The Era Of Software Defined Automobile: How Can Traditional Automobile Enterprises Catch Up?

More and more traditional automobile enterprises begin to step into the field of software development and regard it as an important strategic direction.

Recently, the software center of SAIC Group officially announced its name as "zero bundle", and has officially become a new subject since then; Toyota also announced that it will establish a software focused subsidiary to accelerate the transformation to software business.

This is nothing new. Prior to this, Volkswagen, Bosch, mainland and other auto enterprises and parts suppliers have successively invested in software business to develop the software architecture of automobiles. As a traditional industry which is good at hardware, automobile is gradually entering a new era defined by software, driven by the new force mainly by Tesla.

It is self-evident that the status of intelligent and electric vehicles is connected and shared. No matter the battery management and energy control of new energy vehicles, or the functions of intelligent network connection such as intelligent cockpit and automatic driving, all need to rely on software to drive. In the vehicle value system, the proportion of software has also increased dramatically.

In the case of almost certain direction, the traditional automobile enterprises take the road of software, which is also helpless. According to a report jointly released by Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu China and AMMI human vehicle relationship Laboratory of Tongji University, the intellectualization and networking of automobiles will leverage the digital transformation of the entire industry and change the existing value distribution pattern. The transfer of industry value requires enterprises to pay more attention to and strengthen the ability of software development and integration based on the original hardware R & D capability.

On the way into the field of software R & D, on the one hand, traditional automobile enterprises have been slow down, on the other hand, there are more system, mechanism and other transformation problems, which are the common challenges faced by traditional automobile enterprises including Volkswagen, Toyota and other industry giants.

Software companies set up in succession

After Volkswagen, more and more traditional car companies have set up new companies to develop software technology.

SAIC zero bundle is a wholly owned subsidiary of SAIC Group. According to official information, SAIC zero will focus on intelligent driving system engineering, software architecture, basic software platform and data factory, including SOA software platform, new generation of centralized electronic architecture, cloud service platform, computing power chip, etc.

It is understood that SAIC zero bundle business focuses on four parts: first, digital creative factory to create a people-oriented digital creative team; second, electronic architecture to create a new generation of centralized electronic and electrical architecture; third, the ICV infrastructure software team, which is mainly responsible for the integration of the operating system, business layer and cloud management end; fourth, data architecture and network security To set up a data factory to serve artificial intelligence, as well as the interaction of vertical business (Intelligent cockpit and intelligent driving two vertical units).

It is not only SAIC that aspires to make a difference in the field of software. Recently, Toyota also announced that it will expand the business scope of Toyota Research Institute advanced development to focus on software development. The company was founded in 2018 and is 90% owned by Toyota.

It is said that the company will set up a new holding subsidiary, woven planet holdings, and two operating subsidiaries, woven core and woven alpha, in January 2021.

For example, it will cooperate with other external partners, such as wovenet, to develop new business models, such as arvenet, which will focus on the development of new business models, such as arvene, which will promote the development of new business models.

Some people believe that Toyota's strategic deployment is more specific and covers a wider range than car.software.org, established by Volkswagen.

In June last year, Volkswagen announced the establishment of an independent software development department car.software.org, taking the lead in separating software and hardware business in the form of organizational change. Its goal is to gather 2500 digital experts in the Department by 2025, involving software development, electrical and electronic development, autonomous driving, Cloud Architecture and other fields.

Software defined automobile era coming

Tesla advocates the concept of "passive mobile phone", which can be used by enterprises in and outside the automobile industry, to create a passive mobile phone.

With the in-depth application of intelligence and networking in automobile products, the value distribution of industrial chain will also have a profound transfer. In order to avoid being left behind, the traditional car companies have to make software themselves. "We used to be a hardware manufacturer, Toyota only needed to buy software from other companies, but we had to make changes," Toyota President Akio Toyoda said in an interview with the media. Because if it's left to others, it's tantamount to letting others keep upgrading. If we do research and development, we can create value ourselves. "

"In 2025, 40% of the value of automotive software and automotive software will change. If OEM doesn't lay out in software, then we will just be a part-time worker in the future. " On July 23, Li Jun, director of the software center of SAIC Group and deputy director of SAIC technology center, was more straightforward in an interview with the reporter of the 21st century economic report.

After the initial mass production haze, Tesla, the pioneer, also attracted a large number of fans in the capital market. In the first half of this year, the market value of this new auto company, which was founded less than 20 years ago, broke through 190 billion US dollars, officially surpassing Toyota and becoming the world's highest market value automobile enterprise. Sales volume is no longer the most important indicator to measure the strength of the automobile enterprise, which makes all the automobile enterprises that Tesla surpass (in terms of market value) deeply feel.

"From the perspective of the nature of the company and the software industry, Tesla has always positioned itself not as a high-tech company, but as a company in the automotive industry." Chen Hong, chairman of SAIC Group, admitted at this year's annual shareholders' meeting that Tesla has taken a road to the future of the automobile industry and has taken the lead among all automobile enterprises.

Li Xingyu, vice president of horizon strategic planning and senior expert in the auto driving industry, wrote an article on the Internet that although Tesla takes new energy vehicles as the starting point, compared with traditional car companies, new energy is not a significant advantage. What really makes Tesla stand out is its radical intelligent technology, just as Apple's revolutionary intelligent product iPhone overturned its hand Like the machine industry, Tesla's smart car based on autopilot has also overturned the traditional pattern of the automobile industry and stimulated the industry to accelerate its transformation in a non-linear way.

The constraints of cognition and mechanism need to be broken through

It's not easy to compete for traditional software.

Volkswagen's exploration in the past year or more has sounded a wake-up call to the industry - repeated problems in product software, resignation of the head of software R & D, and power reduction of Herbert DIS, the group's CEO who promotes change

The transformation of traditional automobile enterprises may be more difficult than expected: on the one hand, software is a completely different field for automobile enterprises, and automobile enterprises need to invest a lot of resources (including time and money) to promote software research and development; on the other hand, although the trend of intelligent automobile and Internet connection is the general trend, whether it is necessary for automobile enterprises to spend a lot of resources to do software self-study is very difficult In essence, a consensus was reached.

Li Xingyu made a metaphor that enterprise transformation is almost equivalent to "dismantling parts from an old machine that is still in operation and then assembling a new machine". It will inevitably touch the vested interests of many parties and be limited by the organizational structure. From this point of view, the traditional car companies are not even as good as the new forces of car making.

At the end of last year, VW id.3 was first exposed to software problems, which delayed its launch. Id.3 is the first mass production vehicle based on MEB platform, and it is also the vehicle model to be carried by its newly developed operating system. According to local media reports, many system components in the id.3 infrastructure are incompatible, leading to "300 software vulnerabilities found every day.".

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