At the beginning of 2018, the National Development and Reform Commission released the "Intelligent Vehicle Innovation and Development Strategy" (draft for soliciting opinions), proposing that by 2020, the proportion of new intelligent vehicles in China will reach 50%; By 2025, China's new cars will basically achieve intelligence, and other intelligent cars will achieve large-scale application; By 2035, we will take the lead in building a strong intelligent vehicle country. Later, someone calculated that if the annual production and sales of automobiles in China were 30 million in 2020, according to this plan, the sales of intelligent vehicles in China would exceed 15 million in 2020.
Stimulated by such huge market potential, nearly all mainstream car enterprises, emerging car manufacturers and technology companies have been building up the position of smart car development in the past two years. They either aim at high-tech configurations such as LCD meters, intelligent central control, head up display, biometrics, and remote control, or directly force the auto drive system with higher difficulty coefficient, constantly expanding people's imagination on the next generation of cars, thus driving changes in the way users perceive cars.
Taking vision as an example, in the past, users wanted to understand the operation of cars mainly through mechanical instruments. With the continuous development of smart cars, their functions are becoming more and more diverse, requiring more and more content to be presented to drivers and passengers. The full LCD instrument panel, head up display, intelligent central control, and rear in car infotainment systems have begun to receive widespread attention and are widely configured in mass-produced vehicles. For example, models such as the Jaguar New XFL and Audi New Q7 all have four screens, including a central control display screen, an instrument panel display screen, and two screens in the rear seat area. The BMW 7 Series has more screens, with up to six screens.
Moreover, in order to facilitate the use of related functions by drivers during the driving process, many cars are even equipped with intelligent interaction technologies such as voice control and gesture control, making the interaction between drivers and passengers with systems and applications more convenient and safe, and minimizing the phenomenon of "distraction" during the driving process. It can be said that in the process of intelligent car technology innovation, the way users perceive cars is also constantly being reshaped.
So, how does the current market view the innovation in user perception brought about by smart cars? In a recent survey conducted by GAC, over 60% of participants believe that these innovations can make car operations smarter, more convenient, and safer, which is the trend.
For example, voice control. In the era of functional vehicles in the past, users had to use the relevant functions inside the car, such as turning on the air conditioning and closing the rear windows. They had to shift their gaze away from the road surface, find the corresponding air conditioning switch or window closing button, and complete the relevant operations before they could refocus on driving. This is actually a very dangerous "distraction" behavior during high-speed vehicle operation. But with voice control, a simple sentence of "turn on the air conditioning" or "close the rear window" may achieve the same effect, while driving safety is doubled.
The heating of HUD follows the same principle. As part of the in car display, HUD is experiencing explosive growth as it allows drivers to see vehicle related information without having to lower their heads, thereby concentrating more attention on the road and improving driving safety. According to relevant statistical data, the global front-end HUD market size in 2016 was about 560 million US dollars, a year-on-year increase of 33%. It is expected that the market size will reach 1.78 billion US dollars by 2020. Geely, GAC, Changan, Great Wall and other domestic independent models are expected to heavily equip their new models with this technology.
However, some people are not optimistic about these innovations. In this survey, 7% of participants believed that some of the gimmicks in the above configuration were more practical and not optimistic. Taking voice control as an example, although voice technology can now achieve functions such as making calls, sending text messages, enabling navigation, playing music, and controlling seats, low accuracy of voice recognition, significant environmental interference, and rigid voice commands are still technical barriers that cannot be overcome, and further improvement is needed. 28% of the participants remained neutral because they felt that many of the technologies involved were still in their infancy and it was too early to draw conclusions.
In terms of specific application areas, nearly 60% of the participants in this survey favor user perception innovation in the fields of automotive safety and intelligent interaction, especially automotive safety. 30% of the participants hope to further improve their perception ability in this field. In fact, the automotive industry has always followed this pattern of technological innovation, that is, safety is always a factor. The emergence of LCD instruments, voice control, HUD, and other technologies, including deep integration with driving assistance systems, is actually aimed at this goal.
Intelligent interaction technology, as a hot topic in recent years, is also widely favored by the market. A mainstream view around human-computer interaction is to minimize unnecessary visual content and weaken visual forms, in order to reduce the information load and interference of drivers during the driving process. Especially in the current context of increasingly diverse communication and information presentation methods between drivers and vehicles, how to minimize the constraints of traditional physical buttons and display screens on drivers and reduce their information processing burden is a challenge facing the entire industry.
Some people believe that gesture interaction will have great potential, especially gesture interaction technology that integrates tactile feedback. However, others believe that voice control is a better choice, or the integration of multiple technologies. As for which one will eventually dominate, further observation is needed.
In other application areas, such as remote control, digital cockpit, intelligent headlights, and intelligent entry systems, the proportion of participants who hope to further improve user perception ability is 15%, 13%, 9%, and 5%, respectively.
Further analysis of the future development trends in various sub sectors shows that 40% of participants believe that human vehicle interaction technology will become more diverse and intelligent in the future, and may even integrate more innovative technologies, such as VR technology, holographic projection, etc., to meet the diverse driving needs of different user groups.
For example, Ford is understood to be developing a new technology called "Feel The View" to help them "see" the scenery outside the window for vision impairment recognition. This technology is characterized by providing vibration feedback on the side window glass of the car. The new device utilizes an integrated outward facing camera to convert visual content into grayscale images, which are then transformed into vibrations of different intensities on the car window that can be felt by fingers, creating a feeling similar to Braille, thus describing the content of background images to visually impaired individuals, such as mountains or skyscrapers.
28% of participants believe that user perception will be more deeply integrated with intelligent driving assistance technology, further improving driving safety. After all, in the future vision of many car companies, cars will not only be a means of transportation, but also have more extended functions, such as becoming offices or reception halls. So how can we meet the driving safety requirements in different application scenarios? It is necessary to deeply integrate various innovative user perception technologies with driving assistance technologies, to ensure driving safety while freeing the hands, feet, and even eyes of drivers and passengers as much as possible.
25% of participants are more concerned about the development of the cockpit, believing that it will continue to evolve towards digitization and intelligence. Indeed, as the main battlefield for reshaping the travel experience of a car model, the cockpit is gradually entering the era of intelligence under the bombardment of various cool intelligent concepts and innovative technologies from current vehicle manufacturers, component suppliers, and technology companies. For example, at the 2018 CES, Bosch showcased a future cockpit, which, with its equipped camera and sound recognition software, can recognize the driver and automatically load the owner's personalized settings, such as seat, mirror position, and favorite music playlist, to meet the personalized needs of users.
In addition to Bosch, the new cockpit products showcased by vehicle manufacturers and component companies such as Hongqi, Nazhijie, Byton, Faurecia, and Yanfeng also reflect the trend of intelligence, endowing the cockpit with learning functions and providing more customized needs for drivers and passengers.