The unprecedented large-scale promotion of OTA, BMW accelerates smoothing out the shortcomings of electrification.

         Recently, the BMW Group announced that more than 750,000 BMW cars worldwide have upgraded the BMW 7.0 operating system to the latest version through OTA, of which more than 200,000 vehicles are involved in the Chinese market. Unlike the 4S store upgrade method most commonly used by traditional car companies, car owners can download the software for free in the BMW App in the car or on the mobile phone and install it by themselves. The estimated time is about 20 minutes.

          People close to the BMW Group (China) understand that this upgrade is the largest and most extensive upgrade in the history of the BMW Group, as well as the largest remote upgrade in the history of a European car manufacturer; the upgrade content not only includes digital services, Driving assistance also involves modules such as electrical, chassis and power systems.

         OTA, or Over the Air, translates to "over the air online upgrade" in Chinese. The system upgrade mode on smart phones in the early years made it widely known. Before BMW's high-profile announcement of OTA, the one-month iteration has almost become the speed that Tesla and the new carmakers are trying to match, which also shows that intelligent networking is also an important competitive indicator for car companies. This large-scale upgrade means, to some extent, that BMW, which had been slightly conservative in electrification before, is now also accelerating into the main track of electrification.

Everywhere

        It is understood that BMW's large-scale OTA upgrade includes software aspects such as intelligent voice assistants, digital applications in the car, and intelligent screen projection, as well as hardware aspects such as intelligent parking assistance systems and tailgate switches. The upgraded parking assist system can realize parking actions parallel to or perpendicular to the lane.

         Although BMW introduced "connected driving" to the Chinese market as early as 2012, the traditional car company that really refreshed consumer perception is the "first Internet car" Roewe RX5 created in 2016 by SAIC Roewe and Zebra Zhixing. Since then, Internet vehicles have been everywhere on the market.

        CMB International Bai Yiyang said that OTA has already formed a competitive effect under the leadership of Tesla. The essence is to optimize the functions of the vehicle. Like SOTA, it is very easy to implement. FOTA requires hardware embedded to do it. It involves EEA architecture. Said that it is easier to achieve on new energy vehicles.

         According to BMW, the OTA is based on the 7.0 operating system launched in 2018 and has achieved some hardware upgrades. But in terms of functionality and technology, it is far behind Tesla and the new car-making forces.

         Take Tesla as an example. Since the OTA was launched in 2013, its autonomous driving assistance function has undergone multiple iterations. In 2015, the acceleration time of Model S P85D 0-96km/h after FOTA was shortened by 0.1 second. Autopilot not only successfully created a "smart" business card for Tesla, but also created a new business model through value-added services that continue to increase prices. NIO Pilot from NIO and XPilot from Xiaopeng also came into being.

Catch up

         Not long ago, BMW CEO Ziptzer announced that a brand new electric platform will be developed before 2025. The platform uses an independent architecture and is compatible with internal combustion engines. At present, in addition to the BMW i3 developed in the early years based on an independent electric platform, the pure electric models i4 and iX3 all adopt integrated platforms modified from fuel vehicles.

        After Volkswagen announced that it had invested heavily in building exclusive pure electric platforms, many traditional car companies such as Mercedes-Benz, Peugeot Citroen, Hyundai, and Geely followed suit. At the same time, despite internal calls, BMW continued the conservative style of its former CEO Kruger, stating that it would not follow the strategies adopted by Mercedes-Benz and Audi to compete with Tesla.

        The financial report shows that BMW's net profit fell by 28.9% in 2019. BMW announced that it plans to cut costs by 12 billion euros by 2022. In the second quarter of 2020, BMW experienced its first loss in ten years, and its gross profit fell by 71.6%. What's unattainable is that the electric vehicle business has risen against the trend, and the e-series sales have increased by nearly 40% year-on-year. Gao Le, CEO of BMW Group Greater China, said that the importance of the Chinese market has further increased relative to other countries.

        Its electric vehicle business has bucked the trend and the most important Chinese market is the world's largest electric vehicle market. BMW, which is under financial pressure, seems to have begun to change. Following the creation of an electric vehicle platform by Songkou, BMW bypassed the 4S store and launched a large-scale OTA upgrade. This is not only supported by high-cost in-vehicle Ethernet, but also means the corresponding adjustment of the electronic and electrical architecture and talent structure.

         In October of this year, BMW increased its digitalization efforts and established a dedicated digitalization department to report to the BMW Group director Wei Bofan who is responsible for research and development. The department has 7,000 engineers and will integrate software, electronic circuits, autonomous driving and assisted driving. It is worth noting that BMW has set up the largest R&D center outside Germany in China, and established Lingyue Digital Information Technology Co., Ltd., focusing on "data infrastructure" last year.

        An industry insider believes that Tesla and Weilai are redefining "luxury" with digitalization. Although this OTA is not only for BMW's new energy vehicles, it is a major step for BMW to tie its shortcomings in intelligent connectivity. BMW, which has a huge user base, is providing a channel for traditional car users to switch to smart car users. It is expected that in the next 5 years, BMW will plan a new electric platform while taking into account the electrification process of the current compatible platform.

        "The global new energy is going in the direction of pure electricity in the long run. It is expected that BMW will accelerate after determining the pure circuit line." Bai Yiyang said.