On December 21, Huawei held the “Gathering Ecological Opportunities to Create the Future” 2021 Huawei Intelligent Automotive Solution Ecological Forum online. At the forum, Huawei proposed to adhere to the development strategy of “platform + ecology” and focus on ICT technology, centered around the iDVP, MDC, and HarmonyOS intelligent cabin platforms, in order to build an ecosystem and collaborate with partners to help automakers build better cars.
Platform instead of Building Cars
As we all know, the automotive industry is undergoing the greatest change in a century, with the direction of electrification, networking, and intelligence constantly advancing.
Huawei believes that intelligent cars have four characteristics:
Bit manages power;
Computing power drives horsepower;
Software defines features;
Simply put, software deeply participates in the definition, development, validation, sales, and service processes of cars, and continuously optimizes each process to bring users a continuously optimized experience.
This change mainly comes from the application of digital technology, with communication bandwidth, computing power, and software code scale increasing several hundred or even thousand times. How to efficiently and high-quality develop these systems will be a huge challenge for the industry.
In order to better respond to this challenge, the traditional vertically integrated development model, talent model, and supply chain system are all changing. The automotive industry, which has been refining the division of labor for many years, is undergoing the greatest change in the past century. The original pattern of a hierarchy from whole vehicle factories to Tier 1 and Tier 2 suppliers with clear division of labor and no change for decades no longer applies in the era of electrification, networking, and intelligence. Based on new digital architecture, technology, and engineering, a cross-border integrated “platform + ecology” collaborative model is evolving.
iDVP Intelligent Automotive Digital Platform
In the intelligent automobile digital architecture, Huawei provides the basic elements of the iDVP intelligent automobile digital platform, including the Computing and Communication Architecture (CCA), the In-Vehicle Operating System, the Hybrid Application Software Core (HAS Core), and a complete tool chain. Huawei works with its partners to jointly define the hardware and software interfaces, develop atomic services, achieve software and hardware decoupling, and help automobile manufacturers quickly develop cross-vendor and cross-device applications.
On December 21st of last year, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers established the SDV working group jointly with 22 start-up members. The goal is to coordinate whole vehicle factories and parts enterprises to promote the standardization of intelligent automobile hardware and software interfaces.
After the establishment of the SDV working group, more than 70 companies joined the group, and successfully released over 520 jointly defined APIs including 230 device abstraction APIs and 290 atomic service APIs in October this year. After interface standardization, it will simplify the development of applications for a variety of devices.
As an important member of the SDV working group, Huawei has completed system pre-integration with 20 devices from 10 manufacturers based on standardized interface specifications.
The intelligent driving calculation platform MDC is a strategic high point for vehicle manufacturers to win future competition. It faces the three major challenges of long investment cycles, high scene complexity, and high technical difficulty.
The Huawei MDC intelligent driving calculation platform provides developers with tool chains and SDK support, supporting the software development and porting of partners, while meeting the core requirements of the intelligent driving application for vehicle specifications and safety.
More than 70 partners have joined the MDC ecosystem, jointly promoting the pilot and commercial use of intelligent driving scenarios in passenger cars, ports, mining trucks, and parks.
Based on the Huawei MDC and vehicle cloud service platform, partners have jointly created the horizontal transportation system in the intelligent terminal system in Tianjin, using unmanned driving trucks to transport containers between the yard and the ships, achieving a simulation of 3 berths, 3 ships, and 76 unmanned tractor-trailers operating in parallel. Real-ship and real-car load tests are currently underway.At the recently concluded Guangzhou Auto Show, two intelligent electric vehicles made their debut, both of which chose MDC as their intelligent driving computing platform, namely GAC Aion LX Plus and the machine-dragon of Great Wall salon brand.
HarmonyOS Intelligent Cockpit Ecosystem
The cockpit is the center of human-machine interaction, with strong user perception and a demand for personalized, intelligent, and diverse service experiences. Huawei aims to build an intelligent cockpit ecosystem around the HarmonyOS car operating system with the goals of hardware modularity, interface standardization, and system platformization. Huawei has developed nine types of vehicle-mounted enhancement capabilities, opened 1,517 in-car business APIs and 13,000+ HarmonyOS APIs, and provided tools and technical support to reduce the integration and development difficulty of cockpit systems.
Based on the HarmonyOS car operating system, Huawei has established partnerships with more than 150 software and hardware partners. They jointly define hardware interfaces to achieve hardware plug-and-play, interchangeable upgrades, and interconnection among diversified hardware. API interfaces are offered to applications to quickly develop cockpit systems that cover the whole scene and synergize with multiple devices, providing consumers with personalized, intelligent, and diverse service experiences.
In Huawei’s latest cockpit DEMO car, partners have already deployed Hongmeng peripheral devices such as car skylights, electronic rearview mirrors, holographic projection, steering systems, and smart health seats.
StarFlash Technology
The deployment of wired communication cables in vehicles is complex and not easily expandable, while the commonly used Bluetooth and Wi-Fi cannot meet the requirements of in-vehicle device interconnection in terms of delay, reliability, and security. Where there is demand, there is opportunity. StarFlash Technology has the characteristics of low latency, high reliability, and precise synchronization, making it suitable to meet the demand of intelligent vehicles for high-quality short-range wireless connections.
The StarFlash Alliance was officially established on September 22, 2020, and it is dedicated to promoting innovation and industrial ecology development of the new generation of short-range wireless communication technology, supporting applications scenarios such as intelligent vehicles, smart homes, smart terminals, and smart manufacturing to meet the demand for ultimate performance, and ultimately promoting international standards and industry.
Huawei Intelligent Car Solution Innovation Center and Yang Cheng Peninsula Intelligent Networked Test SiteThe Huawei Intelligent Car Solution Innovation Center is located in Huawei Suzhou Research Institute. It has been built and put into use, mainly open to car companies and partners for joint development, testing, verification, and showcasing of achievements. The innovation center includes 9 major labs, including MDC, Fusion Sensing, Intelligent Cockpit, and In-vehicle Gateway.
Not far from the Suzhou Research Institute is the Yangcheng Peninsula, where a leading intelligent connected vehicle test field is under construction and will soon be put into use.
Huawei used 3,000 typical traffic accident scenarios in China as a reference and performed cluster analysis on the impact of risk elements on driving. They established an intelligent driving test area including 13 test areas, 103 road static elements, and comprehensive scenario coverage. The test field includes a dynamic control square with a diameter of 300 meters and 14 system laboratories.
At the Intelligent Car Solution Ecological Forum, Huawei once again emphasized their no car-making policy, and aimed to become an integrated supplier of incremental components in the intelligent car era, focusing more on helping automobile companies to manufacture cars with their ICT technology advantages.
In the upcoming year of 2022, the Alpha S HI version, which cooperates with Beijing Automobile Works (BAIC) Jiuhu, is expected to be delivered. The Avita, which cooperates with Changan and CATL, is scheduled to make its official debut in Q2. In addition, the HI version vehicle model that Guangzhou Automobile Group (GAC) is developing in collaboration with Huawei is already in progress. Huawei’s dedicated effort to create the HI version vehicle model is getting closer to consumers at last.
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.