The Roewe 5 Internet Car—A Vehicle and Infotainment Hub

The Roewe 5 “Internet car” runs on a single chip and the cloud. Is it a critical step toward autonomous cars?

China’s first connected car, the Roewe 5, is inching closer to being road worthy and becoming a model platform for what a connected car can be.

According to Texas Instruments (TI), SAIC Motor’s Roewe 5 will be powered by a single Jacinto 6 chip and will be capable of supporting an infotainment advanced driver assistance system (InfoADAS), driver identification services and an advanced driver assist system as well as real-time analytics that can tune a the cars performance as conditional on the road, and with the mechanics of the car change.

While the Jacinto 6 chip will be at the heart of the Roewe 5’s onboard systems, the connected car will be streaming data to Alibaba’s YunOS smart operating system running on the company’s Aliyun cloud. With the backing of the cloud’s awesome computing power, the Roewe 5 has the opportunity to change the way that drivers in China and beyond view the in-car experience. And that’s just as more and more Chinese are getting onto the road.

Aside from providing in-car assists, the Roewe 5’s YunOS connection will make it possible for drivers to find nearby parking, locate fuel stations and make restaurant reservations.

“TI is devoted to driving excellence in infotainment and InfoADAS solutions,” said Curt Moore, TI’s general manager of automotive processors. “We are delighted that our technology has allowed SAIC and Alibaba, a leading car OEM and an e-commerce titan, to achieve remarkable performance with a differentiated product for their ‘Internet car.’ In the future, TI will continue to work closely with SAIC and Alibaba on leading, innovative TI technology that stretches beyond the existing boundaries of Internet-connected vehicles.”

Whether Alibaba thinks its Roewe 5 platform is a training ground for developing autonomous cars, or whether it’s a product that introduces China to the pleasure of driving, isn’t clear just yet. But if I were betting on an outcome, I’d say that Alibaba is looking toward a future filled with autonomous cars and ride sharing. Combining its cloud infrastructure with a connected and autonomous car could be a massive revenue stream for the company. If it can get there before the Googles, Apples and Amazons of the world, the company will have truly distinguished itself from Silicon Valley’s technological Brahmans.