Competition in the infotainment market where artificial intelligence is applied will be fierce

If there is a technology that best fits the phrase, “dreams become reality,” it would be the self-driving car. When you call a car, it comes to you on its own, and it drives to its destination on its own. Self-driving cars recognize and avoid obstacles while driving, and provide various conveniences and information to the owner. Although it will take some time for fully self-driving cars to be commercialized, the so-called “semi-self-driving car” technology is becoming increasingly sophisticated. Now, it is easy to see advertisements for cars with self-driving functions, and they have become a deep part of our lives. This magazine will serialize the self-driving car project over the next 11 issues. Starting with the self-driving car industry trend, it will cover semiconductor components such as radar, lidar, and camera sensors, communications, precision maps, SW platforms, artificial intelligence, security, and K-City services. We ask for your continued support. <Editor’s Note>

Electrified cars are often referred to as “running semiconductors.” However, as the importance of software to operate these electronic devices grows, we may now be able to call cars “running software.”

While the trend has been to install software (SW) to operate various functions installed in cars for the stability and convenience of cars, cars are increasingly becoming software-based. Vehicle software can be divided into electrical component SW platforms and infotainment platforms.

In the SW platform for electric components, the open automotive standard software AUTOSAR (automotive open system architecture) is at the center. AUTOSAR has about 50 member companies centered around 9 core partners: BMW, Bosch, Continental, Daimler, Ford, GM, Peugeot Citroen, Toyota, Volkswagen, and 7 OEMs and 2 Tier 1 companies. The purpose of AUTOSAR is to solve the problem of increasing software complexity as electronic devices increase and to increase software reusability to reduce costs.


AUTOSAR is a common platform that separates the hardware and application layers and can be used if the hardware meets certain requirements. In simple terms, it can be thought of as an OS like Android or iOS. Gradually, the proportion of AUTOSAR in vehicle ECUs increased, and in 2015, a vehicle that applied AUTOSAR 100% was released. It came at a time when OEMs are actively expanding their demand for ECUs based on AUTOSAR.

AUTOSAR is divided into the Classic Platform, which has the type of data for connecting ECUs inside a vehicle, and the Adaptive Platform, which can create ECUs that connect the inside of a vehicle to the external network, was released last April. Adaptive Auto was created with self-driving cars in mind, with the ability to develop AI based on Linux.

After a self-driving car recognizes its surroundings, the question arises as to how to control it, and at this time, the platform is important. In September of last year, the United States released guidelines for legislation related to self-driving. The guidelines state that self-driving cars must transmit their self-driving records to the cloud and that users must be able to view the records. This means that the car must be connected to an external network. The adaptive platform is needed to connect to an external network. It is the software that serves as the foundation for self-driving cars.

“Adaptive Platform can generate code as open source. Since there are no tools developed yet, the company that develops tools first will take the lead,” said Kim Gap-hyun, CEO of Popcorn, which has an AUTOSAR tool vendor ID.

OEMs, IT companies are rushing to prepare infotainment

Infotainment, which refers to a multimedia system that can be enjoyed in a car, such as music, movies, the Internet, and information, is a field in which software technology has been introduced early on.

Despite the high barriers to entry into the industry, the infotainment sector was a breakthrough that allowed IT companies to easily enter the automotive sector. In particular, as artificial intelligence was fully incorporated into the automotive industry, this sector became the one that IT companies were most interested in. For example, if two-way data with customers is accumulated through artificial intelligence voice recognition, equipment or services that can respond to customer requests can be provided based on this.

Thanks to the active participation of large IT companies, compatibility issues that had been raised as a drawback have also been resolved. In the early market, since each auto OEM developed their own infotainment system with their own OS, the specifications were different for each company. Apple released 'CarPlay', an OS based on iOS, and provided connectivity that could be used in cars, and Google also released 'Auto' based on Android, and development of systems utilizing this followed. Apple and Google are providing the OS to over 40 OEMs for free in exchange for receiving vehicle user data.



In China, which has the largest automobile market, portal company Baidu developed 'CarLife' tailored to the Chinese market and launched it with the same strategy as Apple and Google. These companies ultimately aim to create value-added businesses based on data collected through embedded vehicle OS.

Alibaba has already commercialized the business model that Google, Apple, and Baidu are drawing up in 2015. It has developed 'WinOS' in cooperation with Shanghai Automotive, and is selling cars in shopping malls and operating them in conjunction with car centers, gas stations, insurance companies, and financial services. It is doing online and offline things that existing automobile OEMs used to do offline.

Automobile OEMs did not stay still either. In order to differentiate themselves from IT companies, they decided to independently develop an OS for vehicles and formed an alliance called GENIVI. GENIVI creates an open source development platform and standards to aid in the development of in-vehicle infotainment (IVI).

Domestic companies also need to prepare for infotainment

In Korea, Obigo (CEO Hwang Do-yeon), which provided mobile web browsers, commercialized a vehicle web browser based on an HTML5 web browser. The vehicle browser plays a role in enabling applications to run on the OS. Since cars have a different format from smartphones, a separate tool such as a browser is required. It is scheduled to be built into BlackBerry QNX's vehicle OS starting in 2018.

In addition, SKT and KT are also responding positively to the entry into the infotainment business. SKT introduced a service that linked its AI speaker, Nugu, with the Kia K5, and KT demonstrated a service that linked Giga Genie with the Hyundai Ioniq.

According to Gartner, the infotainment system market is expected to grow rapidly to a scale of 270 billion dollars (approximately 304 trillion won) in 2020, so cooperation between mobile carriers and automotive electronics companies is also expected.

Kim Min-seok, director of Obigo, said, “What we should pay attention to in the infotainment market recently is artificial intelligence. It is evolving beyond the stage of simply providing music or information in the car to enable services such as car sharing, parking, and home IoT by connecting to external servers,” and predicted the future direction of infotainment development by saying, “Expandable commercialization based on the cloud is in preparation.”