Main Highlights:
- Qualcomm reaffirmed its commitment to the automotive sector at its Consumer Electronics Show (CES), announcing new OEM clients and constructing a software engineering center in Berlin.
- To provide the latest Snapdragon Digital Chassis to the company’s European automotive customers.
- Volvo is one of a growing number of manufacturers that announced the integration of Snapdragon technology into their vehicles on Tuesday.
- Qualcomm’s Snapdragon platform encourages innovation by other companies designing automotive infotainment centers.
Qualcomm demonstrated a solid commitment to the automotive sector at this year’s CES, announcing new OEM clients and establishing a software engineering center in Berlin to help the company’s European auto customers with the unique Snapdragon Digital Chassis.
According to Enrico Salvatori, senior vice president and president of Europe/MEA and Qualcomm Europe, the office launch demonstrates the company’s commitment to bringing innovative and exciting technologies to the automotive sector.
The digital chassis is a collection of cloud-connected platforms for advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and automated driving. It includes the Snapdragon Ride Platform for ADAS and automated driving, the Auto Connectivity Platform for LTE, 5G connected services, cellular vehicle-to-everything (C-V2X), Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and precise positioning, and the next generation of the Snapdragon Cockpit, a digital cockpit, and infotainment system.
According to Qualcomm, the company’s integrated automotive platforms, including the digital chassis, have a combined order pipeline of more than $13 billion. In its current form, Snapdragon is based on Qualcomm’s car-to-cloud service, which was unveiled at CES 2020 and was the company’s first product geared at keeping cars connected to the cloud. This would enable speedier over-the-air upgrades and vehicle and usage information collection, allowing the firm and its carmaker partners to generate new revenue streams.
Qualcomm Technologies’ senior vice president and general manager of automotive, Nakul Duggal, stated that Qualcomm Technologies understands automakers’ need for differentiation and uniqueness and the enormous opportunity to redefine the automotive and station, business models. The Snapdragon Digital Chassis enables platforms to remain continuously updated with new capabilities following vehicle purchase while allowing the automakers to develop new features and services and provides user interaction and service-based business models.
Volvo’s involvement with Qualcomm
Volvo is one of a growing number of automakers to integrate Snapdragon technology into their vehicles on Tuesday, the firms announced. Volvo’s upcoming fully electric SUV and Volvo EV brand’s Polestar 3 SUV will both be powered by Qualcomm’s digital cockpit, which runs on Google’s Android operating system, and a suite of wireless technologies that support Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, and the automaker expects to launch the vehicles later this year.
Honda also announced plans to include Qualcomm’s digital cockpit into its following models, which the company anticipates will be commercially available in the United States in the second half of 2022 and globally in 2023. In September, Renault Group announced plans to integrate the digital cockpit into its Mégane E-Tech electric vehicle. Still, on Tuesday, the company announced plans to expand the collaboration to the entire suite of digital chassis platforms, including the connectivity platform and the Snapdragon Ride platform.
Volvo, Honda, and Renault join an ever-growing list of Qualcomm Snapdragon customers, which appeared to have accelerated following Qualcomm’s acquisition of automotive technology startup Veoneer in October. Qualcomm has since struck agreements with approximately 40 OEMs, including BMW, General Motors, Hyundai, JiDu, Xpeng, NIO, and WM, to integrate various Snapdragon platforms into their vehicles.
Qualcomm’s Snapdragon platform also enables innovation by other firms developing automobile infotainment centers. At CES, the business announced cooperation with Alps Alpine to produce a Snapdragon-powered “Digital Cabin.” The interior is equipped with innovations such as an e-mirror that helps alleviate blind spots by providing peripheral vision, a big ceiling display, and sound zones that direct noise to each passenger individually.
While most of Qualcomm’s customers are upgrading their cockpits and infotainment systems, the company may be most bullish on its Ride platform, a system-on-a-chip (SoC) that should provide a robust enough CPU to support ADAS and autonomous driving features. Veoneer’s Arriver self-driving software unit has upgraded Ride to the point where it can compete directly with Nvidia’s Drive Orin SoC, which is already being utilized to provide similar functionality with customers such as Cruise Mercedes-Benz, Volvo, Zoox, and, most recently, TuSimple.
