The car of the future may be more powerful than the computer on your desk — thanks to one tiny silicon chip.
At the company’s “Automotive Redefined: Technology Showcase,” Qualcomm unveiled the fourth generation of its Snapdragon Automotive Cockpit platform, a plug-and-play answer to the question car manufacturers are wrestling with: How to bring the best of modern computing into an ordinary car. The latest version of the platform bundles advanced computing, machine learning, computer vision, and a suite of sensors into a chip no bigger than a silver dollar.
“We strive to deliver the industry’s most advanced digital cabin solutions and aim to reinvent the driver, passenger and rear-seat entertainment and contextual awareness experience, while also addressing the automakers’ shift to zonal compute architectures with the fusion of compute, performance, A.I., and safety,” said Nakul Duggal, senior vice president & GM, automotive for Qualcomm.
That chip — the heart of the platform — is built using advanced, 5nm process technology, Qualcomm says, enabling the company to pack more silicon into a smaller than ever package. But one chip alone won’t turn an ordinary car into a self-driving machine. It’ll require miles of networking cable throughout the vehicle, a slew of sensors including radar, lidar, and high definition cameras, additional chips throughout the car, and so on.
Still, the brains of tomorrow’s vehicles are the crucial component shaping the advancement of the automotive world. What features they bring will shape our experience driving tomorrow. So what’s supported in the chip?
The platform also supports a variety of other technologies, including the typical alphabet soup of acronyms: The Blackberry QNX real-time OS, Linux, and C-V2X technology, the latest iteration of a long-running dream in the connected car world. In theory, C-V2X (essentially short for “vehicle to anything communication”) means your car will talk to the road, the street signs you pass, other cars, your house, and so on, to ensure seamless, safe driving.
In reality, it’s going to take decades for the infrastructure to be built to fully support such a system. But it’s a wonderful idea!
Qualcomm said the platform will begin production in 2022, but reference designs of the system will be available for automakers this summer. Look for it soon in a car cockpit near you.
BYD has launched the third-generation Qin Plus DM-i in China, and the first thing that caught my eye is its price. According to CarNewsChina, the plug-in hybrid sedan starts at 79,900 yuan, which is about $11,980. That’s an incredibly low price for a brand-new car, especially by US standards.
What’s even more impressive is the range. The Qin Plus DM-i can drive up to 137 miles on electricity alone, which should cover most people’s daily commutes without using a drop of gas. Once the battery runs out, the 1.5-liter engine takes over. Thanks to its 17-gallon tank and roughly 91 mpg with a drained battery, the combined range reaches up to 1,423 miles.
Apple won the PC market’s worst quarter, but that’s not the entire story. It won the race by stumbling less than everyone else.
PC makers shipped just 57 million computers worldwide in Q3, which might look good, but it’s a 21% year-over-year plunge (via Counterpoint Research). And despite Apple’s Mac shipments falling by 11%, to 5.6 million, its market share rose from 8.7% to 9.8%. How did that happen?
Update (October 22 23:54 PT): In response to our query, GM clarified that offline recording support is already available on eligible vehicles. Like Tesla's Sentry Mode, it requires owners to connect a USB drive to save incident recordings, which can be viewed on the vehicle's infotainment screen. The upcoming Connected Cameras feature will build on this by giving owners remote access to these recordings via the revamped OnStar app, allowing them to check footage without walking out to their car.
General Motors has announced plans to add a new Connected Cameras feature to its OnStar service starting next year, giving drivers a way to monitor parked vehicles remotely and capture footage of certain incidents.