Bitauto original looks back on 2021. We have witnessed a major event in the field of smart cars. We may exclaim that a certain Internet company is going to transform into car manufacturing; we may sigh that a certain enterprise Claiming that the range of its electric vehicles has exceeded 1,000km; I wonder if the increase in vehicle prices is really caused by a lack of cores? Curious about whether the self-driving taxis wearing "big hats" on the road are really as convenient and safe as traditional taxis?

In fact, with the continuous advancement of electrification, intelligence, networking and sharing of cars, more and more new technologies and new products have emerged. The underlying reason why the field sees a hundred flowers blooming today is the continuous advancement of technology. Simply put, it is the empowerment of technology. If we want to know why cars can drive autonomously, we need to first understand what fused sensing, vehicle-road collaboration, large computing power chips, high-precision maps and other technologies include; if we want to know what the upper limit of electric vehicle battery life is, we must first understand Let’s see what kind of state battery technology has reached, 4680 battery, cobalt-free battery batteries, solid-state batteries, CTP/CTC, blade batteries, 800V platforms, etc.; in addition, large and complex technologies such as the vehicle’s electronic and electrical architecture, information security, thermal management system, hybrid technology, and fuel cell technology are determined like the underlying foundation The superstructure of future smart cars.

As we look forward to what new developments there will be in the car rim in 2022, we might as well do an inventory and analysis around three key technologies. One is the large computing power chip; the other is the 800V high-voltage SiC platform; The third is the central computing architecture for multi-domain integration. These three pieces of content will be the key technologies that will usher in strong development and scale up this year. Let’s talk about them one by one.

01 The 1000TOPS large computing power computing platform ushered in the first year of mass production and installation

In the past year, we seem to have often heard the term computing power TOPS, and chip manufacturers have racked their brains. To improve the computing power indicators of their own products, various car companies are also constantly flaunting that their cars can achieve performance with less computing power than the entire vehicle. It seems that horsepower is no longer the only criterion to describe the performance of a car. Computing power is now This era of smart cars has also come to the center of the stage. So what exactly is computing power? In fact, computing power simply describes the computing power of a chip. TOPS is the unit of computing power. 1TOPS means that the processor can perform one trillion operations (10^12) per second. Doesn’t this sound like an exaggeration? In fact, we can compare it to the human brain. The human brain generally has 10 billion neurons. The more neurons, the smarter it is. So if the car wants to replace humans in thinking, it must have more powerful computing power to help us identify and Anticipate the unpredictable environment on the road and improve our driving safety. Therefore, the greater the computing power of the chip, the more scenarios and functions it can handle and respond to, and the stronger its ability to help us in emergency and complex scenarios.

The Salon Mecha Dragon vehicle released at the Guangzhou Auto Show at the end of last year has a computing power of 400TOPS;

Xpeng G9 reaches 508TOPS;

Nio’s ET7/ET5 is equipped with 5 millimeter-wave radars, 12 ultrasonic radars, 1 ultra-long-range 33 high-performance sensors, including high-precision lidar, with the support of four NVIDIA Drive Orin chips, have a total computing power of up to 1016 TOPS;

This is not over yet, Great Wall WEY Mocha’s computing power will reach an astonishing 1440 with the blessing of the “Little Magic Box 3.0” developed by Hao Mo Zhixing and Qualcomm. TOPS.

But it needs to be clarified that the computing power of thousands of TOPS does not refer to a single chip but a large computing power platform integrated by multiple chips. We mentioned above The new supercomputing platform ADAM has reached 1016TOPS because there are four single-chip computing power reaching 1016TOPS. 254TOPS Orin chip blessing; therefore, we also made a statistical summary of the chip computing power in the current mainstream chip field to see what level each chip has reached:

Through the statistical table, we can find that currently in the autonomous driving domain, Nvidia's Orin chip has the largest computing power among mass-produced chips. Among domestic brands, Black Sesame's Huashan 2 A1000Pro has reached a single-chip computing power of 196TOPS. Black Sesame Smart COM Yang Yuxin once said: "The premise of software-defined cars It’s the hardware that comes first, and only the hardware Only if the performance and computing power of the software are sufficient can subsequent software be quickly implemented with iterative upgrades and extended function applications. "Therefore, Black Sesame's development strategy is to put hardware first and spread as much computing power as possible, just like many people who pursue the number of cylinders and horsepower. Like performance enthusiasts, the horsepower may not be used, but it must be available. But everything has two sides. Although the reserved computing power space is sufficient, the cost will inevitably rise. It depends on whether the car manufacturers and consumers are willing to pay for this part of the reserved computing power.

Of course, the domestic chip factory Horizon is also very good. The Journey 5 chip released last year reached 128TOPS, and Horizon CEO Yu Kai has stated many times that Horizon is not simply pursuing Physical computing power, but more emphasis on the computing efficiency of deep neural network algorithms on the chip, that is, FPS (Frames Per Second). It seems to be a more economical approach.

In addition, the strength of the three foreign giants NVIDIA, Qualcomm, and Intel Mobileye in the field of autonomous driving chips cannot be underestimated. At the just-concluded CES 2022 exhibition, these All three companies have also shown their special skills. Nvidia announced that more companies will adopt its open DRIVE Hyperion platform, such as Volvo’s high-end brands Polestar, Weilai, Xpeng, Li Auto, and R Both Automobile and Zhiji Auto have adopted DRIVE Hyperion. The platform includes high-performance computers and sensor architecture for fully autonomousSafety requirements for self-driving vehicles. The latest generation of DRIVE Hyperion 8 is built with redundant NVIDIA DRIVE Orin system-on-chip, 12 surround cameras, 9 radars, 12 ultrasound modules, 1 front-facing lidar and 3 internal perception cameras.

This system has strong safety redundancy. Even if a computer or sensor fails, the backup equipment can ensure that the self-driving car will keep the passengers safe. Take it to your destination.

Qualcomm has launched the Snapdragon Ride platform in the field of autonomous driving, which can meet the needs of L2+/L3 level autonomous driving. Qualcomm has also recently announced a number of cooperation developments, including assisting General Motors in building Cadillac LYRIQ and assisting BMW in building its autonomous driving platform. At the same time, Qualcomm announced at the show that it is expanding its technology portfolio to respond to the changing needs of the autonomous driving field.

Intel’s Mobileye has released three chips in a row, namely EyeQ Ultra, EyeQ 6L and EyeQ 6H. It can be regarded as sounding the clarion call for counterattack.

In the future, the computing power of chips will be the cornerstone of the development of smart cars. Only with continuous breakthroughs in computing power can the upper limit of intelligence of smart cars be pushed higher.

02 The 800V high-voltage SiC platform will become a magic weapon for car companies

The chip computing power we mentioned earlier determines the intelligence level of a car, so next we will talk about the technology It is the ability to determine how quickly an electric vehicle can charge. You must know that slow charging has become a major pain point for many electric vehicle users and is also the culprit that discourages many users from trying electric vehicles. Although there are currently battery swapping technologies that can greatly improve energy replenishment efficiency, due to high costs and difficulty in promotion Many reasons restrict its development. Therefore, fast charging is currently the solution with the greatest development potential and the most likely to become mainstream.

First of all, we need to know that the charging speed is determined by the charging power. Then let’s recall the physics knowledge in high school, power = voltage × current, that is, P = U*I, Therefore, there are only two ways to increase charging power, either increasing the voltage or increasing the current.

As a result, two technical routes have been developed, one is the high-current school represented by Tesla and Krypton, and the other is the high-voltage school represented by Porsche and supported by many other manufacturers. Let’s briefly talk about the high current school. The biggest difficulty of this school is the heating problem caused by the increase in current. We also introduce the heating formula: Q=I^2Rt. It can be seen that the heat will increase exponentially as the current increases. , so how to dissipate heat has become a development problem. Taking Tesla as an example, when charging at a V3 supercharger with a power of 250Kw, the maximum current can be as high as 600A. The heat generation can be imagined, but Tesla uses a water-cooled charging gun and A variety of thermal management solutions allow this problem to be solved. Moreover, the reason why Tesla chooses high current as its development direction is due to cost control issues, because the components of the high-voltage platform will increase the cost of the entire vehicle. It can be seen from Tesla's current downward prices that high voltage is obviously in the opposite direction. .

Then let’s return to the topic of high-voltage platforms. The traditional voltage platform is generally 400V. The high-voltage platform currently raises the voltage to 800V or even higher. High voltage can effectively solve the heating problem of large currents. Low current + high voltage requires high-voltage charging piles and high-voltage adaptation solutions at the vehicle end. .

Charging end: Charging guns, contactors, wiring harnesses, fuses and other components must be replaced and upgraded to high-voltage resistant materials.

Vehicle end: The power battery of the vehicle itself, air conditioning compressor, electric drive, PTC, OBC, DC/DC and other high-voltage platform-oriented components must be newly designed and adjusted to adapt to the new High voltage platform.

The upgrade of the charging terminal is easy to say, but the component upgrade of the vehicle terminal requires new technical support to be realized. It was mentioned before that the problem with high current is heating, so the limiting factor for high voltage is the current automotive-grade component IGBT (Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor), that is, an insulated gate bipolar transistor.

Its high-pressure resistance is insufficient, so it is necessary to choose a new high-pressure-resistant material to replace existing components. This new material is SiC silicon carbide.

The operating temperature of SiC devices is above 200℃, the operating frequency is above 100kHz, and the withstand voltage can reach 20kV. These performances are better than traditional silicon-based IGBTs; the volume of SiC devices for IGBT One-third to one-fifth of the entire machine, the weight is 40%-60% of IGBT; it can also improve the efficiency of the system. Under different working conditions of electric vehicles, SiC devices consume 60%-80% less power than IGBTs. %, the efficiency can be improved by 1%-3%.

But it should also be noted that IGBT accounts for about 7%-10% of the cost of electric vehicles, making it the second most expensive electric vehicle accessory after power batteries. If SiC is used, the current cost of SiC MOSFET of the same level is about 8-12 times that of IGBT, and the loss is also greater than IGBT. Therefore, if a high-voltage platform is used, how to control costs will also become a major problem for car companies.

In addition to the Porsche Taycan we mentioned earlier that already uses an 800V high-voltage platform, many domestic brands are also accelerating their layout. For example, the newly released Xpeng G9 will be equipped with an 800V SiC platform and will be equipped with a 480Kw high-voltage supercharging pile.

The Great Wall Salon Mecha Dragon also supports high-voltage platforms, such as BYD, Dongfeng Lantu, Geely Automobile, GAC Aion, and Li Auto , BAIC Jihu and many other brands will join the camp of high-voltage platforms.

So regardless ofHigh current and high voltage are all to improve the efficiency of our energy replenishment, but from the current point of view, the 800V SiC high-voltage platform is expected to become the mainstream, and many car companies will also install this platform on cars in 2022, so this year will also be In the first year of development of the 800V SiC high-voltage platform, although there are still many difficulties to be solved, we can see that the market prospects are very good.

03 Automotive electronic and electrical architecture develops from distributed architecture to multi-domain integration

To talk about this topic, first we need to understand what is electronic and electrical architecture, also called E/E architecture. This architecture It refers to the overall layout plan of the vehicle's electronic and electrical system, which integrates various sensors, processors, wiring harness connections, electronic and electrical distribution systems and software and hardware in the vehicle to realize the functions, calculations, power and energy distribution of the vehicle. .

In lay terms, the realization of functions such as four-wheel drive, airbags, anti-lock braking systems, lifting windows, and radio car entertainment systems all need to be implemented in our vehicles. This architecture is completed and what controls each function is a component called ECU. ECU refers to the electronic control unit, also known as "driving computer". The function of ECU is relatively simple. It is basically an ECU that implements one main function. So think of us There are so many in the car Functions require dozens of ECUs to control. Therefore, in the early E/E architecture, it was in a distributed form. Each ECU was connected together through CAN and LIN buses. Now due to the popularity of autonomous driving and smart cockpits, if Distributed ECUs are also used for control, which poses great problems with the number of chips, vehicle costs and safety. Therefore, one or several "brains" are used to control the ECU and sensor architecture of the entire vehicle, DCU (Domain Control Unit), that is, the automotive domain controller came into being.

Currently domain controllers are typically divided into five main domains: powertrain, chassis control, body control, autonomous driving, and smart cockpit. Each domain has a main high-performance ECU, which is responsible for processing and forwarding functions within the domain. A low-speed bus is generally used within a domain, and a high-speed bus or the commonly used automotive Ethernet interconnection is used between domains.

Among these domain controls, the one that attracts more attention is the autonomous driving domain control. In the past, an ADAS system required several independent ECUs to be implemented. For example, lane departure and traffic recognition ECU, forward collision warning ECU, parking assist ECU, and blind spot detection ECU. Some also have panoramic view ECUs, rear collision warning ECUs, etc. Now that there is a domain controller for autonomous driving, one domain can realize all functions, which greatly improves the integration of the chassis and the centralized control of functions.

The future development of E/E architecture will develop in the direction of distributed → domain centralized → central computing:

Distributed architecture: The Under the architecture, ECU and realThere is a corresponding relationship between the existing functions.

Domain centralized architecture: This architecture further integrates ECU and introduces DCU (domain controller unit, domain controller).

Central computing architecture: This architecture further integrates DCUs, and all DCUs are integrated into a central computer. There is no correspondence between functions and components; a central computer directs the actuators as needed.

In the process of moving from domain centralization to central computing, there is another excessive form of domain integration that many car companies are currently trying. Currently, there are two mainstream cross-domain integration solutions: 1. Fusion by function 2. Fusion by location.

Integration by function: three-domain architecture. The three-domain architecture divides the entire vehicle into three functional domains: vehicle control (vehicle domain controller, VDC), intelligent driving (ADAS domain controller, ADC), and smart cockpit (cockpit domain controller, CDC) to realize vehicle driving and autonomous driving respectively. , infotainment and other functions. For example, the E3 architecture of Volkswagen's MEB platform, BMW's iNEXT model architecture, and Huawei's CC architecture all fall into this category.

Fusion by location: According to the physical space of the car, the entire car is divided into multiple areas, such as the left body area, the right body area, etc. The number of wire harnesses can be significantly reduced, freeing up more physical space. Tesla, Toyota, etc. all fall into this category.

In short, the future development direction must be towards reducing entropy. Distribution means complexity and high chaos. Level-by-level integration and eventual unified management will reduce the entropy value. Reducing means reducing costs and increasing efficiency, which means being able to expand more functions.

04 Written at the end

Smart cars are bound to usher in a new round of stronger leaps and developments in 2022. We understand the future development through the underlying logic of these cutting-edge technologies We are also looking forward to what newer and stronger technologies we will see emerge this year. As consumers, we can have more initiative and say when choosing products after simply understanding the technical content behind the functions. , and can better distinguish which car companies really have hard power. I hope that in the future we can witness this smart car revolution together and bring us a more comfortable, safe and cool travel experience.