On the afternoon of August 4, at the 2023 Huawei Developers Conference, Huawei Executive Director, CEO of Consumer Business Group, and CEO of Intelligent Automotive Solution Business Unit, Yu Chengdong, announced the official release of HarmonyOS 4 (hereafter referred to as "Hongmeng 4").
As described by Yu, the latest Hongmeng 4 system features meta-services, distributed interconnectivity, greater intelligence, enhanced security, and increased personalization. To date, Hongmeng ecosystem devices have reached 700 million units, covering intelligent devices such as automotive cockpit and smartphones.
He Gang, Chief Operating Officer of Huawei's Consumer Business Group, discussed some of the new features of the Hongmeng 4 system in the automotive field. He expressed that the powerful distributed capabilities of the Hongmeng 4 system allow efficient content circulation in Hongmeng cockpits, where simply dragging on the central control screen allows backseat passengers to watch the same movie shown on the screen.
In addition, the super desktop feature has also been upgraded. The latest Hongmeng 4 system can easily transfer games from the phone to the cockpit screen through the super desktop. This feature, originally introduced in Hongmeng 3 system, enables direct access to mobile head applications, effectively transforming mobile applications into part of the car machine application.
Smart cockpits and smart driving are the two main touchpoints of Huawei's push for automobile intelligence, with the Hongmeng cockpit becoming a crucial selling point for equipped models. A user survey from a previous Huawei retail store showed that 88.71% and 94.67% of owners of M5 and M7 models, respectively, consider the Hongmeng cockpit the most satisfactory feature of their vehicles.
Serise, which has co-created the AITO M9 model with Huawei, officially announced on August 1st that the AITO M9 will be equipped with the newly upgraded Hongmeng 4 system and is expected to hit the market in the fourth quarter of this year.
The M9, following the M5 and M7 series, is the third model of the brand, and Yu Chengdong expressed confidence that the M9 will become the most luxurious, high-end, and intelligent car on the market.
Notably, the Hongmeng 4 system has also integrated AI large models. Yu Chengdong pointed out that, bolstered by the fundamental capabilities of the Pangu large model, the Hongmeng 4 system further enhances the AI experience. The system's Xiaoyi is the first intelligent assistant with AI large model capabilities, which can identify user intent through understanding natural dialogue.
Multiple auto companies have recently announced their plans to release proprietary AI large model technology or apply the technology to car products.
Geely Auto revealed that the company already has a full-stack proprietary AI large model technology and plans to release it in the second half of the year. It's reported that this model includes painting, music, language, and even autonomous driving AI large model capabilities, covering models with data from billion, tens of billion, to hundreds of billion levels.
Baidu Apollo then announced that Great Wall Motors and Ekka Technology have become the first partners to explore the application of the Wenxin large model intelligent cockpit, with a focus on the car interaction scene based on large model capabilities. Some functions, after verification on mass production vehicle platforms, are expected to be first launched on mass production models such as Great Wall, Lynk & Co, and smart.
A report from Orient Securities points out that vehicle intelligence mainly manifests in two aspects, autonomous driving and intelligent cockpits. The continuous development of AI technology, such as BEV, cognition, NLP language, and other large AI model technologies, is set to push vehicle intelligence to new heights.
It's clear that as the competition for vehicle intelligence intensifies, the large AI model will become the next technological high ground for major car companies.
