ChatGPT was born, which triggered a global hot discussion and thinking. In just a few weeks, people both lamented the rapid development of artificial intelligence and were shocked by the great changes brought by new technologies to life and production, as if suddenly, computers really had self-awareness.
Artificial intelligence, as a substitute for human labor force, is only the tip of the iceberg. What kind of changes can be imagined when ChatGPT is applied to the automobile field? At present, technology has developed to pre-process the influence of each terrain and road condition on the car body, so as to adjust the suspension in advance to improve comfort, handling and safety, but most of them are limited to high-end models of luxury brands and have not been systematically popularized. However, with the release of BYD Yunqi Intelligent Body Control System on April 10th, this situation will be completely changed. From passive suspension to active suspension to intelligent body control, the awareness of body is awakening.
First, create the highest level of global body control system.
BYD Yunqi System is the industry’s first exclusive intelligent body control system for new energy. The full name of Yunqi is Yunqi intelligent adaptive body control system, which is an intelligent body control system developed by BYD for five years and costing billions of dollars. Including Yunqi -C intelligent damping body control system, Yunqi -A intelligent air body control system, Yunqi -P intelligent hydraulic body control system and unlimited Yunqi -X control system.
Yunqi represents the highest level of the global body control system, which brings subversive improvement to new energy vehicles of BYD Auto’s brands, covering different use scenarios such as home, sports, administration and off-road, and creating an all-round and luxurious driving experience for users. When the new energy vehicle has no traditional engine and gearbox, the impact of chassis technology on the driving experience of the whole vehicle will be further amplified, so the brand of electric vehicle has higher and higher requirements for chassis and suspension. Independent research and development is costly and time-consuming, and it is usually unbearable for brands with poor product matrix, which leads most car companies to choose outsourcing chassis technology, which is easily affected by technical bottlenecks and soaring costs.
Second, from perception to decision-making to implementation, break the monopoly of foreign car companies in one fell swoop.
Electrification has brought about the transformation of the whole vehicle architecture, and the vehicle control has changed from mechanical control to electrical signal control, and the accuracy, efficiency and intelligence have been greatly improved. The body control system, which integrates software and hardware technologies such as perception, decision-making, control and interaction, can not only surpass the past, but also provide rich car scenes. This is the intelligent body control system of Yunqi, and the following three levels are the core of Yunqi technology.
Perception is the premise of cloud chariot.
The first key problem of Yunqi is road perception technology, which is the first step to realize intelligent body control. The preview system deeply integrates multiple road surface sensing elements such as monocular/binocular cameras and laser radar to identify road surface features and elevation curves within the range of 5-150m in front of the vehicle, and the recognition accuracy is as high as 3 mm, and the recognition accuracy is over 99% within 15m. It not only realizes the functions of road surface recognition and all-terrain monitoring, but also can quickly adjust and adapt with the suspension system.
Accurate decision-making is the key to Yunqi.
After mastering the core technologies such as software architecture, strategy formulation, algorithm design, etc., BYD’s self-developed Yunqi Intelligent Computing Center has multi-core and efficient processing capability, supports multi-signal interfaces, and can drive various actuators. Through cloud computing, it can process information such as road state, body posture and wheel load, and output the best control strategy in real time.
Take high-speed cornering as an example. Usually, the center of gravity of the vehicle will tilt to the inside of the corner, thus reducing the comfort and handling performance. Yunbi can automatically adjust the suspension located inside the corner, reduce the movement frequency by increasing damping, and achieve the purpose of hardening the suspension. From the completion of road preview, to intelligent decision-making and implementation, Yunqi Supercomputing Center has realized highly centralized integrated control.
Efficient execution is the guarantee of Yunqi.
For the implementation level of Yunqi, BYD independently developed and controlled the whole process through structural design, performance simulation, test methods and other aspects, and combined with the full-stack self-research of system software, it can achieve the perfect adaptation effect of suspension software and hardware. Yunqi intelligent adaptive body control system achieves millisecond response adjustment from the state identification of sensing parts, to the information processing decision of Yunqi Supercomputing Center, and then to the control execution of the whole vehicle.
In addition, users can also control the suspension height and damping mode through the voice control or manual adjustment interface at the APP end of the mobile phone and the Pad end of the vehicle, thus gaining more fun.
Third, "devolve" luxury and make "value" upward.
Next, we interpret Yunqi -C, Yunqi -A and Yunqi -P respectively to see what contribution they have made to chassis awareness.
Yunnian -C intelligent damping body control system-popularization of technology, entering the homes of ordinary people.
Yunqi -C is the first active suspension product in China to realize full-stack self-research in system design, calculation, modeling, simulation, matching and adjustment. The system architecture includes key components such as perception component, decision component and execution component. The suspension system of Yunqi -C can actively control the electronically controlled shock absorber according to the road condition information, and the damping can be adjusted steplessly, which mainly serves the comfort and sports modes.
When the vehicle passes through the bumpy road, the comfort control strategy of high frequency and small damping is adopted to make the chassis "soft", which can effectively buffer the road excitation input and quickly restrain the vertical movement of the car body. Under the condition of 60km/h continuous vibration road surface, Yunqi -C can help the whole vehicle achieve 96% vibration isolation rate, which greatly improves the comfort compared with the traditional suspension. The roll speed of 100km/h double lane can also be reduced by 39.7%.
Yunqi -C is mainly used to improve daily driving comfort and handling performance, such as body pitch, corner roll and steering angle at medium and high speed, etc. This is a popular version of product matrix. At present, more than 80,000 vehicles have been loaded on BYD Han EV, Tang and Tengshi D9, and the product experience has been well received by the market. Later, it was officially upgraded to Yunqi -C through OTA software.
Yunnian -A Intelligent Air Body Control System-Breaking the monopoly, luxury and comfort are no longer far away.
Yunqi -A intelligent air body control system is the first suspension product in the world to realize full-stack self-research in system design and calculation, simulation selection, function and strategy development, software algorithm development and integration, matching and adjustment technology and key parts design. The system architecture includes sensing, decision-making, execution components, and key components such as adjustment part. Its biggest highlight lies in the high integration of three adaptive adjustments of suspension height, spring stiffness and damping hardness with the adaptive adjustment function of dynamic embracing seat, which is of pioneering significance in the industry.
The total lifting stroke of Yunqi -A can reach up to 150mm, which can restrain the acceleration of the car body and brake pitching by more than 25%, and provide two modes of manual and automatic adjustment. In addition, the suspension height is adjusted adaptively with the change of vehicle speed.
BYD also creatively integrated the self-adaptive adjustment function of the dynamic embracing seat into Yunnian-A. In order to suppress the inertia deviation caused by the roll of the vehicle when cornering at high speed, the dynamic embracing seat provides airbag support at the waist of the seat, so that the user can maintain a good driving posture and ensure the safety and comfort of high-speed driving. According to the news of the press conference, Yunnian -A will be the first to ride on Tengshi N7.
Yunnian -P intelligent hydraulic body control system-the world’s first new energy, providing a strong off-road gas field.
Yunqi -P is the world’s first new energy exclusive intelligent hydraulic body control system developed by BYD. It efficiently integrates three core subsystems, namely mechanical, hydraulic and electronic control. The system architecture includes sensing components, decision-making components and more complex execution components. It has the functions of one-button leveling, single-wheel lifting, four-wheel linkage, simultaneous adjustment of height, stiffness and damping. The working environment covers -40℃ to 85℃, with an altitude of 6000m, which is suitable for extreme and harsh environments such as high temperature, cold, high humidity and high corrosion.
The biggest difference between Yunqi -C and Yunqi -A is that Yunqi -P can stably bear the sprung load weighing up to 5 tons. It is an intelligent hydraulic body control system with the maximum load-bearing capacity for new energy passenger cars among the active suspension products released in the industry. In addition, Yunqi -P has a wide range of suspension height active adjustment and four-wheel linkage capabilities. The total adjustment stroke of the front suspension and the rear suspension is 200 mm. When facing off-road scenes such as bullet holes and cross shafts, all four wheels can touch the ground as much as possible to provide sufficient tire grip and balance. And when camping on uneven ground, the four-wheel suspension can be lifted independently to keep the car body level.
As BYD’s first million-class luxury car, I hope U8 will not only surpass the predecessors of traditional SUVs, but also bring the safety, comfort and intelligence of intelligent chassis, and also bring the luxurious and comfortable feeling of integrating technology, new energy and new platform, covering all kinds of car scenes such as transportation, off-road, leisure and business.
To sum up, three different intelligent car body control systems actually correspond to three different consumption and car use scenarios, and the significance of cost performance and popularization brought by Cloud -C; Yunqi -A Active Road Perception and Advanced Air Suspension: Yunqi -P’s cross-era off-road innovation makes users feel the significance of intelligent body awakening from different levels of high school, middle school and low school.
Fourth, the autonomy of production equipment to software and hardware is the core of cloud technology.
From the perspective of global automotive technology, in addition to Rolls-Royce, there are three intelligent body control systems familiar to domestic consumers, namely, the magic body control system applied by Mercedes-Benz in GLE, the magic carpet intelligent air suspension of BMW 7 Series and Audi A8L active suspension technology.
BYD’s cloud technology not only fills the last short board on the traditional chassis, but also combines the pre-control with the wire-controlled chassis, creating a new integrated technology of vertical integration and realizing the straight-line overtaking of traditional car companies and new forces.
The core components of Yunqi released by BYD this time, such as compressors, distribution valves, testing instruments and so on, are all developed and produced by BYD, and the product matrix is subdivided into Yunpan -C, Yunqi -A and Yunqi -P, which comprehensively covers all civilian use scenarios to correspond to different models and consumer demands respectively. This chess game can be said to make opponents dream of it.
Five, R&D investment broke 20 billion, BYD technology is king.
Although the active body control system is not new, the whole technology of Yunqi is self-developed by BYD, which not only gets rid of the dependence of domestic brands on parts suppliers, but also realizes the independence of core technologies, which is the most admirable place. Especially when this system is endowed with perception layer and decision-making layer, the "self-awakening" suspension will bring us unprecedented experience and fun.
In order to increase its core competitiveness, BYD has made great efforts in technical input and output in recent years. In 2022, the accumulated R&D investment was 20.223 billion yuan, up 90.31% year-on-year. By the end of 2022, BYD had applied for more than 39,000 patents and authorized more than 28,000 patents worldwide, with nearly 70,000 R&D personnel. Under the research and development and investment at any cost, the peak technologies such as blade battery, DM-i super hybrid, E platform 3.0, CTB battery body integration and "Easy Sifang" have been released one after another, and the emergence of Yunqi has enabled BYD to keep ahead in technology, and at the same time, it has provided consumers with the best choice, no longer subject to the serious premium of joint ventures or imported cars, and truly fulfilled the significance of technology changing their lives.