In the movie Captain America 2, the director of SHIELD drove a Chevrolet Suburban equipped with artificial intelligence, and successfully escaped the enemy’s blockade with the help of automatic maintenance, real-time analysis of road conditions and autonomous driving. We may never have a war vehicle equipped with machine guns and artillery like him, but the introduction of various new technologies has made the arrival of smart vehicle just around the corner.
Why Are Vehicles So Representative?
As a representative product of the digital era, the innovation of the automotive industry is closely related to many technological advances. First of all, the new form of energy – electric vehicles make it easier for computers to take over the energy management and driving of vehicles. The introduction of cloud computing and artificial intelligence has further enhanced the capabilities of vehicles. A large amount of data is transmitted between the vehicle and the cloud servers, and the on-board autonomous driving system analyzes road conditions in real time. In this regard, we have learned about Tesla’s FSD (full-self driving) which is pure vision solution, and there are also manufacturers such as Nio that are using lidar solutions. Even if AI is not completely taken over, the combination of AR applications and HUD (head-up display) functions can make human drivers’ own driving easier and safer.
What Is the Current Situation of the Automotive Industry?
Less than 20 years after the release of the first prototype, Tesla has surpassed Volkswagen, General Motors and Toyota to become the world’s most valuable automotive manufacturer. In contrast to Tesla’s success, the market share of some traditional brands with a long history continues to shrink. Industry giants such as Porsche and Mercedes-Benz have also begun to transform to electrification and intelligent driving. Behind the decline of old-era products and the prosperity of new-era products is the “digital disruption” that we are familiar with.
How to Imagine the Future?
If we regard all vehicles on the road as mobile large computers, the imagination space will be very broad. Reliable and powerful hardware (think of stable high-voltage power supply and complex heat dissipation technology) will enable vehicles to become the largest and most powerful terminal devices in the digital era. What else can we expect? AI models can be deployed locally instead of in the cloud; cockpits equipped with VR devices can serve as our entry into the world of metaverse.
Referances
Wu, A. (2024) The Story Behind Tesla’s Success (TSLA). https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/061915/story-behind-teslas-success.asp.
Staff, N. a T.A. (2024) Tesla Releases FSD v12.4: New Vision Attention Monitoring, Improved Strike System With Update 2024.9.5. https://www.notateslaapp.com/news/2031/tesla-releases-fsd-v12-4-new-vision-attention-monitoring-improved-strike-system-with-update-2024-9-5.
VISION AVTR | Future Vehicles (no date). https://www.mercedes-benz.ca/en/future-vehicles/vision-avtr#gallery.
