director of Banma Zhixing’s Intelligent Cockpit Technology, believes that “the operating system is the soul of the intelligent car, which can make data communication and collaboration possible across different domains on board. In the development process from the vehicle OS to the entire vehicle OS, the cabin OS is an important step.”
However, taking this step is not easy. It is even harder to find cooperative partners who are willing to share hardships with you. The difficulty lies in the fact that after going through all the hardships to create a new product, it is very likely that others will not want or dare to try it.
The opportunity came. SAIC’s “Project One” has already started.The secret project with the codename “L” was launched at the end of 2018, with SAIC Chairman Chen Hong personally in charge and President Wang Xiaoqiu as the project commander. In mid-2019, the L project was officially approved with the goal of creating high-end intelligent pure electric vehicles.
Obviously, the L project is quite compatible with the new direction of Banma Zhixing. However, despite the previous successful collaboration case of Roewe RX5, Banma Zhixing also needs to compete with other suppliers on the same stage.
Starting from April 2020, Banma Zhixing’s technical team frequently went to SAIC to discuss whether Banma could participate in the L project. However, the situation at that time was not favorable for Banma. SAIC had already spent nearly a year developing a dual operating system solution of QNX+Android (referred to as Q+A).
“At that time, SAIC still judged Banma mainly based on its previous advantages in speech recognition and maps,” said Li Xiaohua to “AutoCar Max”. The intelligent future that the L project wanted to create did not match Banma’s inherent impression.
In mid-2020, Banma Zhixing’s COO Huang Youyong heard the news that “Banma might not be able to participate in the L project.” He was shocked, but more of it was unwillingness.
Since the great victory in the Battle of Normandy, Banma people have been eager for a bigger victory. This opportunity has come. How much they hope to apply the newly developed intelligent cockpit OS to create an industry-recognized benchmark product in the L project. Otherwise, what’s the point like a hero who has learned to slay dragons but has no place to use it?
In September of the same year, things changed for the better.
As the first model of the L project, IM L7 is equipped with a liftable-through continuous screen with a size of 39 inches, as well as a 12.8-inch 2K control screen. This design of a continuous large screen is unique in the same price range of models.
However, in the process of promoting, the Q+A solution exposed some difficult-to-solve problems, which made it impossible for IM L7’s three large screens to achieve integrated operation, and Banma happens to be able to solve this problem.
However, as Li Xiaohua said, “The operating system is abstract. Without making some PoCs (Proof of Concept, that is, concept verification), customers will find it difficult to believe that ‘you have technical strength’.”
Without any reference, what to do, you can only do it yourself and work hard day and night. In just 90 days, Banma produced a PoC that is ready to demonstrate.
In the original Q+A solution, multiple screens in the car were still independent, while the solution provided by Banma connected the isolated lakes and formed “a sea.” This has never been seen before.By the end of September, SAIC Group Chief Engineer Zu Sijie and his team made the final decision to adopt the Zebra Intelligence Cockpit OS in Project L. Huang Youyong recalls this milestone with great excitement.
After the two parties officially agreed to cooperate, the product and design definition of the intelligent cockpit system started, and Zebra Intelligence Cockpit’s design director, Chen Sicheng, took on the heavy responsibility.
During a co-creation meeting, SAIC introduced the meaning of the “IM” car name, which is inspired by the idea of “knowledge of everything, and thus the world is well governed” in the Book of Changes. Inspired by this name, Chen Sicheng began to think about what intelligence really means in ancient wisdom.
Following the philosophy of “knowing everything and governing the world,” he thought of what Laozi said in the Tao Te Ching: “The highest good is like water, which benefits all things and does not compete with them.” Suddenly, he had an idea.
With the concept of “the highest good is like water” as the core, Chen Sicheng led the team to co-create a set of flowing human-car interaction design concepts with IM Auto. In the Design Requirement Committee (DRC) evaluation at the end of 2020, this product design concept completely impressed key executives such as IM Auto’s CEO Liu Tao.
After the presentation of the proposal, IM Auto’s attendees applauded, and the meeting was adjourned.
On November 26th, 2020, the “Jiujia” project “IM Auto,” jointly created by SAIC Group, Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park and Alibaba Group, with a budget of tens of billions, was officially unveiled to the outside world. It was positioned in the high-end pure electric market and aimed at high-end consumers. Alibaba and SAIC once again joined hands, not only based on the success of their past cooperation, but also because both parties have the determination to create high-end intelligent products using digital new technology.
In January 2021, at the first IM Auto launch event, the new car was unveiled, highlighting the “the highest good is like water” and the “seamless cross-screen experience,” which attracted widespread media and public attention.
Looking back on those days of non-stop research and development, Li Xiaohua sighed, “Heroes have a place to play.”
In the New Year’s Day of 2021, Zhang Chunhui led a pledge conference, in which the SAIC project codenamed “L” was officially named as Zebra Intelligence Cockpit’s “Sky Knight Campaign.”
“My only requirement is to create an ultimate product experience,” This is Zhang Chunhui’s expectation for the Battle of Tianjiao. “We must have ambitious goals and work down to earth.”
For Zebra, the Battle of Tianjiao is a battle that can only succeed and not fail. It is a new experiment to empower car companies with new technologies, new products, and new models, and is also a good opportunity to prove themselves.
In August 2021, Zebra’s HMI (Human Machine Interface) design has passed the assessment. “High-end and high-quality” is the evaluation from Liu Tao, the co-CEO of IM.
Since then, on the product level of IM Automobile, Zebra has relied on the advantages of Alibaba Group and worked with Alibaba Cloud, Damo Academy, Tmall Genie, Alipay, Amap, and Qianxun Location to jointly empower IM.
Zebra is not only responsible for operating systems, HMI, voice assistants, maps, Carlog intelligent onboard camera systems but also deeply involved in DLP digital projection headlights, cloud platform construction, and empowering IM Automobile to create intelligent driving with product concepts such as “man-machine driving together” and “increasing trust and enhancing experience.”
In mid-2021, Zebra established the Banzhi Business Unit, concentrating technology, product, and engineering forces to serve the IM project.
In fact, as early as the fourth quarter of 2020, the two sides began to work together, and IM’s technical team gradually came to Zebra and received training from the latter to better collaborate. At the same time, Zebra’s multiple teams almost went to IM for meetings every week, pushing project progress in a tight time cycle.
Continuous discussions and updates on plans, throwing out different ideas in group chats every day, and repeatedly studying them in scenes where functions are implemented.
The IMOS underlying system of IM Automobile is the AliOS Intelligent Cockpit Operating System, based on a distributed architecture design, which achieves data fusion and task collaboration at the operating system level through Fusion Soft Bus and has cross-domain fusion capabilities. The intelligent cockpit OS connects the instrument domain and information entertainment domain, creating an immersive cockpit experience and maximizing the capabilities of hardware such as screens. In terms of fluency, the most intuitive is that the screen response speed of the intelligent cockpit based on AliOS is faster than that of Q+A.
“At that time, there was a lot of pressure. We not only had to explain what products could achieve but also had to explain in detail how the SOA framework was implemented, where its value lies, how security is ensured, and so on. We had to battle with different technical engineers,” recalled Zheng Jianping, a senior architect at Zebra.
Since the two sides are to battle, of course, there are unpleasant moments.”Zebra and Chery leading hundreds of people in joint-office encountered some friction in the early stages, but with a shared goal, they established a strong sense of trust during the collaboration,” said Liu Wang, Deputy General Manager of the Banzhi division.
Interestingly, his statement aligns highly with Li Weimeng, the leading person in charge of Chery’s automotive user touchpoints.
In the deep collaboration between Zebra and Chery, Li Weimeng had an important task of ensuring that the products were delivered on time despite various modifications, and also to ensure that integration and selection compromises of various viewpoints were made to align the needs of both technical innovation and market demand.
Li Weimeng mentioned another aspect of converting engineering thinking to market demand. «Fortunately, both Chery and Zebra teams have internet thinking, which makes our collaboration smoother and faster,” she said.
The efforts made by the teams of both sides were recognized by the users. In the Chery APP community, many users who used the Chery L7 system were appreciated.
An ID called Timmy, who relied heavily on the car system, was very satisfied with the L7’s entire IMOS operating system when experiencing it statically. “It’s very smooth, logical, clear, simple and easy to use,” he said.
He believed that the Chery L7 system adopted a more open, collaborative, and compatible approach in terms of software and screen, and this idea was worth recognizing. “When I clicked back and forth to test the system, I felt that the engineers had put in day and night, hard work, because it was really different from other systems.”
In early 2022, Liu Tao came to Banzhi Zhixing and summarized the previous work. “The partnership between Chery and Zebra has overturned the traditional OEM and supplier cooperation model, and will produce more chemical reactions in the future.” Despite the twists and turns in the process, he was confident in the new product: “We will shine the brightest after this journey.”
After the team struggled for hundreds of days and nights, the two partners finally ushered in an important moment. After the Chery L7 was opened for pre-orders, 3000 quotas were sold out in less than 10 minutes. By the end of July, the Chery L7 has entered the accelerated delivery phase, and the current delivery volume has exceeded 1,000 units, making it the fastest delivery model among domestic luxury pure electric vehicles priced above 350,000 yuan.# Translation
Zebra is not only creating smart cars for itself, but also helping itself to sell cars and users to use cars better. After the launch of Zhiqi L7, Zebra integrated Alibaba’s advantages in online and offline marketing resources, opening up precision marketing market space for Zhiqi. At Hangzhou’s Pro Orange and EFC Center, the booth jointly operated by Zebra and Zhiqi brought more traffic and sales to new cars. Recently, IMOS 1.2.0 was officially released, which refined the product details and improved the user’s interactive experience with the system.
“In the movie ‘The Battle at Lake Changjin,’ Wu Jing played Wu Qianli and said, ‘A egg outside is destined to be eaten when it is knocked, but if you can peck it from inside, maybe it is an eagle.'” Xiao Feng said emotionally, “With everyone’s efforts, so many impossibilities gradually become possible. Zebra Intelligent Driving vows to be the eagle that breaks the eggshell!”
Conclusion
In the industry, Tesla was once seen as the benchmark that smart cars are difficult to surpass.
Zhang Xiao, the product and strategic director of Ideal Auto, believes, “Tesla is a very terrifying competitor. If your product is more expensive than it, it must be better than it in performance. If your performance is the same as it, you must be cheaper than it.”
“We are confident in creating the strongest model on Zhiqi cars.” Several Zebra employees said confidently in the interview, “Zebra + Zhiqi > Tesla” is their common goal.
They believe that behind Zhiqi L7’s intelligent cockpit system, Zebra Intelligent Driving has undergone a comprehensive technological and product upgrade, representing the development direction of high-end intelligence.
In the view of “AutocarMax,” Zebra Intelligent Driving’s cooperation with Roewe and Zhiqi is not only a collaboration between Chinese smart manufacturing and independent technology, but also a necessary exploration of the Chinese automobile industry’s intelligentization.
In 2016, the RX5 launched by Zebra and Roewe has become a classic, leading the development trend of intelligence and network connection in the domestic automobile industry. In 2022, the launch of Zhiqi L7 is of greater significance to Zebra Intelligent Driving.
Because, as Zebra Intelligent Driving’s number one project, this is the first deep cooperation with a high-end smart luxury brand and another milestone event in the company’s development process. In the trend of the entire industry moving towards high-end intelligence, Zebra Intelligent Driving empowers Zhiqi L7 with innovative technologies and products, and the intelligent cockpit system sets a new industry benchmark.
While continuously developing iterative products, Zebra Intelligent Driving has not stopped its efforts, but has focused more on the research and development of underlying operating systems, making AliOS compatible with other operating systems to meet the customized needs of different customers and create a new immersive intelligent cockpit experience for more car models.
In the race of intelligentization in the automotive industry, Baidu Apollo is making every effort to win the “Battle of Heavenly Talent”. Baidu Apollo is not only empowering the entire industry with the concept of enabling all things with AI, but also fully tapping into the golden value of software, creating ultimate user experiences.
As a practitioner of idealism, this is Baidu Apollo’s down-to-earth approach and its boundless vision.
As a philosopher once said, the flower of idealism will eventually bloom in the soil of romanticism.
Looking forward to that day’s arrival.
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.