Volkswagen launches the “Sound Tomorrow” Intuition Technology Innovation Competition, and the winning team will be able to develop interactive prototypes with the public.
In recent years, many well-known brands in traditional industries have begun to realize that they are not only a company, but also an open platform to lead and support innovation. By partnering with more flexible startups with cutting-edge technology, these old brands are an important way to innovate.
September 19, Volkswagen’s “Sound Tomorrow” Intuition Technology Innovation Contest was officially launched in Hangzhou Future Science City, and innovative solutions for Chinese startups and designers And plan to cooperate to create an interactive prototype that was born in China and meets the needs of Chinese consumers.
Volkswagen introduced that the theme of this interactive prototype is “Car anthropomorphization”, which gives technology decision-making ability through technology and promotes a more natural interaction between people and cars. Volkswagen hopes that participants can design solutions based on the theme of interactive prototypes from three aspects: “drive experience enhancement”, “drive safety protection”, “in-car life and work efficiency”.
The intuition science and technology innovation competition launched this time is the first stage of the “Sound Tomorrow” project. The whole project also includes four other stages, namely “Intuitive Interactive Movie” and “2025 Concept Car Discovery Tour” “, “2025 Made in China Concept Car” and “Tomorrow Intuition”, this series of activities will continue until the end of 2020.
Volkswagen is the first international car brand to enter the Chinese market. The first car of many Chinese is also Volkswagen. In recent years, new energy, artificial intelligence, human-computer interaction interface, intelligent network connection, and shared travel have become the hottest keywords in the domestic auto industry, and these new trends are also affecting Volkswagen’s product strategy in China.
At the Frankfurt Motor Show in Germany, which last week, Volkswagen officially released the first production model IB3 based on the MEB platform, which is expected to start selling in the European market next year. Volkswagen Brand Products Market and Product Strategy Department said at the press conference that Volkswagen plans to produce more than 28 million vehicles based on the MEB platform in the next decade.More than 30 billion euros. “Next year we will also bring the MEB platform to China. By 2023, the Volkswagen brand will bring no less than 10 IB series models to consumers,” he said.
At the conference, partner and assistant president Ma Jinnan, CEO Li Zhifei and Yunqi Capital Managing Director Chen Hao delivered a keynote speech and shared their contributions to travel and innovation. Insights.
As the representative of China’s new business media, witnessed the rapid rise of China’s most representative emerging unicorn companies such as headlines and Didi. Partner and Assistant President Ma Jinnan mentioned in his speech that many companies shouted the slogan of “innovation”, but the behavior of landing innovation was very poor, and Volkswagen was one of the few “can make innovations in the competition”. The technology industry giants in the form of landing.”
Ma Jinnan said that in the past period of time, some companies have been unable to achieve their own hematopoietic capacity due to excessive pursuit of financing, and excessive pursuit of listing speed has led to sustainable development constraints. These challenges have also led to some new changes in the venture capital ecology. For example, we noticed the signs of the integration of venture capital ecology and traditional industries, and began to appear innovative industrialization and industrial innovation. When startups no longer move, they shouted “subvert everything”, but truly realized the strength and craftsmanship of accumulation. The value of real recognition of small steps, fast iterations and long-termism is not contradictory.
Going out is an important partner for Volkswagen to deploy AI smart travel in China. In April 2017, I went out and asked about the $180 million D-round financing that I announced for Volkswagen. At the press conference, I went out and asked the founder and CEO Li Zhifei that they have cooperated with Volkswagen in the past two years to develop a pre-installed car audio interaction system. This product may be next year at FAW-Volkswagen, SAIC Volkswagen and Audi. Seen in the model.
Li Zhifei said that the development of this product has to solve a lot of difficulties. First of all, the noise of the car is more complicated. The external noise of the open window, the sound of the child in the car, the noise of the engine are all interference factors, which poses great challenges to the accuracy and sensitivity of speech recognition. Secondly, the voice interaction requires “ In real time, and the network environment in the car may be unstable. For example, when a car passes through an underground tunnel without a network, how to maintain the normal use of voice interaction is a problem;The car’s system is very complicated, in addition to doing voice interaction, but also to monitor the car, which is very demanding on the CPU.
In addition, Chen Qi, Managing Director of Yunqi Capital, shared their investment strategies in the field of travel from the perspective of investors. Chen Wei said that intelligence and electrification are two important trends in the automotive industry. In the field of intelligence, Yunqi Capital cuts in from the autopilot solution. In the upstream, it will focus on computing chips, sensors, laser radar, millimeter wave radar, camera, inertial navigation and wire-controlled chassis technology. Maps, travel services, etc. In the field of new energy, they will pay attention to battery cells and battery management systems, and mainly focus on charging pile operation and charging and replacing in the downstream.
In the final part of this conference, a debate team composed of investors, entrepreneurs, and media people focused on “Future Auto” innovation: insight into user needs or creating demand for users. The issue was debated.
The official website of the competition
At present, the “Sound Tomorrow” Intuition Technology Innovation Competition has started the registration channel. The deadline for registration is November 8, 2019. Participants can register and submit the program on the official website of tomorrowcalls.com.
At that time, Volkswagen will invite internal industry experts, senior investors and senior media personnel to form a professional jury to review the proposals submitted by the participating teams. Among them, 24 teams will enter the hackathon in December. , for the 12 admission tickets for the final. The final will produce the Top3 team in this competition. The three winning teams will each receive 500,000 cash prizes and will participate in the Volkswagen interactive prototype cooperation program.
At the same time, Volkswagen will travel to Shanghai, Shenzhen and Beijing on September 24th, September 26th and October 10th to conduct a city tour presentation, detailing each issue.
If you are interested in the competition, please contact corp_innovation@36kr.com.
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