The "Car Brain" Of Downtime

Since 2020, with the voice of "software defined car" gradually rising, the automotive industry is receiving a new baptism. From traditional automobile enterprises to new forces of car manufacturing, the competition centered on Intelligent Internet connection and automatic driving is in full swing.

"In the next 10 years, the car will eventually become a 'four wheels + supercomputer' form." On March 10, Zhang Kai, director of intelligent driving of Great Wall Motors and chairman of smart bank, said publicly.

In fact, with the continuous evolution of intelligence, the car is gradually evolving from a vehicle to an intelligent terminal running on the road, and its core components have gradually changed from the engine, gearbox and chassis to the "car brain" composed of chips, software and data.

After the reform, the car will completely break away from the attributes of the vehicle, and will evolve into an intelligent travel mobile space under the control of the "car brain".

However, the blessing of intelligent Internet connection and automatic driving has brought more convenient travel experience for users, and also opened a corner of security risks.

On September 23, 2020, Tesla's global network was cut off, and the system outage caused numerous vehicles to be paralyzed, and Tesla owners were unable to connect their cars through app. In the earlier year of 2019, Tesla also had a number of accidents involving auxiliary driving system. Recently, several accidents caused by Tesla's abnormal braking in China also attracted the attention of all sectors of the society.

It is not only Tesla, but also the first batch of es8 delivered by Weilai. It has also been exposed that the system of the whole vehicle cannot be started due to the crash of the central console during driving.

Just before March 15 this year, Mercedes Benz recalled more than 2.6 million vehicles through large-scale OTA due to the design problem of communication module software.

Cui Dongshu, Secretary General of the National Joint Association of passenger car market information, had predicted that automobile products were still evolving. On the way to subvert traditional machinery, problems were gradually emerging, which might gradually become a "disaster area" for future recall.

Not only that, with the advent of the era of software defined automobile, the quality problems of automotive software are increasing rapidly, and the "car brain" that does not know when it will go down is affecting the travel safety.

Software problems are increasing day by day

"On March 15, 2019, 19 AI intelligent Internet connected SUV haver F7 was purchased, but some functions publicized by it were found to be missing and nonexistent. First of all, there is false propaganda on the vehicle, and the on-board WiFi and carlife are not on the real vehicle. After several months of complaints from the majority of car owners, great wall manufacturers issued an announcement through the Internet of vehicles app on January 20, 2020, requiring the owners to pay twice to replace the new version of the car. Second, the automobile radar is indirectly out of order. When the vehicle is close to the obstacle, the radar does not respond. Every time the driver manually turns on the radar to work, which can not help the driver to realize blind area detection, avoid some unnecessary accidents and affect driving safety. "

On the eve of March 15, a haffer F7 car owner filed a complaint on the platform of the 21st century economic report "shuliaotong". According to the reporter's analysis, we found that there are still many problems related to car programs and software all over the country.

In addition to the design problems or compatibility of the vehicle software itself, the actual intelligent level of the vehicle is not consistent with the propaganda of the main engine plant, which is also becoming the hot spot of automobile consumers' complaints.

Input "software" as a keyword search in the car quality network of the automobile consumption complaint website, and there were as many as 120 complaints, including vehicle engine stuck, APP unable to be installed, APP unable to use, Internet of vehicles disconnected, on-board interconnection system failure, video and audio system failure, etc.

"Before buying the car, support for carlife was clearly shown on the website and in the brochure of the 4S store. It also supports Android and apple phones, but after I bought the car, I found that it didn't have this function. " A domestic brand car owner told the 21st century economic reporter.

It is worth noting that behind such complaints, the deeper hidden danger lies in the safety of consumers' travel. With the gradual development of automatic driving technology, in recent years, many car companies boast that their products have L2 and L3 automatic driving functions. However, since 2020, there have been more than 600 complaints about the failure of driving safety auxiliary system. Adaptive cruise failure, active braking system fault and automatic parking fault have become the focus of complaints.

At the same time, with the increasing degree of intelligent network connection and digitization, intelligent network vehicle integrates a large number of cameras, radars, tachometers, navigators and other kinds of sensors, resulting in the past intelligent terminal remote control, data theft, information deception and other security issues have gradually appeared in the intelligent vehicle. Once the "car brain" problems, the above hidden dangers may endanger personal safety and public safety, causing irreparable heavy losses.

In 2020, the defective product management center of the State Administration of market supervision and administration of the people's Republic of China jointly conducted information security tests on a number of intelligent connected vehicles. It was found that 63% of the Internet connected vehicles had a certain degree of security risks.

However, the industry has not yet formed a unified solution for software problems. Compared with the traditional quality problems of automobile engine, transmission, chassis and body, the quality of automobile software and related safety problems are still in the blank area of supervision.

Can OTA solve the hidden trouble?

With the increase of automobile software related problems, the number of vehicle related recalls has increased significantly. Software upgrade (OTA) has become an important way for automobile enterprises to repair "loopholes" and solve product problems.

According to the IHS Markit 2020 annual report, there were 213 vehicle recalls involving program or software problems in China from 2014 to 2019, involving 6.8302 million vehicles, accounting for 9.0% of the total number of recalls. Among the 213 recalls involving programs or software, 169 were recalled through software upgrade (OTA), accounting for 79.3%, involving 5.097 million vehicles, accounting for 74.6%.

It is worth noting that in the face of more and more software problems, on November 25, 2020, the general office of the General Administration of Market Supervision issued the notice on Further Strengthening the supervision of technical recall of automobile remote upgrade (OTA), which requires that from now on, all producers who carry out technical service activities for sold vehicles by OTA should comply with the regulations on the administration of recall of defective automobile products And the requirements of the implementation measures of the administrative regulations on the recall of defective automobile products shall be filed with the Quality Development Bureau of the State Administration of market supervision.

This is also the first national level for the car OTA technology to make a unified recall filing requirements.

After the release of the above requirements, on March 12, in view of the design problems of communication module software, Mercedes Benz will upgrade the communication module software for the recalled vehicles free of charge through OTA technology, so that users can eliminate potential safety hazards without going to the store.

Before that, many new forces of car making, including Tesla and Weilai, mostly adopted the method of online software upgrade to "recessively recall" cars.

"Although we encourage enterprises to implement recalls in the form of Ota, we can not use OTA methods to evade or replace recalls. Ota is only a kind of technical service mode of recall, which is not equal to recall, nor can it replace recall. No matter whether the enterprise takes OTA as a recall measure or a technical service activity, it must fulfill the obligation of filing. " Xiao Lingyun, director of the Automobile Department of the defective product management center of the State Administration of market supervision, once said at an open forum that for the products with high safety requirements, manufacturers should not cover up the truth of software problems in the name of Ota upgrade.

At the same time, the process of Ota for vehicle enterprises also brings new challenges. Due to the large number of vehicle ECU and complex network, once the vehicle establishes communication with the outside world, it will bring the possibility of the original closed network to be invaded. How to ensure the vehicle safety and establish security protection measures is a problem that vehicle enterprises must pay attention to when they carry out Ota.

During the two sessions of the National People's Congress and the Chinese people's Congress this year, a number of representative members made suggestions and suggestions on the data privacy protection of intelligent connected vehicles.

    Chen Hong, deputy to the National People's Congress, Secretary of the Party committee and chairman of SAIC, suggested that the collection, storage and commercial use of the data of the intelligent Internet connected vehicle should be filed and managed by the relevant national departments. In terms of data privacy protection, the intelligent network connected automobile enterprises should inform the users of the possible privacy risks, and separate the data and personal identity when analyzing and processing the data Anonymize data to ensure user data security.

    In addition, in view of the possible safety problems of smart cars, Zhou Hongyi, member of the CPPCC National Committee, founder and chairman of 360 group, suggested that the state should encourage and guide automobile enterprises to incorporate the networking safety protection system of intelligent vehicles into the vehicle production, sales and service system, and gradually form mandatory requirements, which should be listed as the standard configuration of automobile safety like automobile safety belts.