HKUST Xunfei strongly enters the field of vehicle-mounted intelligence and vows to be a vehicle-mounted intelligent unicorn.

With the intelligent network connection technology becoming the "new demand" of the current automobile market, it means that consumers are willing to pay for the intelligent network connection function of the car, which has become the direct incentive to promote the purchase of cars. As one of the "new four automakers", "networking" has not only become a factor that consumers focus on when buying cars, but also a key area for major auto companies. This is a distinct change compared with the traditional car purchase concepts such as the blind pursuit of car brand effect and one-sided attention to engine performance in the past.

Intelligent network technology is becoming the killer of China's independent brands in the market.

On March 20, 2018, at iFLYTEK headquarters in Hefei, Anhui Province, the star company, known as "the leader of China's intelligent voice and artificial intelligence industry", signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Dongfeng Qichen to carry out all-round and in-depth cooperation in the field of intelligent connected vehicles to jointly build "China's automobile brain".

Taking "customization" as a stepping stone forerunner to join hands with the new force to take the road of subversion

In fact, as early as 2016, HKUST Xunfei and Dongfeng Qichen cooperated in on-board voice applications. At that time, their voice interaction technology was integrated into Dongfeng Qichen's car-machine platform, and product specifications were also formulated. However, this time HKUST Xunfei once again joined hands with Dongfeng Qichen. "The two sides will break the wall through technology to build a' Chinese Auto Brain', forge the technological ecology of Zhilian Auto's entire manufacturing chain, lead the' new four modernizations', seize the highland of Zhilian, and help China's auto industry to upgrade again." Zhou Xianpeng, vice president of Dongfeng Motor Co., Ltd. and general manager of Dongfeng Qichen Motor Company, said at the signing ceremony of Dongfeng Qichen iFLYTEK strategic cooperation.

Dao Ge said that Che learned that HKUST Xunfei has accumulated many years of technology in speech synthesis, speech recognition, oral evaluation, natural language processing, semantic understanding and other technologies, and has long been a leader in the domestic intelligent speech and artificial intelligence industry. Based on intelligent voice and artificial intelligence technology with independent intellectual property rights, iFLYTEK has launched a variety of products that can meet different application environments, from large telecom applications to small embedded applications, from education, telecommunications and other industries to enterprise and consumer users, from mobile phones to cars, from home appliances to toys. At present, HKUST Xunfei has occupied more than 70% of the Chinese voice technology market.

Dongfeng Qichen is a new force cast by Dongfeng Nissan. It officially became independent on February 7 last year to respond to rapid changes in the market with better and faster decisions. The performance of this new force last year was remarkable, with cumulative terminal sales of 143,031 vehicles, an increase of 22.7 percent over the same period last year, setting a new historical record. In the case of the downturn in the domestic auto market, Dongfeng Qichen has grown strongly and has become a beautiful landscape among its own brands.

The forerunner, HKUST Xunfei, has many years of technology accumulation, and the new force Dongfeng Qichen has the advantage of rapid response. The two sides hit it off. With intelligent network connection as the new demand of the automobile market, let the brand cover more young main consumer groups. Considering that there are many applications and homogenization of vehicle-mounted terminals in the current market, Dongfeng Qichen will jointly develop vehicle-mounted terminals and application services for Qichen's on-sale models and future models with the characteristics of Dongfeng Qichen brand, forming vehicle-mounted intelligent terminals and application system specifications and standards.

As we all know, intelligent voice interaction technology is a key technology to realize the intelligent networking of automobiles. As the pioneer of China's intelligent voice and artificial intelligence industry, iFLYTEK has brought many changes and innovations to the automobile industry. In the future, in terms of technology landing, it is also extremely important to choose car companies with a sense of forward-looking layout of the Internet of Vehicles. From this point of view, the cross-border cooperation between Dongfeng Qichen and HKUST Xunfei can be said to be a win-win move.

Take the posture of a unicorn and ride the dust horse to step on the domestic vehicle-mounted intelligent market.

As for iFLYTEK, your first impression may be one of their products-iFLYTEK voice input method. At the 2016 Hammer Mobile Phone Conference, Lao Luo demonstrated the HKUST Xunfei voice input method on the spot, word for word, making it quickly become a super online celebrity, and at the same time bringing the HKUST Xunfei company into the public eye.

In fact, it is a software company specializing in intelligent voice and voice technology research services. The company mainly started with voice recognition technology and is currently involved in popular Internet industries such as artificial intelligence, smart home, big data, and the Internet of Things. HKUST Xunfei is also a listed company with good stock market performance. At the beginning of 2017, the stock price of iFLYTEK was about 27.39 yuan per share. As of the close of March 21, 2018, the stock price was 58.99 yuan per share, an increase of 115.

Dao Ge said that the car learned that as of November 2017, iFLYTEK not only cooperated with Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Toyota, SAIC, FAW, Great Wall, Changan, Geely, Chery, JAC, GAC, Haima, Southeast and other automobile manufacturers. Market cooperation. More than 100 front-mounted cars equipped with xunfei human-computer interaction technology have been shipped, including Lexus 2017 full-line models, Chery Erez 5, Rongwei 350, Great Wall H6, Changan CS75, Geely New Emgrand EC7, Jianghuai S5, Southeast V5 and other models. The "Little Flying Fish" on-board intelligent voice assistant released in August last year has positioned the aftermarket of mainstream cars in China, and has established cooperation with car manufacturers such as Lu Chang, Kaiyue, Feige, Hengchen, Good Helper and mainstream map manufacturers such as Gaud and Khalid, and has successively introduced voice application products such as "Car Voice Assistant" and "Bluetooth Voice Point Small V. Previously, iVoka, which was well received by SAIC, Rongwei and MG models, was the complete technical support provided by HKUST Xunfei and the interaction design done by Botai.

HKUST Xunfei has undergone great changes in the process of cooperation with suppliers and car companies.

When HKUST Xunfei first entered the automotive field, it did not even know what the hardware of the car was. Today, the business scope of HKUST Xunfei has covered the software and hardware of the car machine system, service platform, operation, and even can support the content. Therefore, iFLYTEK, suppliers and car companies are getting closer and closer, and cooperation is moving towards "depth" and "customization". Relying on AI, HKUST is already moving into the automotive sector.

It is reported that in the future, the cooperation between HKUST Xunfei and car companies may also be extended to body control and the introduction of information on the entire service chain of cars. However, iFLYTEK did not show a proud posture, but humbly stated that it was "interlaced as a mountain" and would not easily "cross the border" and "advance". Although HKUST Xunfei positions itself as a mobile Internet company, they understand the difference between making cars and making the Internet. Ma Bing, executive deputy general manager of the iFLYTEK Platform and Embedded Division, said, "The Internet is the idea from smart to connected to the cloud, while the car is the first is security, from security to intelligence and then to the cloud. So it involves the low safety factor of the iFLYTEK to do, the safety factor of the car companies to do." It seems that compared with some Internet giants, HKUST Xunfei's head is still clear and understands the bottom line and position of communication and cooperation with automobile companies.

With the successive announcements of iFLYTEK's strategic cooperation with Chery, GAC and Qichen, the specific implementation of the cooperation on the whole vehicle can not help but make people think about it. At the signing ceremony of strategic cooperation with Qichen, Wu Xiaoru, executive president of iFLYTEK Co., Ltd., mentioned the call center project. According to Dao Ge's understanding, the speech synthesis technology of iFLYTEK has reached the international advanced level, and it can even synthesize the speech of a specific person through speech. Therefore, in the future, users call Dongfeng Qichen's hotline, which sounds like a staff member, but in fact ta is likely to be an intelligent robot. ta can understand the caller's language and provide technical support for the caller as needed.

In his speech at the scene, Wu Xiaoru said that "the signing of this strategic cooperation agreement will certainly have a far-reaching and significant impact on the long-term development of Dongfeng Qichen and iFLYTEK", but it is obvious that Wu Xiaoru is still conservative and modest. If artificial intelligence replaces artificial, this day will undoubtedly be a change in the automobile industry and even the whole society.