Dickcar Launches Smart Cockpit Controller for Automotive Central Control Screens
The rise of intelligent and connected vehicles has enriched cockpit applications and multimodal human-machine interaction, accelerating the adoption of smart cockpits. However, this has also brought a series of development pain points. For example, the significant increase in cockpit electronics applications has led to increased complexity in the vehicle’s electrical and electronic architecture, increased costs, and difficulties in supplier management. Furthermore, distributed architectures have resulted in a fragmented cross-device experience, making it difficult for users to achieve smooth multi-device collaboration.
To address these issues, over the past few years, some auto modification companies and auto product dealers have proposed smart cockpit solutions and products based on central control screens. These solutions aim to better coordinate cockpit functions and help reduce vehicle costs and weight. Leveraging its years of expertise in automotive electronics, Dickcar has successfully developed a highly integrated and scalable smart cockpit screen controller, which has now been officially launched.
Multiple pain points in automotive smart cockpit screen controllers remain to be addressed
The market for automotive smart cockpit screen controllers is rapidly growing, with a compound annual growth rate of 15.2%. However, while smart cockpit products hold broad market prospects, the challenges facing technological evolution cannot be ignored. These challenges can be summarized as follows:
● Limited by the vehicle’s electrical and electronic architecture and chip computing power, most current automotive cockpit electronic modules are still relatively fragmented and independent. This increases the user’s operational burden, poses potential security risks, and hinders the realization of a seamless, collaborative experience across multiple devices—precisely one of the most fundamental user demands for smart cockpits in the multi-screen trend. Furthermore, this decentralized architecture creates redundant computing power.
● In a distributed ECU architecture, the network structure within the vehicle’s sensor and controller systems is also highly complex, increasing the amount of wiring and reducing reliability.
● From a supplier management perspective, the traditional multi-chip, multi-host architecture significantly increases the number of automotive suppliers, making supplier management more difficult. Furthermore, because each ECU often comes from a different supplier and has different embedded software and underlying logic, it also hinders future OTA upgrades.
To address these issues, inspired by changes in vehicle E/E architecture, technology providers such as Dickar began exploring control solutions for smart cockpit screens several years ago. More specifically, by developing intelligent cockpit screen controllers, we integrate infotainment, LCD instrument clusters, HUDs, and selected ADAS applications, enabling fully integrated cockpit functions and providing users with a superior driving experience. Furthermore, our intelligent cockpit solutions and products also help reduce costs and weight, and optimize after-sales service operations. Upon their introduction, they garnered widespread attention, prompting numerous companies to actively pursue them. Currently, Dickcar’s intelligent cockpit screen controllers have successfully undergone design and engineering verification and are mature for large-scale commercial use.
Technical Analysis of Dickcar’s Intelligent Cockpit Screen Controllers
Dickcar’s extensive automotive electronics expertise has played a crucial role in developing intelligent cockpit screen domain controllers. From a single product to a multi-product convergence, Dickcar has broken down the technical barriers between different systems, enabling multi-screen interaction and information exchange. Dickcar has also undergone multiple upgrades to its intelligent cockpit control screen solutions and products, resulting in the development of its fourth-generation domain controller for intelligent cockpits.
Dickcar’s fourth-generation smart cockpit smart screen controller, based on a high-computing SoC chip, integrates functions from multiple operating systems and security levels onto a single platform. This allows for more convenient over-the-air (OTA) feature expansion and intelligent experience upgrades, redefining the cockpit of the future. Specifically, this product offers the following highlights:
● Fully meets the automotive market’s demand for “one chip, multiple operating systems,” reducing the complexity of complex feature development and overall vehicle electronics costs. Based on a hardware SoC, it supports multiple mainstream chip platforms and various operating systems, including QNX, Android, and Linux. Hypervisor virtualization makes software deployment more flexible, secure, and efficient. Furthermore, the product supports multiple LCDs, cameras, and audio, demonstrating a high level of integration.
● Supports multi-screen interaction and interconnection: including separate audio output for the main and secondary central control screens; sharing audio and video resources between the two screens; dual-opening third-party applications for independent multi-user use; and real-time synchronization of instrument clusters with the central control panel, navigation, and music information.
● Enhances vehicle safety: It integrates multiple ADAS driver assistance features to ensure safe driving. In addition, the benefits of this domain controller for OEMs’ ongoing operations and management are also clear. By utilizing a unified computing platform and network communication architecture, OEMs can better leverage OTA updates to continuously improve vehicle functionality, adding more connected car and ADAS applications, and enhancing user retention. This development model also helps reduce the number of suppliers, facilitating the selection of cost-effective suppliers and facilitating supply chain management.
Notably, the domain controller in Dickcar’s fourth-generation smart cockpit is a successful example of this in the cockpit field. This platform utilizes a layered development approach based on a standardized software architecture, enabling customers to implement differentiated customization at the application logic level. Hardware abstraction and modular software design isolate applications from hardware, enabling application development without hardware considerations. This promotes industry-wide specialization, helping automakers reduce R&D preparation workload and improve R&D efficiency. This not only allows Dickcar greater flexibility to provide appropriate technologies and services tailored to diverse customer expectations, but also allows it to be deeply involved with automakers and related partners, such as chipmakers, as they begin planning their next-generation products, working with them to redefine the automotive cockpit and transform from a Tier 1 to a Tier 0.5 provider. Dickcar’s current plan is to launch smart cockpit solutions and products based on AAOP this year, and the product is currently in the final stages of preparation for mass production.
Continuing to deepen its presence in the automotive product market and compete for the future of automotive intelligence
From developing a single cockpit electronics product to integrating functions from multiple different operating systems and security levels onto a single platform, and successfully launching a domain controller for the fourth-generation smart cockpit, Dickcar has achieved a major leap forward in its intelligent transformation. As vehicles continue to evolve from a distributed to a centralized architecture, how will Dickcar’s research and development in the smart cockpit sector proceed? In light of the evolving trends in the smart cockpit sector, Dickcar will focus on four key areas: developing cockpit smart screen controllers with higher performance, greater integration, and greater scalability to better meet the diverse development needs of the automotive market. This will improve the interactive convenience of both new and existing vehicles. As vehicle intelligence and connectivity continue to rise, future car functions will inevitably become more complex. Enabling rapid interaction between owners and these complex functions is a challenge that automakers and component suppliers must address.
Dickcar believes that current human-computer interaction methods such as voice recognition and visual recognition can achieve certain optimization effects. However, in the long run, achieving comprehensive intelligence in the smart cockpit requires the introduction of more human-centric, multimodal interaction methods to fully meet users’ personalized, emotional, and scenario-based interaction needs. Therefore, this will be Dickcar’s next focus.