SAIC Motor is the largest of the Big Four car manufacturers in China—SAIC, FAW, Dongfeng, and Changan Automobile. It sold 5.37 million vehicles in 2021—a full 8% of global car sales that year or nearly twice as many as Ford managed to sell.
SAIC Motor Corporation Ltd. owns many vehicle brands but the better known are Maxus (formerly LDV) and MG. SAIC manufactures VW, Skoda, Audi, Chevrolet, Buick and Cadillac for the Chinese market. SAIC also has a joint-venture with Iveco to manufacture trucks and buses as well.
The Chinese companies OPPO and SAIC are partnering to create an “ecological domain”—a solution for vehicle/smartphone cross-platform integration. In plain English, the two companies want to create a new experience for car owners whereby their smart car with help from their smartphone can enhance their lives through communicating with the largest IoT platforms and making good use of electronic architectures and software platforms.
This is a logical next step for both companies, who have combined their expertise to produce a highly integrated and human-centered solution that will offer users complete control of their connected lives through their phone and car.
OPPO and SAIC Motor have launched a joint project called Project Pantanal, which will combine OPPO's safety technologies with SAIC's full-stack solution, aiming to create a safer driving experience.
The “ecological domain” will make use of discovery and connection capabilities through the widest possible reach of protocols. It will aim to connect existing and new solutions and devices, as well as establish a framework for hardware/software communications and data transfer.
A new technology will allow any phone to connect to any car, providing a full suite of services that can run on any size of the screen and deliver a uniform experience across many platforms. In essence, it's the Internet of Things with a dash of Big Brother thrown in.
Both companies have virtually unlimited resources, and this new solution will mean quick progress. We can expect to see first results within the next few years, as the “eco domain” will allow us to do many more things without having to actually do them, all without leaving the car or with just a quick voice command spoken quietly to our phone.
