In the past two years, both new forces and traditional car companies, when releasing new cars, all like to add the prefix of smart in front, which seems to become the admission ticket to the new playground, without which, they cannot play happily with everyone.

So the question arises, what is the smart car they are talking about? What kind of car is considered a smart car?

What is a smart car?

This is a big question, and it can even be said to be a bit vague, and the line between right and smart module wrong is blurred.

Let's see how the professionals define a smart car. Here is a short excerpt:

Smart cars should follow the direction of continuous evolution of information perception, simple control feedback, intelligent control feedback path car functions/services, based on information technology, with the driver and passengers in the car driving, safety, maintenance, entertainment and other diversified, personalized, maximum satisfaction of demand as the goal, fully integrated with modern electronic technology, sensing technology, mechanical technology, control technology, communication technology, artificial intelligence, the Data mining and many other technological advances. Relying on the overall coordination of the entire system consisting of automotive electronic system (including vehicle information terminal), external control terminal, communication network and service platform, and based on the comprehensive analysis of automotive user needs, in-vehicle, surrounding environment and service providers, it presents automotive intelligent service capabilities...

Don't understand? It's right if you don't understand.

The above is the expression of professionals, but we consumers are more interested in user experience, that is, how we feel smart when we use the car.

So for the rest of the article, we'll try to talk to you about what a smart car is in an easy-to-understand way.

In fact, the concept of smart cars is accompanied by new energy vehicles (especially electric cars). New energy vehicles, represented by Tesla, redefined the concept of automobiles, and the trend of smart cars began to sweep the world, and then various new energy brands continued to give full play to the concept.

Electric cars are a natural vehicle for smart cars.

Electric cars are the natural carrier of smart cars Electric cars are the natural carrier of smart cars. Of course, this does not mean that fuel cars cannot be intelligent, but intelligence is easier to achieve in a fully electrified structure, which is a major trend in industry technology. To give a very simple example.

Take the study published by the car as an example, for the gasoline engine based car, if you want to carry out emergency braking, step on the pedal to start the braking system, the internal combustion engine needs to receive the braking signal to stop injecting fuel and do work, this process basically requires 500 milliseconds of response; for electric cars, because it can directly change the current output, quickly adjust the operating speed of the motor, and even reverse the force, the whole process only It takes about 30 milliseconds. This 30 milliseconds and 500 milliseconds difference is enough to avoid 120 km/h emergency braking accidents. This is the decisive gap for autonomous driving.

For over a century, the core components of fuel vehicles, especially engines and transmissions, have been bottlenecked in development. Traditional OEMs spend a lot of money, material and time, probably just to improve the thermal efficiency of the engine by 1%. It's safe to say that the ceiling can already be seen on the possibilities of fuel-efficient vehicles.

And electric cars have a new electrified architecture, modular design, it is simpler and there is more room for technology to play and make an intelligent, networked and differentiated experience.