Will the intelligent network association become a chronic poison?

No one will question the future of automotive intelligent networking, but not many car companies have found the way to the future.

Intelligent car networking-an overly ambitious proposition, including not only car networking, intelligent cockpit, but also car-road coordination, and automatic driving also covers it. Among them, car networking is the focus of competition among car companies at present. After all, this is OEM (original? Equipment? Manufacturer) directly connects to the best contact of the consumer.

If car companies don't think clearly about their position in this field and just add intelligent functions blindly, it may be like taking a dose of chronic poison. The farther they go on the road of intelligence, the more they do, and the deeper they are poisoned.

In order to compete with internet companies for users and data, automobile companies advocate "software-defined cars" and set up their own R&D teams to hold data in their hands on the basis of hardware manufacturing.

At the same time, some OEMs have begun to think about "data defines cars". With the help of digital technology, enterprises and organizations can create greater value in the ever-changing digital world, which will be the key to winning the next era.

0 1? The road to competition and cooperation?

The first generation of car networking was born in 1996, which was an era when 2G was not even popular. Based on the American analog mobile signal network, General Motors, EDS and Hughes Electric jointly developed OnStar.

At that time, with the help of wireless technology and global positioning system, OnStar provided wireless services for cars, such as road rescue and remote diagnosis. Users in the car can contact the customer service center with a button and get comprehensive voice help.

In 2007, Ford launched SYNC car intelligent entertainment system, which opened the second generation of car networking. Two years after SYNC was released, Ford took an important step and launched an open interface called AppLink.

The interface connects the synchronization system and the application programs on the smart device, allowing consumers to bring the content used by the smart phone terminal to the in-car platform and adapt to the in-car use environment. One of the partners of this system is Microsoft.

Since then, the "Pandora's Box" in which car companies compete with technology giants has been opened.

At the beginning, the cake of the Internet of Vehicles was not big, and Internet companies such as Microsoft did not show great ambitions until 20 13.

In June+February, 5438, Accenture Consulting released a report saying that nearly 40% of customers said that on-board technical equipment was one of the main factors they considered when buying a car.

Technology giants started earlier than this report. At the Apple Global Developers Conference held in June 20 13, Apple officially entered the automotive field and announced "iOS? Are you online? That? Car "plan. On March 20 14, Carplay was officially released at the Geneva Motor Show. This function allows users to map the functions in the iPhone to the car center console via USB cable or wifi.

In the same year, Android? Cars first appeared in the public eye, and Baidu began to build Carlife cars compatible with iOS, Android and Linux systems.

At that time, the common practice was to project the mobile phone application to the vehicle, so it was necessary to connect the in-vehicle system with the smart phone to use the software, which meant that some car companies gave up the dominance of the in-vehicle information system.

In order to adapt to consumers' demand for new things more quickly, these manufacturing Pearl automobile companies have to cooperate with internet companies.

In the era of mobile Internet, users and data have become the cakes that technology companies compete for. The auto giants, whose main source of income is hardware, are anxious, and they also want a piece of the action. An Internet person spoke the mind of car companies.

"(Users) still use mobile phones when they get on the bus, which is a shame for autobots." Wang Jian, then Chairman of the Technical Committee of Alibaba Group, made this remark at the 10th TC Conference, which was widely circulated in the automobile circle.

This may be an amazing remark made by Alibaba, which had not yet entered the automobile industry at that time, in order to stimulate the cooperation between automobile enterprises and find a breakthrough, but this problem does exist.

Soon after, Ali realized his wish. On July 6th, 2065438+06, Yun Qi Town, Hangzhou, SAIC Roewe RX5 was listed, which was called "the world's first Internet car".

Car companies are trying to get rid of the simple mobile phone projection technology path, and instead, the two sides have equal and in-depth cooperation to develop systems and platforms to bring better driving experience to users.

The ensuing problem is the competition for data, which is the field that technology companies are best at. Ali, Tencent, Baidu, Huawei, Xiaomi and today's headlines have all entered the market, and Apple, Google, Amazon and Microsoft have also stepped up the layout of the automobile industry.

Of course, car companies have never given up their efforts to regain dominance.

After the initial success of the Bianconeri, SAIC and Ali are no longer in the honeymoon period. On August 28th, 20 19, Ali injected all the intellectual property rights and business of YUNOS operating system into Zebra, becoming its single largest shareholder. At the same time, SAIC is also developing its own car networking system.

Jack Ma, Chen Hong, Zhang Yong and Wang Jian test drive RX5 together.

"Car manufacturers don't want every car company to have the same service and want to have personalized components, but Internet companies want every car company's system and even application to be the same, so there is a wrestling process between the Internet and car companies." Nicholas, senior partner and managing director of Boston Consulting Group? Lang told HD Auto Business Weekly.

2065438+In June 2009, Volkswagen announced that it planned to convene more than 5000 digital experts for "Automobile". Software "automotive software development department, which will be fully responsible for the on-board software business.

Is it equipped with zebra system A and Android system? Cars? When OS models were put into production one after another, Volkswagen became the pioneer of traditional car companies to resist the invasion of Internet giants.

02? Less? Is it? More?

On 20 16, roewe RX5 pioneered the "internet car", which is not only an innovation in definition, but also learned from many car companies.

A number of industry experts told HD Automotive Business Weekly that shortly after the release of RX5, "several European manufacturers directly bought several cars and shipped them back for disassembly analysis."

However, one of the characteristics of the Internet is its fast replication speed. Various car companies have launched functions such as central control of large screen, map as desktop, voice interaction and control, and the "Internet car" has been rapidly homogenized.

At the same time, car companies and technology giants began to "stuff" more functions into cars.

Wang Jian's words inspired a generation of car networking people, but the opposition between car networking and mobile phones was too extreme, which made many car companies stubbornly "drive away" mobile phones.

This "either-or" thinking is likely to become a chronic poison.

In order to replace the mobile APP, car companies spend a lot of energy to develop in-vehicle functions, and users only need to experience the mobile phone in their pockets for one minute.

There is no doubt that the function of the vehicle terminal can create value. For example, if the movie ticket has been purchased in advance, the previous process is that the user gets on the bus, takes out his mobile phone, inputs the destination and navigates to the destination. If you get through the news and the user gets on the bus, the central control will automatically jump out, "The movie you booked in xx Cinema will start in n minutes. Do you want to navigate?" Click or voice to confirm.

But the function of buying movie tickets is not suitable for getting on the bus. You have to choose movies and cinemas, compare prices and choose seats, which greatly distracts the driver's attention or delays the start-up time of the vehicle.

A more direct case is that a car company takes "central control screen can hit the glory of the king" as its selling point. This may attract attention in marketing, but the real experience may not be very good.

From the scene, playing the glory of the king is in a leisure state, and my daily operation is just a mobile phone, which makes me more used to it and more comfortable. What's more, where can I sit comfortably when I operate the central control screen by hand?

Such smart gimmicks can only increase costs or increase publicity points, but they cannot enhance user stickiness. If the user experience of the new function is not good, it will become a deduction item in the user's mind.

A car owner who bought a joint venture brand once talked about the gap between the car networking function and the expectation in HD auto business review. Voice feedback is slow, starting the vehicle after the next login will remind you to log in, and some unnecessary functions cannot be uninstalled.

In this case, car companies should concentrate on optimizing the common functions of cars and improving the user experience, rather than subconsciously confronting or completely replacing mobile phones.

Navigation, music and voice interaction are probably the three functions that users use most frequently. Take voice interaction as an example. Many models need "Hello, XXX" or physical buttons every time they wake up. Now more and more manufacturers are beginning to reduce the frequency of wake-up language, and even introduce wake-up free function.

Less? Is it? More, car companies must first do subtraction, reduce the function development that is more suitable for mobile phones, focus on the functions that are suitable for car services, add in improving user experience, and strive to do 10% and 20% better than other car companies.

Quantitative change leads to qualitative change, and each in-vehicle function gives users an excellent experience, which can form a positive cycle, and the user experience will get better and better, creating value and naturally improving the reputation.

Subtraction does not mean that new functions will no longer be developed, but it can further explore and even create user needs related to automobiles.

Taking electric vehicles as an example, many car companies are developing or have launched a function: when the power drops to a certain value, it will automatically issue an early warning and actively recommend nearby charging piles. Car companies with perfect ecological layout of charging piles can also lock the charging piles for a period of time to ensure that the owners have piles available.

No splash

In addition, the potential of sensors such as car cameras is also worth further development. Under the condition of not invading privacy, the sensor monitors the temperature of people in the car to automatically adjust the temperature inside the car.

To put it simply, in the scene inside the car, we should foster strengths and avoid weaknesses, and do a good job of adapting to the scene inside the car and the car company itself.

03? It's not just the car that needs changing?

In today's era of automobile industry reform, automobile companies from manufacturing industries hope to transform into travel service companies or technology companies to some extent.

"Software-defined car" is the hottest topic in the industry now.

Ambitious car companies began to build their own software teams. Volkswagen plans to set up a digital team of 5,000 people, Great Wall Motor has set up a digital center, SAIC software center has appeared in the name of "Zero Beam", and Toyota's software company woven has also appeared recently.

Whether it is building a software team or reforming the electronic and electrical architecture, these are actually returning to manufacturing. Software defines hardware, and hardware is still the foundation of the transformation of car companies, which is the core different from technology companies.

However, the strategic conflict between hardware genes and software strength improvement of car companies is not small, and the progress is not smooth.

In the first quarter of this year, the German "Manager" magazine broke the news that Volkswagen (at that time) recorded about 300 new bug problems every day. According to the anonymous engineer, because of the immaturity of the public. There are problems in communication and interaction among many modules of OS, ID.3

Because of the radical software self-research strategy of the Group, software bugs of Volkswagen ID.3 frequently occur, and the delivery date of listing has been postponed many times.

But in the longer term, if we only rely on software, car companies still can't become industry leaders.

It can be predicted that the automobile industry will enter the era of "data-defined automobile" in the future. Data defines hardware, software, services and ecology, and all players have opportunities.

With the upgrading of hardware and the increase of sensors, the service and experience feedback used by users are increasing, and the data behind them will also show geometric growth.

However, are car companies really ready for such a huge amount of data? How to process and use these data to create profits?

Three years ago, I interviewed a zebra executive. He said, "Because of the cooperation with Ali Zebra, SAIC has been leading the industry for three years."

In a blink of an eye, three years later, zebra executives have already left. Looking back on the sentence of "leading for three years", the key point is not RX5, but the digital transformation window of automobile enterprises opened in advance. It seems that SAIC has not understood this yet.

Nowadays, the digital transformation at the business level is the first.

Many companies' intelligent networking departments have recruited experts who are responsible for vehicle data and application usage data, not to mention setting up software departments or companies' automobile enterprises separately.

The R&D director of an international automobile company told HD Automotive Business Weekly that a well-designed electronic and electrical architecture and the digital architecture of the basic software platform are the bottom core to realize the digitalization of business. On this basis, "the key is the data center and ID account system, as well as agile working methods."

Specifically, the data center is the basis for collecting and connecting data in series. These data sources are the ID account system of each user. The ID can be a mobile phone number or an ID number. Cross-validation, authorization and authentication are all carried out in the cloud. Finally, empower employees to get enough information quickly and iterate functions and services quickly.

If the massive data is compared to a gold mine, car companies without digital transformation can only dig the mine by hand, but they can't purify it, while digital OEM can turn the ore into gold and even make various forms of ornaments.

In order to make good use of data and realize the efficient flow of data in enterprises, digital transformation can not be limited to business departments, and the digitalization of enterprises themselves is also imminent.

Digitalization of automobile enterprises is to promote enterprises and organizations to create greater value in the ever-changing digital world with the help of digital technology, and realize "business data, data business", which is a major operation involving management system, organizational structure, business model and many other aspects.

Guo Yongfeng, Director of Digitization Department of China FAW Group, said at the 12th China Automotive Blue Book Forum this year that the traditional manufacturing model has been greatly impacted in recent years, "including the huge impact on the office style of our internal employees."

FAW realized that digitalization of automobile industry is an important carrier to realize transformation and upgrading. They did a very challenging thing recently, that is, knocked out the ERP system.

ERP is the core system of some enterprises' internal management, and its peripheral relationship is also very complicated. This product is developed by FAW itself and is used by all enterprises in the group. Faw recently decoupled it, that is, opened and dispersed the system and tried to build a new system.

"The core starting point of this decoupling is because we deeply realize that digital technology will have a greater and greater impact on the management mode of the car factory, and the original highly coupled system is no longer enough to meet or support the agile changes of the business." Guo Yongfeng said bluntly.

This process faces great challenges, because establishing a brand-new business center in a well-organized automobile enterprise is not only a business work, but also a test for managers.

The difficulty of digital transformation of automobile enterprises lies in breaking the existing interest distribution, which is very complicated and there are many obstacles when it comes to "people".

Weimar chief data officer May Song Lin believes that digital transformation must first integrate people. "It is basically impossible to integrate data without integrating people."

The bigger the system, the more difficult it is for car companies to transform. The transformation promoted by Volkswagen CEO Diss is not very smooth. As a result, Diss stepped down as CEO of Volkswagen brand, and his application for renewal was rejected by the board of directors and boycotted by the trade union.

"Digital transformation has no choice for the automotive industry." Li Peng, digital director of Great Wall Motor Digital Center, felt in a circle of friends that the promoter of change must have the determination to conquer, but he was dead before the conquest.

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This article comes from car home, the author of the car manufacturer, and does not represent car home's position.