Volkswagen, built-in ChatGPT starting in the second quarter… Hyundai Motor Company’s AI chatbot ‘Chat Baker’ is being developed
Recently, the SDV (Software Defined Vehicle) trend is blowing in the global automobile industry. Just as the mobile era began with the advent of smartphones with numerous applications (apps), software innovation is in full swing in the automobile industry. If you look back at the opening of the smartphone market, it started with Apple, whose main business was computer production, not mobile phone manufacturing. So who will lead the software craze that will determine survival in the future automobile market?
Tesla advances automotive software
The reason mobile phone manufacturers failed to lead the smartphone market in the past was because they lacked software technology know-how. In the past, Apple did business by making and selling computers, but its essential competitiveness was in software. The operating system (OS), or software, installed in all Apple products is developed directly by Apple. Unlike manufacturers such as Samsung Electronics and HP that use Microsoft (MS) products as operating systems for their computers, Apple independently develops software for all digital devices such as Mac computers, iPhones, iPads, and Apple Watches. Looking at the fact that smartphone manufacturers other than Apple still rely on Google Android shows how difficult it is to achieve software competitiveness.
So what about car manufacturers? The automobile industry is well aware that software technology is directly related to quality competitiveness in the future mobility market. Unlike electronic devices such as smartphones, cars have a base price of tens of millions of won and their average usage period is much longer. From a consumer's perspective, when buying a car, they pay more attention to safety and security than any other product. Since the software, which is the brain of a car, cannot be entrusted to a third party, major manufacturers are accelerating their own software development.
The opportunity for the automobile industry to realize the importance of software development was the emergence of electric car company Tesla. Like the ‘iPhone momentum’ in the past smartphone market, Tesla showed innovation in the field of vehicle software. Tesla has made it possible to manage the car as if it were a single computer with its own integrated OS called ‘Tesla Software’. It is equipped with 4G LTE so that the car can always be connected to the Internet, so the OS can be upgraded at any time. Thanks to its own OS, Tesla electric vehicles have high battery efficiency and can continuously add autonomous driving and infotainment service functions.
Traditional powerhouses in the automobile industry are also actively working on software development. Global automakers such as Mercedes-Benz ‘MB.OS’, BMW ‘iDrive’, Volkswagen ‘VW.OS’, and Hyundai Motor Group’s ‘Connected Car Operating System (ccOS)’ are developing their own OS. This is to provide stable mobility services optimized for the company’s cars. However, it is difficult for vehicle manufacturers to develop all software independently. Therefore, the core OS and mobile platform are developed in-house, but other areas such as electric vehicle battery management systems and artificial intelligence (AI) for automatic vehicle control are being developed in collaboration with tech companies.
Today, the automobile industry is no exception to the massive AI wave that is predicting major innovation in almost all industries. Volkswagen plans to embed generative AI chat GPT in vehicles released in the second quarter of this year. BMW announced that it will produce cars equipped with Amazon AI starting this year. Honda announced a new concept electric vehicle called ‘Apila’ in partnership with Sony, and Mercedes-Benz is planning to integrate ChatGPT into its in-vehicle voice assistant MBUX.
Large-scale AI innovation is also required for mid- to long-term industries
There is also high interest in the automobile industry in the very large language model (LLM) technology that made the emergence of ChatGPT possible. Accordingly, automobile companies are attempting to improve the driver experience in vehicles by collaborating with big tech such as Amazon, Microsoft, and Google. There are also companies that are trying to develop LLM on their own, and Tesla is a representative example. Hyundai Motor Group is developing an AI chatbot called ‘Chat Baker’ based on the LLM independently developed through its autonomous driving software subsidiary ‘42Dot.’
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