Text/Zhang Yi

Nowadays, the "new four modernizations" of automobiles, which are trending towards electrification, intelligence, networking and sharing, have become the focus of discussion on future automobiles. The focus of content, and as suppliers in the automotive industry, how do they face this trend?

I participated in the fifth Bosch Technology Innovation Experience Day a few days ago. As the world’s top Auto parts supplier, Bosch Technology Innovation Experience Day is also a very meaningful event. Here you can not only see some cutting-edge technologies that will be applied to mass-produced vehicles a few years in advance, but also hear about the industry giant. Their thinking and understanding of future intelligent transportation

For example, during the discussion on future travel trends at this Bosch Experience Day Forum, Dr. Xu Daquan, Executive Vice President of Bosch China, believed: Enjoy travel. It will be a changing trend, and the top of the future automobile industry will be the most exclusive travel service providers. The pattern and supply chain of the automobile industry will undergo tremendous changes.

At the same time, as a representative of smart electric vehicles, Tesla's sales and market value have been rising during the epidemic this year. One view is that future car competition may gradually develop from electrification to intelligence, and the time will exceed industry expectations.

▲Dr. Xu Daquan, Executive Vice President of Bosch China

In response to this issue, Dr. Xu Daquan, Executive Vice President of Bosch China, said unabashedly: Tesla is indeed a great company, and the emergence of Tesla is accelerating. It has led to changes in the entire automobile industry, from the development of electric vehicles to the next step of intelligence, and future autonomous driving is accelerating.

From a technical perspective, the entire automobile industry and automobiles already have the capabilities like. Some of the necessary technical conditions for intelligent development already exist, but it is still difficult to determine when L4 and L5 level autonomous driving will be achieved, but the speed of new technology intelligence is getting faster and faster.

What Bosch is doing is going all out to develop towards intelligence, how to turn Bosch into an IOT company instead of a traditional auto parts manufacturer.

And now. At this event, Bosch also showed us its latest electrification, automation, interconnection and personalized solutions for commercial vehicles and passenger cars, including driver assistance systems for commercial vehicles, CVT for electric vehicles, and smart cockpits. Cutting-edge technology.

Electric vehicle CVT technology

Bosch’s own internal predictions conservatively estimate that there will be 21% pure electric vehicles by 2030, but the development of electric vehicles is extremely rapid. , they predict that by 2030, more than 1/3 of global powertrains will be pure electric models.

At the same time, Bosch believes that for pure electric models, single-stage or two-stage reducers are not necessary. The best solution for electric models, so they have launched CVT technology for pure electric models, and the core pressure steel belt of this CVT can withstand torques of up to 600N.m

▲CVT core components- Pressure steel belt

To put it simply, electric CVT has the following advantages: comfort, power density, and reduced energy consumption.

In the initial stage, the motor torque can be reduced to improve comfort. During rapid acceleration, the CVT can be adjusted to keep the motor at a constant peak power, thereby improving acceleration performance. It is also suitable for high-speed stages. For example, the motor speed can be reduced to increase the power density and thereby increase the maximum vehicle speed.

Motor output is more optimally adjusted through multiple gears, just like the Porsche Taycan has a two-speed transmission. The small 1st gear ratio is responsible for starting acceleration performance, and the 2nd gear is a large gearbox. The ratio is responsible for providing top speed and reducing energy consumption during normal driving at high speeds.

It’s just that Bosch’s electric CVT transmission ratio has a wider range than single-stage and two-stage reducers. The speed ratio range is about 4.0, which is equivalent to four gears, so it can better balance the In addition to the above performance, it can also keep the vehicle speed consistent with the most efficient working range of the motor, achieving the most economical working conditions, that is, reducing energy consumption.

What Bosch is currently doing is to combine an electric motor with a CVT to form a power platform, striving to cover five levels of models with one power platform. It can be said that this is a very powerful and innovative technology in electric vehicles. A technology with great application prospects.

Commercial vehicle driving assistance system

Unlike passenger cars, commercial vehicle autonomous driving in specific scenarios may come earlier. Bosch established a commercial vehicle system in 2018 ADAS engineering team, in addition to displaying commercial vehicle driving assistance systems, this event also released for the first time the latest generation of millimeter-wave radar and cameras for commercial vehicle autonomous driving.

In fact, I think that for commercial vehicles, the implementation of autonomous driving may not only be faster, but also the demand for assisted driving should be stronger than that of passenger cars. Because in the same traffic environment, the driving safety of commercial vehicles will have a greater impact on the safety of the overall traffic environment due to the huge difference in volume and mass compared with passenger cars.

Five years ago, Europe had regulations requiring that some commercial vehicles be forced to install AEBS and LDW (automatic emergency braking, lane departure warning systems). China currently only has LDW and FCW (forward collision warning), and In 2022, Europe will also launch BSIS and MOIS, which are blind spot detection functions and early warning for pedestrians crossing in front of trucks at low speeds.

But relatively speaking, BSIS and MOIS may be more needed in the domestic market. Many people have seen various traffic accidents on the Internet caused by the blind spots of heavy trucks. This is because Caused by lack of blind spot detection. Bosch's solution for these two functions is to use angle millimeter wave radar. The vehicle side angle radar performs measurements every 20 milliseconds. The backward detection distance can reach 160m, which can completely solve low-speed traffic accidents caused by heavy trucks' blind spots. .

▲The red cable in the picture is the angle radar applied to the side of the car

At the scene, Bosch also showed us the fifth-generation millimeter wave radar and the second-generation multi-function The camera-based Volvo FH heavy truck, among which the fifth-generation forward radar can support the automatic emergency braking function of heavy commercial vehicles, while the corner radar provides support for functions such as blind spot monitoring and departure reminder systems, and the camera can be effectively used in smart vehicles. Functions such as light control, road sign recognition, lane departure warning, lane keeping assist, and forward collision warning. ?

However, in addition to the second-generation multi-function camera that has been mass-produced in the live demonstration, Bosch is also developing a third-generation multi-function camera for commercial vehicles, with mass production in 2023. Compared with the second generation, the biggest change is to pave the way for the integration of the electronic and electric architecture of the future vehicle, because the third generation camera provides two high-speed CAN interfaces, including an Ethernet interface, which supports the transmission of video to on the central control display.

Intelligent Cockpit

In addition, Bosch also shared its views on future smart cockpits. The development of the electronic and electrical architecture of smart cockpits can be roughly divided into four stages: distributed stage - intra-domain integration. Stage - cross-domain integration stage - central computing stage, basically showing a trend of increasing centralization.

Currently, most companies are in the distributed stage, that is, a function in the car needs to correspond to an ECU (electronic control unit). What Bosch is currently doing is to achieve intra-domain integration, which can reduce the cost of the vehicle (BOM), reduce wiring, reduce weight, and reduce the difficulty of software development and improve OTA capabilities.

In addition, Bosch has received its first global cockpit domain controller project the year before last, with customers from North America. This project will be mass-produced in 2022. Let’s take a bold guess. GM’s Cadillac Lyriq is likely to be the first model provided by Bosch to realize the integration of smart cockpits.

In addition to the technologies mentioned above, Bosch actually demonstrated some other technologies at this event, such as wire-controlled steering, remote-controlled autonomous parking based on cameras and ultrasonic radars, millimeter-wave radars, cameras We will not introduce the high-speed lane change assist functions implemented one by one.

In fact, through the above technology display, we can roughly see the trend of the new four modernizations of automobiles. Although Bosch, as a giant, is also accelerating its transformation, its route is more conservative. For example, electric CVT is an existing It is forward-looking and does not give up its own technological advantages. Looking to the future, as a top automotive supplier, it is worth looking forward to what new technologies Bosch will bring to the road of intelligent development and what changes it will make during the transformation process.

This article comes from the author of Autohome Chejiahao and does not represent the views and positions of Autohome.