Qualcomm was one of the few major companies who decided to have an in-person press event, and it scored the full room at its announcements revolving around PC, 5G, mobile, and especially Automotive.
Qualcomm has been offering automotive cockpit solutions since 2014, and the introduction of Snapdragon 602A has had some substantial wins.
Honda is focusing on the digitally advanced In-Cabin capabilities of its new vehicles. The announcement focuses on the premium and technically advanced vehicle capabilities that are possible with the 3rd generation Snapdragon cockpit platform. The new platform will be utilized in upcoming Honda models to power the automaker's technically advanced infotainment systems.
The upcoming vehicles will serve as Honda's first-ever models to utilize the 3rd generation Snapdragon Cockpit Platform and feature an Android-powered infotainment system. Honda expects the vehicles to be commercially available in the US beginning in the second half of 2022, with vehicles commercially available across the globe in 2023.
"We pride ourselves in having the ability to offer cutting edge automotive solutions, like our Snapdragon® Digital Chassis™, to help industry-leading automakers like Honda meet the growing demand for digitally advanced and personalized driving experiences," said Nakul Duggal, senior vice president & GM, automotive, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. "We look forward to continuing our long-standing working relationship with Honda to help accelerate the future of automotive innovation and having our 3rd Generation Snapdragon Cockpit Platforms bring personalized and highly immersive experiences to Honda's next-generation vehicles."
As the automotive industry's leading first-announced scalable artificial intelligence (AI)-based solutions, the 3rd Generation Snapdragon Cockpit Platforms are designed to support higher levels of compute and intelligence needed for advanced capabilities featured in next generation vehicles, including highly intuitive AI experiences for in-car virtual assistance, natural interactions between the vehicle and driver, and contextual safety use cases.
The most recent car out of the Honda shipping in Japan since early 2021 is the compact SUV Vuzel. The European version called simply Honda HRV is also about to start delivering to customers in Q1 2022, and it is also powered with Snapdragon automotive solution, just the previous generation.
The 3rd generation is more powerful and will bring faster CPU, GPU, and AI capabilities and will most likely be part of Civic that is supposed to start shipping to the US customer in the latter part of the year. Honda CRV is next up for a refresh and could embrace the 3rd or 4th generation Snapdragon. The last Honda Civic was powered by Nvidia's Tegra 3 chip between 2015 and 2021, and the outdated chip and Android 4.4 based solution show a severe lag and aging symptoms.
To clear some possible confusion, Qualcomm announced the 4th generation Snapdragon Automotive based on the 5nm process in January 2021. Still, it takes years before these end up in the car shipping to customers.
Renault was the first manufacturer to announce the 3rd generation Snapdragon Automotive solution in September 2021, but it looks like that there will be a lot of supporters in 2022.
