Your Car Is Qualcomm's Next AI Frontier: It's Getting Smarter, Safer and More Fun

Your next car is going to be much smarter and safer than the one you’re driving around in right now. It’s also likely going to be more fun, offering a personalized riding experience that will differ depending on whether you’re the designated driver or a passenger princess.

How? With a little help from artificial intelligence. The engine was once the primary factor determining the relative greatness of your car, but a shift is underway that will see you focus more keenly on what software your car is running, and what it’s using to run it. That’s where Qualcomm comes in. 

On Tuesday the company debuted its Snapdragon Cockpit Elite and Snapdragon Ride Elite platforms, at its Snapdragon Summit in Hawaii. The former is designed around providing digital experiences to drivers and their passengers, whereas the latter is all about providing more sophisticated assistive driving. Both Mercedes Benz and Chinese EV maker Li Auto have already confirmed that they will be putting the latest Snapdragon tech in their upcoming vehicles.

Qualcomm also announced it will partner with Google to allow automakers to use a combination of Android Automotive OS and its own Digital Chassis tech to develop their own custom voice assistants. “Combining voice assistants, immersive map experiences, vehicle sensors and real-time updates with the power of generative AI, this platform will enable cars to proactively anticipate driver needs,” said Gretchen Effgen, Android auto global partnership director.

Qualcomm, which is best known for making smartphone chipsets, has only been in the auto game for a few years.

“There’s so many people that told us we’ll not succeed in automotive,” said the company’s CEO Cristiano Amon during the Snapdragon Summit keynote on Monday. But Qualcomm did what it does best by bringing its most comprehensive tech to the table, and is now partnering with almost every major car manufacturer, he added.

The latest platforms both run on Qualcomm’s Oryon CPU, which the company announced last year to power its mobile platforms and which has now been adapted for auto. What this means is a three-times improvement in CPU and 12-times improvement in AI performance compared to Qualcomm’s platform from last year, which equates to enhanced in-car safety and other in-vehicle experiences.

Responsible for the boost in AI performance is the new neural processing unit, which can handle inputs from many different sensors and data sources at once. For example it can juggle navigation, in-car entertainment and messaging simultaneously in a smart and seamless way across screens and audio outputs. It uses context to understand who is in the car, and it won’t read out a message that mentions someone if that person is present. Very discreet and good news for gossips.

Another improvement Qualcomm has brought to its car tech is advanced support for zonal audio, which creates a kind of bubble around each person in the car that gives them their own entertainment or productivity zone. For example, the driver might get audio alerts about road conditions that won’t be heard by other passengers who are watching a movie or gaming.

An AI assist for car safety

One major benefit of AI-assisted vehicles is that the technology can provide extra eyes and ears to keep you safe on your drive, as well as advice about how to rectify any safety issues. Different elements of Qualcomm’s tech play into this. The GPU, for example, has integrated functional safety features that can support the display of safety focused information.

To keep the driver safe, cars these days must be able to synthesize data drawn in from cameras and sensors in real time, and here the NPU once again plays a role. The Snapdragon Ride Elite is expected to have six times the computing power of its predecessor, which should make the car safer and more responsive should a dangerous situation occur. 

The platform is designed to support more than 40 sensors in total, including multiple 16-megapixel cameras outside of the car, while processing all the information centrally and simultaneously. It can adjust the visibility according to the information it’s receiving, accounting for conditions from darkness to direct sunlight.

It’s tricky to know right now which auto companies will make use of Qualcomm’s updated tech other than Mercedes and Li Auto. As Amon points out, almost every car company is joining forces with Qualcomm these days in recognition of the paradigm shift toward connected cars, but the chip is flexible and can be tailored by each carmaker to take advantage of the features they’re most interested in.

“The car is now more than just mode of transportation. It is becoming a seamless extension of our digital lives,” said Nakul Duggal, Qualcomm’s group general manager of automotive, introducing the new platforms at the Snapdragon Summit on Tuesday. “It is a mobile living space, a space that is customizable on the fly, making your family weekend road trips more fun for everyone.”

Our cars are becoming more personalized than ever with the help of AI. They’re evolving into mini smart homes on wheels, and in many ways it feels like Qualcomm’s first baby steps in the auto world are quickly turning into bigger and bigger strides as it shows everyone what they’ve been missing in terms of safety and fun.

Watch this: Everything Announced at Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Summit 2024

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