[car home Internet Travel] OTA can be Online Travel Agency, Orthopaedic Trauma Association or Overflying-Top Attack, but today, almost everyone will recognize the same explanation-Over the Air Technology.
10 seconds to understand the full text
1. The mistake of OTA design has caused more than one embarrassing accident, but it has also helped car companies create a "miracle".
2. FOTA and SOTA, and "F" stands for Firmware; "S" stands for Software.
3. Every OTA update is actually quite complicated, and the "ECU" in the car is the object of upgrade.
Is OTA really important?
However, because cars have completely different properties from smart hardware such as mobile phones, it is many years later for cars to use OTA to upgrade their in-vehicle systems than smart devices. After all, the most common problem with mobile phones is inconvenience or property damage.But in the automobile industry, there are no minor problems, most of which are life-related events.. ?
These two events show that for cars,OTA is not only a tool of "success is Xiao He, failure is Xiao He", it is closely related to automobile driving safety.. For car companies, its significance is not to let your car keep up with the "fashion trend". Your mobile phone has been able to OTA for a long time, so you still change your new machine every year.
The value of OTA is mainly reflected in: on the one hand,The owner does not need to go to the 4S shop alone to upgrade the system.; On the other hand, we should know that whether it is system upgrade or recall, the main engine factory will subsidize the 4S shop for working hours and other expenses.Through OTA, car companies saved a lot of money..
Does it matter? Also important,It is important for car companies to repeatedly verify and test the "fool-proof" design in every link and even in the upgrade process. A little deviation may lead to a big mistake.It’s not afraid to lose a little reputation, but it’s really terrible to have a safety hazard.
Past lives of OTA
The first OTA online upgrade in automobile history was Tesla Model S, which was in 2012. In that year, my Bora had only one radio and CD player, and there was nothing to upgrade these two things anyway. I was not "sour".
Friends who know about new energy vehicles should know that,Power management system is one of the "three big parts" of electric vehicles, which involves the power and running of vehicles.. At a time when most of the so-called "Internet cars" can only be upgraded by OTA for entertainment system functions, Tesla was able to upgrade the core part of the vehicle through OTA many years ago. Of course, this is still pediatrics.
When people wondered how Tesla would respond to Consumer Report, in less than a week, Tesla released an OTA upgrade, and the upgraded Model 3 was retested by Consumer Report, and the braking distance of 60mph (English, about 97km/h) was shortened by 5.8 meters.
The "blood" of Americans is always reflected in this kind of thing, and they love "slapping" and dramatic turning points. It seems that only in this way can their stories be "widely circulated". When I first heard this story, I thought: What did you (swearing) do early?
As we said, even today, there are still few car companies that have the ability to upgrade their power systems by OTA. On the one hand, car owners may improve their happiness a little because of the faster dynamic response after the upgrade, but it is accompanied by the considerable risks of car companies themselves. A little mistake may do bad things with good intentions.
Even so, OTA has brought great potential and vitality to the automobile industry. In 2018, McKinsey released a report and analyzed that the upgrade of zebra OTA is a landmark event for smart cars in China.
Similarly, nowadays, a new China brand car with "intelligence" as one of its selling points is on the market. If there is no OTA function, are you embarrassed to say hello when you go out? Coupled with the development of V2X and other car networking functions mentioned earlier, OTA is expected to become the next "standard" after ESP basically becomes "standard".
FOTA and SOTA
Car companies sometimes pay attention to maverick, do not go with the flow, and publicize that we are not OTA, we are FOTA! In fact, the common OTA should be called SOTA strictly."S" stands for Software software, while "F" in FOTA stands for Firmware..
These two words are more inclined to the internal classification of engineers, and the firmware packages actually sent to the car often cover the contents of FOTA and SOTA. Of course, the technical strength of car companies and suppliers who can do FOTA will not be too bad.
An art tour of OTA upgrade package
Let’s briefly talk about the process of a car OTA here. First of all, as mentioned above, car companies need to design, write and repeatedly test the content to be updated. After ensuring foolproof, the packaged content will be distributed to each car to be updated through the network operator.
After that, Gateway(OTA Manager) will be responsible for managing the update process of all ECU, distributing the firmware to ECU, and telling ECU when to update. The deployment of Gateway is particularly important when multiple ECU need to update at the same time.
Usually, a car will be equipped with a number of ECU electronic control units responsible for controlling different modules. According to the functional classification, please refer to the following two figures.
Anyway, after all ECU updates are completed, Gateway will also send confirmation information to the server. The whole process is a complete OTA update.
Summary: Is OTA important after all? Is the car networking safe?
Finally, the summary part, the value geometry and importance of OTA, I think you have your own judgment after reading an article. If you want to ask about security, it’s a pity that nothing in this world is absolutely safe. Your mobile phone with both Face ID and fingerprint recognition looks safe, but it’s just that hackers don’t bother to take the time to crack your mobile phone.
The technology is as strong as Tesla. In 2016 and 2017, the in-vehicle system was cracked by Tencent Cohen Lab twice, realizing contactless and arbitrary remote control of Tesla in parking and driving conditions. Tesla also publicly thanked Tencent Cohen Lab for this.
At this point, the terminology annotation series of car networking is over. It is also during this time that I have the opportunity to talk about the details that I have no energy or space to interpret in detail in the article. The Internet of Vehicles itself is a tool to serve car owners. You don’t need to take it too seriously, but as the attributes of "tools" and "toys" of cars become more and more clear, the Internet of Vehicles will become more and more important in the next few years.
[Annotation series of car networking terms (I) Voice control]
[Annotation series of car networking terms (middle) What is V2X? 】
The Internet of Vehicles will change people’s perspective on cars, change the way people "drive" cars, and change the pace of life around cars. The process of accepting a new thing is painful, but when people adapt to a thing and are suddenly deprived of it, it is really uncomfortable. I believe that you who are "meditating" at home these days should have a deep feeling. (Photo/Text car home Zheng Xu)
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