Automakers and the automotive supplier community have traditionally excelled in designing and engineering vehicles and their mechanical components. However, over the last decade and a half, the automotive industry has become inextricably linked to the tech world, as many of the latest innovations are outside the traditional realm of powertrains, chassis, and design. An automaker’s success today is heavily dependent on the ability to bring tech innovations to market in ways that are relevant to today’s new vehicle consumer.
Qualcomm, a company more associated with wireless technology and smartphone chipsets than automotive products, has quietly become a hugely important player in the automotive supplier space with its Snapdragon System on Chip (SoC) products being adapted for automotive, allowing the seamless integration of digital cockpits, infotainment, and ADAS features into the latest vehicles. AutoPacific’s president and chief analyst, Ed Kim, had the opportunity to sit down with Anshuman Saxena, VP and Head of ADAS/Autonomous Driving Products at Qualcomm, to get further insights.
Saxena and the Snapdragon team have been discussing at length how to address affordability. Its new Snapdragon Ride Flex product, which combines the processing of ADAS and cockpit functions onto a single chip (instead of multiple chips) to significantly reduce costs, is designed to help address this.
Consistent with data from AutoPacific’s syndicated Future Attribute Demand Study (FADS), Saxena says that younger consumers expect advanced technology in new vehicles today, regardless of price point. Young consumers have grown up with technology as a given in their lives, so the traditional model of waiting to have the “cool stuff” until they have reached a certain level of financial success later in life does not apply anymore.
A 16-year-old owns and uses the same iPhone as the wealthiest CEO, so young people expect to have the latest technologies in vehicles they can afford. Quips Saxena, “And why would they not want to have features that cars like Tesla have?”
Snapdragon Ride Flex, with its single SoC, helps address this. “The Flex…has better cost affordability because you are packing everything into a single computer, improving the experience,” as well as addressing cost, according to Saxena. However, Saxena believes that above all, safety is the most important attribute that Snapdragon must bring to the table.
Saxena says, “Safety cannot be compromised. Safety is the most critical thing in anything we do, and comfort level functions start becoming (a second) value add that consumers would want to use, and then the third important thing is user experience.”
In other words, comfort and user experience are of supreme importance; however, Snapdragon’s technologies must, above all else, integrate and process various inputs (such as ADAS and cockpit features) in a way that ensures the safe and reliable operation of these technologies. With numerous high-profile real-world mishaps involving ADAS and semi-autonomous driving features over the last few years, proven safety is of paramount importance to both automakers and consumers alike.
Perhaps not surprisingly, China is the big rollout market for Flex. As Saxena says, “Where do you see a lot more democratization of these (technologies)? You…see it in China first, right? Our Flex take rate is going to be much higher in China (because) cost is a big driver, and speed is a big driver. So that will drive the phenomena which will come in the rest of the world…but yes, we will see more in China to start.”
At the moment, Saxena sees Level 2+ (supervised eyes-on hands-free driving such as Tesla’s FSD or BYD’s God’s Eye) as the main focus for autonomous drive features for the foreseeable future as Level 3 (eyes-off, hands-off) requires extensive validation, redundancy, and safety mechanisms.
However, Saxena says that Snapdragon hardware is very much ready for Level 3. “Our hardware is designed for the highest level of safety requirements; we have built our software to those requirements,” says Saxena. However, he also notes that achieving Level 3 autonomy to work safely and reliably is more about validation, testing, and redundancy at the OEM level than it is about the Snapdragon hardware itself.
Going forward, Saxena anticipates a gradual evolution of autonomous driving technologies for privately owned vehicles (as opposed to robotaxis) and a continued industry focus on enhancing safety and the user experience. He also believes that China will continue to lead in the early adoption of advanced ADAS technologies, as evidenced by the sheer number of L2+ semi-autonomous systems already on sale there, meaning that L3 autonomy is likely closer. In North America and Europe, however, L3 is “probably later, towards 2030 or even later, and maybe 5% max of total sales” for the foreseeable future, according to Saxena.
One thing is certain: while Qualcomm and its Snapdragon SoC systems are less known in the traditional automotive space, that is changing rapidly as its technologies and solutions are firmly geared towards the future of automotive innovation.
The fusion of the automotive and tech industries in recent years has yielded some of the most groundbreaking innovations in the automotive space in decades, and tech suppliers like Qualcomm will be among the most important in delivering the innovations that today’s new vehicle shoppers want.