A few days ago, the third-party OTA solution provider "Elabi" announced that it had obtained Series A financing of $654.38+0 billion. The financing was led by Zhangjiang Hi-Tech, followed by Zhangjiang Ketou and Caive Fund. Among them, Zhangjiang Hi-Tech just joined hands with SAIC and Ali to invest in Smart Machine.
Elaraby, founded on 20 17 and 10, mainly provides OTA upgrade and related data services for automobile customers, in short, it is a software supplier of the OEM. In the automotive field, Elaraby has served 25 mainstream models of more than 65,438+05 OEMs, including SAIC-GM, Great Wall, Jianghuai, SAIC Chase and BYD.
Traditional car enterprise software is "weak", and third-party OTA suppliers are rising rapidly.
Volkswagen ID.3? Carrying the great goal of Volkswagen Group to realize "software-defined car", it was officially unveiled as early as last September. It is also the first pure electric car born on Volkswagen's brand-new pure electric MEB platform, shouldering the heavy responsibility of mass electrification.
However, cars were made a long time ago. Last year, it was revealed that due to serious software problems, we had to wait for the cable to be "upgraded" in the parking lot, so there was a wonderful scene of a tent factory brushing machines. Cable, OTA? Indeed, the public is doing this now.
In fact, compared with OTA, a new force in building cars, traditional car companies are obviously not so smooth in this respect. According to relevant data, by 2025, it is estimated that automobile products will be consumer electronic products with 700 million lines of software code, realizing the transformation from hardware function carrier to software service carrier. In this process, OTA will be the key supporting technology.
In fact, more and more car companies have begun to use OTA as the most important selling point of their models, and they have spared no effort in publicity. According to relevant statistics, in 20 18 years, there were only 2.39 million OTA vehicles, and the assembly rate was only 1 1.8%. By 20 19, it will increase to 3.838 million vehicles, with a year-on-year increase of 60.6%, and the assembly rate will increase to 19%. By 2025, the number of OTA assemblies in China will reach180,000, which is likely to exceed 50 million in the world.
However, due to the high cost of OTA in software and trial and error, it needs very deep technical accumulation, which is lacking in traditional car companies and lacks large-scale reliability verification and testing methods. At this stage, many traditional car companies prefer to use third-party suppliers to establish the corresponding OTA system. Thereby accelerating the ultimate goal of on-board OTA.
In the traditional automobile cost composition, hardware accounts for about 80%, and software and services account for about 20%. It can be said that the proportion of smart car software will be higher and higher in the future. For L4 self-driving cars, the hardware cost may only account for 40%, the software may account for 40%, and the content may account for 20%. In addition, in terms of software code, traditional cars only have tens of millions of lines of code, while smart cars will have 300-500 million lines of code. This is why Volkswagen, as a traditional car company, can't solve a software Bug.
OTA brings more business models.
OTA can be said to connect the relationship between OEM and consumers, and the owner no longer needs to go to the 4S shop to upgrade related software as usual. It is a brand-new experience, which is convenient and efficient for consumers.
At the same time, traditional car companies used to sell in-vehicle hardware, but they will sell software in the future, providing new functions or optimizing existing functions through OTA upgrade, such as automatic driving function, voice interaction and even performance improvement.
For example, "NIO" of Weilai Automobile? Pilot? " Optional package ",including eight functions of assisting driving. If the owner needs it, he only needs to pay 6.5438+0.5 million yuan, and then the online OTA will be directly upgraded and opened. ?
During the COVID-19 epidemic, BYD also launched the "high-temperature disinfection and sterilization function", which can remotely heat the air-conditioned air in the car to 60℃ on the APP to kill COVID-19. Geely Xingrui recently announced a brand-new upgrade plan at the Guangzhou Auto Show, involving many software and hardware projects such as automatic parking, panoramic image, car engine, air conditioner and engine NVH. , the price is 5777 yuan. Another example is Tesla's 2499 yuan rear seat heating, which is also directly turned on through OTA, which was unimaginable in the past. Now OTA can really do many unexpected things.
So why do traditional car companies need a third-party supplier to provide OTA solutions? First of all, traditional car companies lacked the corresponding OTA practical experience in the past, and at the same time could not affect various parts suppliers, and research and development would be limited. Secondly, car companies pay great attention to reliability to a certain extent, dare not try and make mistakes, and lack relevant testing methods. In addition, traditional car companies pay attention to efficiency, and in order to speed up the process of vehicle research and development, they tend to integrate suppliers. The most important point is that traditional car companies pay attention to cost. If the third-party OTA supplier is adopted, the cost of self-research can be greatly saved.
In the future, as the selling point of automobiles slowly shifts from hardware configuration to software configuration, the importance of OTA will be greatly enhanced. Third-party OTA suppliers will definitely become the "good medicine" for traditional car companies.
This article comes from car home, the author of the car manufacturer, and does not represent car home's position.