An Introduction To Scenario-Driven Car Making

Dr. Shaoshan Liu is the founder/CEO of PerceptIn, Autonomous Cellular Clinics challenge lead at BeyonCa and Asia Chair of IEEE Entrepreneurship.

Coming from a purely technological history, I have used the previous ten years developing autonomous driving technologies. More than one calendar year ago, I embarked on an enjoyable new journey of producing smart electric powered motor vehicles (IEVs), of which autonomous driving is only one particular ingredient.

Immediately after deep diving into the car-creating procedure for a though, I have been awed by the complexity of car engineering, challenged by the cultural clash of regular auto-building and world wide web-type, rapid-paced innovations, touched by the everlasting beauty of car layouts and encouraged by the broad spectrum of utilization scenarios for smart electrical motor vehicles.

At the very commencing of 2023, I experienced an epiphany, acknowledging that we have appear to the age of state of affairs-pushed car or truck generating, this kind of that IEVs should really serve a incredibly obvious and comprehensive buyer need to have. With the sole mission of fulfilling this need, we need to then steadily unfold the complexity of vehicle making. I connect with this new course of action scenario-driven auto creating. Consequently, I have designed a 2023 New Year’s resolution to produce a series of articles detailing my comprehending of state of affairs-driven motor vehicle earning. In this opening posting, I endeavor to describe the strategy of scenario-pushed vehicle generating.

As talked about in my prior short article, the IEV marketplace is evolving by means of a few phases of advancement: electrification, intelligence and ecosystem. Just after extra than a person ten years of advancement, different IEV providers, this kind of as Tesla, NIO and XPeng, have laid a very very good basis in electrification and intelligence, and it will be very demanding for latecomers to obstacle their set up positions in all those spots. Thus, it will be a good shift for any new IEV firm to depend on the current source chain for electrification and intelligence but target on proprietary technologies to allow a few use eventualities.

In a way, an IEV is similar to a smartphone. Some individuals use their phones primarily for get the job done needs, some use their phones largely for enjoyment and some use their phones as wellness monitors. I predict that the IEV field will evolve likewise, and utilization will extend past mobility.

I have currently observed some illustrations of situation-pushed car creating in the IEV field. China’s Li Automobile has developed a collection of “soccer mom” autos to fulfill the wants of buying up children, getting a loved ones excursion and other household-oriented usage situations. The critical characteristics of Li Auto’s IEVs contain a spacious inside surroundings and massive screens for entertainment. Canoo, a U.S.-dependent IEV business, develops “lifestyle” cars, especially focusing on tenting utilization scenarios. BeyonCa (with which I have done projects), a newcomer in the IEV room, focuses on making luxurious vehicles targeting in-car or truck well being monitoring. HiPhi, one more Chinese IEV model, develops robot vehicles for customers to system and interact with, this sort of that a consumer can make the auto dance or play a musical exhibit.

As extra and more situation-driven IEVs appear to current market, we require to develop an modern car-producing course of action to create cars for precise use eventualities in its place of infusing new utilization situations with present platforms. The common motor vehicle-generating process is a technological innovation-pushed, bottom-up course of action, in which automotive engineers determine the essential parameters of the chassis platform, which includes proportions, mass, torque, gear ratios and aerodynamic drag forces, and then based on this platform, designers derive numerous versions for distinct shopper teams. On leading of these models, product managers elaborate on usage situations.

Situation-driven automobile producing, in contrast, is a top rated-down system in which the utilization scenarios are described initially, then the car’s exterior and inside types are defined encompassing the utilization eventualities. Lastly, different technologies, this sort of as in-cabin intelligence, autonomous driving and chassis, are scouted from the technological know-how offer chain to empower the utilization eventualities.

What would make the top rated-down circumstance-pushed car-making process feasible is the emergence of modular auto engineering, exemplified by systems these as skateboard chassis and centralized electrical/digital (E/E) architectures. These standardized modules significantly decrease the cost and growth time of automobile engineering. More importantly, these standardized modules provide effectively-defined interfaces and abstractions for IEV authentic tools suppliers (OEMs) to build cars and trucks for particular usage situations, similar to how our youngsters can unlock their imagination applying LEGO creating blocks.

On the other hand, the conversion from a conventional vehicle-earning process to a circumstance-driven car or truck-making system is no uncomplicated task. In the rest of this sequence, I will go over vital enabling technologies, which include skateboard chassis, centralized E/E architectures and an in-motor vehicle metaverse. I will discover a number of new utilization eventualities such as in-car wellness monitoring and programming your IEVs. I will talk about the exterior and inside structure procedure for scenario-pushed car generating. I will dive deep into the obstacle of undertaking management, especially the cultural clash of standard auto making and internet-design and style, fast-paced innovations. Last but not minimum, I will evaluation ground breaking branding, marketing and client outreach strategies for state of affairs-driven IEVs.

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