When autonomous driving becomes the norm in the future, what “unexpected” functions and designs will appear in cars?

First of all, there will be huge changes in the vehicle architecture, the human driving function will be eliminated, there will be no steering wheel, no brake pedal, whether it is the steering system, the transmission system, the driving system or the braking system, everything will be controlled by wire. People are in the car, like in a moving room.

Autonomous driving will first popularize public transportation, because the lower cost after sharing can better add more expensive sensing equipment and optimized algorithms to public transportation facilities, such as buses, taxis, etc., will be given priority to popularize Use a driverless system . A common feature of these models is that there is no longer a driver’s seat, and the interior of the car is entirely composed of passenger seats.

Of course, there may be safety redundancy in the early days, the steering wheel can be hidden in the car body, and the redundant brake settings may also be used to save space, and the somatosensory control of manual or virtual brakes may be used.

Then when autonomous driving becomes the norm, these redundant safety facilities will be phased out, the cab will be cancelled, the chassis will become thinner, and the space inside the car will basically be withdrawn due to the mechanical structure, even if it is the body of a smaller-looking A-class car , there will still be room for a B-class car or even a C-class car, but the weight is lighter than the current A-class car.

Take the optimization of the braking system as a simple example.

The hydraulic brake system often used in passenger cars, when the driver steps on the brake pedal, pushes the master cylinder piston through the push rod (power assist), so that the oil in the master cylinder enters the brake wheel cylinder , and the brake fluid makes the The piston pushes the brake shoe outward, pressing the friction plate against the brake drum, generating a braking torque that prevents the wheel from turning. Release the brake pedal, under the action of the return spring, the brake is cancelled.

The current brake -by-wire system is the same as the wire-controlled transmission system. The brake pedal and the brake function are no longer a traditional physical connection, but a wire-controlled connection. The original hydraulic device is no longer connected to the pedal. The hydraulic system, power assist system, and brakes are all taken over by the electronic system.

The sensor of the brake pedal gives a feedback electrical signal to the degree of force (size, speed) of the pedal, and the ECU integrates the vehicle status information such as the vehicle speed, and drives and controls the executive motor to generate the required braking force.

In the future pure wire control, mechanical structures such as brake pedals and sensors will be cancelled, and the sensing device will directly transmit data to the chip, the chip will give processing advice, and send it to the brake for execution. Reduce weight and save space.

Second, solid-state/semi-solid-state batteries will replace the current energy source, and the density will be increased tenfold.

(The negative electrode is made of metal lithium , and the positive electrode is made of sulfide or air, corresponding to lithium-sulfur batteries and lithium-air batteries, and the theoretical energy density is 7-10 times that of the current theoretical value of lithium batteries (387wh/kg). )

Now it supports 800 kilometers of battery life, the density of the battery system is 180wh/kg, and the battery weighs several hundred kilograms, which actually accounts for one-third of the body weight. Battery.

In the future, the energy density of the battery is ten times higher than the 180wh/kg of the ternary lithium battery currently installed in the car, and because of the line control of the vehicle, the body will be greatly reduced in weight + the battery will be greatly reduced, and an adult can carry it. The weight of the battery, inserted into the battery compartment of the car, can support a cruising range of 500 kilometers for a small car loaded with 4-5 people. The replacement process is similar to the previous Apollo moon landing spacecraft for small nuclear batteries.

In addition to the substantial increase in energy density, the safety of future batteries will increase. The electrolyte will be difficult to leak, non-volatile and non-flammable. Even if the outer casing is pierced and thrown into the fire, the battery will not burn violently or explode, which will be more than Traditional fuel vehicles are safer.

Secondly, with the popularization of 6G or 7G, under the data connection of low-orbit satellites, there will be no dead spots to cover signals all over the world, and large data transmission without delay will make cars do not need to think or assemble high computing power. Chips and big data storage chips, but only need to be equipped with sensing equipment and signal transmission equipment (sending, receiving).

This is similar to the electronic and electrical architecture of the vehicle. First, the distributed electronic and electrical architecture is transformed into the current domain-centralized electronic and electrical architecture. Finally, the vehicle functions are in the cloud, relying on cloud computing and cloud processing to achieve various functions of the car.

And these cloud functions will greatly reduce the hardware expenditure equipment of the car, making the price of low-end cars more approachable, just like the current mobile phones will quickly spread to all classes. Cars with the best sensing equipment are still expensive, but in big cities, cars with complete V2X facilities do not need such sophisticated sensing equipment, so most people use cars that are For the normal version, you only need to pay the cloud fee to turn on the automatic driving mode.

Just like the current mobile phone needs to pay network fees to allow you to access the Internet, there may even be different monthly payment fees to ensure the level of automatic driving. For example, if the monthly payment is 200, L4-1 can be opened, which can be used in most urban road sections. Autopilot. With a monthly payment of 500, L4-2 can be opened, and automatic driving can be used in all relevant road sections in the city, and there is no need for slow public transportation (public transportation that can accommodate cars). The monthly payment of 1,000 can guarantee the supply of multi-layer redundant computing power, open L4-3, and increase the safety guarantee to 99.9999% under the premise of 99.9% safe automatic driving of the national standard. Road priority, etc.

If you want to go to a special environment, such as a mountainous area or a remote area where the V2X infrastructure is not mature enough, you need high-end sensing equipment + satellite real-time coverage, then you need better vehicles, or temporarily lease (install) high-sensing equipment, and additionally need additional cloud payment to support greater computing power. Therefore, the basic hardware (vehicle) will be cheap, and the classification of software and network payment has become a normal state of automatic driving classification. In addition, the luxury and humanization of the smart cockpit will also be a paid item in the future.

(Picture source network, invade and delete!)

Source: Zhihu www.zhihu.com

Author: Will.liu

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