Qualcomm's Evolution of Autonomous Products

our cars. Well, yeah, c S, it's a it's just kicking off now, I guess it kicks off tomorrow morning. And Otto is the big buzz out here in Las Vegas this week. So Otto used to be an afterthought and all of a sudden, Otto is the central thing out of c Yes, it's become the main, the main part of the show. And so very big for Qualcolm this year is we've announced our first autonomous drive platform.

We've been working on it with big customers like Gem over the last few years and finally just unveiled it in our press conference just a few minutes ago. So Bloomberg is one of the first to find out about it. It's called snap Dragon Ride and it's basically the central computer brain inside the vehicle that's going to allow your car eventually to take on some driving functions and eventually drive itself over the coming years. All Right, So I

feel like this is long awaited in many ways. Is the year that that we actually see this in cars or is it going to take a little bit longer for that robust autonomous driving experience? Yeah? You know, it's it's going to be evolutionary. So just like everything else an automotive, it won't just be one day the cars are driving themselves. You know, I think it's a society. We can't adapt that quickly, and so what's really limiting um.

You know, technology is certainly evolving continuously, um, But what's really limiting it is our reality as humans to be

able to acclimate to the changes. And so what you'll see is what you're already seeing, and that is you'll go from level one to level five autonomy where the car will start to break itself in certain conditions, and then it might steer itself or to keep in the lane, and then it might recognize some road signs and eventually help you on the highway and then eventually help you and stop and go traffic, and then ten years from now you'll turn around the car will be fully driving,

after you've acclimated to kind of each one of these use models. And that's the way passenger vehicles will evolve. Patrick, I think that's what will get us all used to it. I feel like in many ways, the technology is certainly there. We've seen that right with um various automakers already in terms of self driving cars. Tesla certainly front and center here. I guess as I'm on the car, my car can kind of drive on its own already also, but it's

not a Tesla. But what's interesting is I constantly think about the infrastructure around me. I think about, you know, messy roads or signs and things that aren't so clear that are going to complicate our move towards a fully self driving world. So where are we on that? Who's responsible for that? Because if once you start getting towns and governments and things involved, that to me says it's going to take a lot longer. Now, I think you

put your finger on it. So it's it's easy enough in what's called the closed loop situation for cars to be able to drive themselves. The technology is just nearly there to be able to make that happen with mobility services and robot taxis and these things enclosed loop environments.

It's the open loop environments that you're talking about, where there's potholes in the roads that aren't mapped, these types of things, and so it's it's evolved, continuously evolving the technology where it's able to detect these things um which is really going to allow us to be able to run these open loop scenarios. And that's why we're graduating passenger vehicles from level one up until level five autonomy over the counting years. Another point you made was very good,

and that is the infrastructure. So it won't be just the cars that are that are that are helpful and autonomy. The infrastructure itself will know a lot more. It will know where the potholes are, it will know where the traffic, where the traffic jams exist. And so I think it's a it's a concert of what's going on in the car and the technology and very similar technology in the infrastructure. And so each the sad answer to it is each

municipality is responsible for putting together that infrastructural approach. And some states like California and Arizona are a little bit more advanced, and there's other states that I think are falling behind. But it will be the marriage of infrastructure and the car to be able to really bring a full self driving environment over the coming decade. It's almost

like crowdsourcing or crowdfunding. I do think about ways and how it works, and man, I've been pulled into it, or I'm like, oh, yeah, I just saw a copp or oh yeah, there's a car pulled over, Like you know, you start doing that, and I do wonder how much that will have to be a part of, you know, kind of what happens in the future. So Patrick, go ahead, No,

now you're you're bringing in a very important point. That's why five G is necessary because as Jason is are runs over a pothole, figures out that the road is closed, it can report that up to a cloud and that we'll use that crowdsource information to inform all the vehicles across the network. So cars will no longer be isolated

on their own. We're connecting all the cars together and the cars to the infrastructure, like we discussed last time I was on your show, with the two X technology So Patrick, I'd just like to point out that you have pointed out that Carol asked really good questions and apparently I drove drive over potholes. So I'm not holding it against you because you're all the way out there in Las Vegas' bro. I'm just I'm just saying, alright, so, uh, just only about thirty seconds left and we're gonna hold

you over for the next segment. But the mood you said pretty good out there as it relates to cars right now, Ces, it's just amazing. So ce s. As I mentioned, five years ago, automotive was an afterthought, pushed away in one of the halls, and now it's just

his front and center. I can tell you qual Calm we did seven or eight press releases, seven of the we're all about automotive and autonomy and different services that were offering now, so automotive has really become the center of what's going on in the bus at CS and no true than more true than this year. Patrick Little is our guest. He's senior VP General manager at Qualcom Global Automotive, getting ready to head to CS out in Vegas on the phone from San Diego though on this

Monday Hey, Patrick, we do want to move on. But one more question I have, because you are seeing what's going on in terms of self driving technology, chips increasingly playing a bigger role when it comes to the automotive space, is are all automotive companies alike in terms of their pursuit and pushing towards self driving or are there some that from your vantage point, are definitely ahead of the pack. Now that it's not it's not homogeneous, for sure, There

there are, but it is there are. There are leaders in Europe, there are leaders in North American, leaders in China. One of the companies that we announced that we're working very closely with his General Motors. They've been a partner of ours since twenty since two thousand two, and we launched on Star together, and so they're one of the more advanced companies in North America that's really pushing for

autonomous driving. And they've come out with their super crews and their ultra crews in different varieties of their autonomous driving. But that's one one company I think that in partnership with Qualcom, has really been able to break new barriers in autonomous driving. Several of the German automakers are really aggressive and we've been working with several of them as well. So there are laggards and leaders in the space, for sure. I think everyone has the same goal in mind, and

that is safety. Really autonomous driving and eight ASS is really all about safety. Uh. And so you have North America a couple of leaders, and a couple of leaders in Germany, and certainly a few in Asia that are that are continuing to lead the way. But General Motors is a friend of the family, will say, and they've really been working closely with us. Two, I would say,

in kind of a trusted advisor partnership. Patrick, we talked a little bit about this a few minutes ago, but I've g tell us what that actually looks like because I feel like too often, I think we talked about this with you when you visited with us before. This notion of like, yeah, three G, two four G, thing's got a little bit faster, But five G feels like more of a game changer, really sort of a step function up. As they say, tell us what that actually

looks like, especially when it comes to your business. Yeah, five five G is a game changer across nearly every industry and certainly that's true for automotive, and so those core tenants of five G just to speed, the low latency, in other words, your your time to access it is very high. The reliability is extremely high, which is very important for automotive, and it's going to make a bunch of change. Five G alone will make quite a few

changes in automotive. One of the things we talked about when we last spoke was a cellular vehicle to everything, or vehicles talking to other vehicles, talking to the infrastructure.

It's very important that the network be available all the time, and so five G has extremely high reliability, much higher than three G or four G. And I think that's an important part of connecting the car to the world around it is that reliability also for eight as it's important there will be so much data coming from the car and going to the car in terms of maps and algorithms and other data back and forth. It's very important that you have that very high throughput that five

G can give you. So five G will actually play a very central role in many aspects of the evolution of automotive, not only for autonomy and not only connecting the car to the world around it. But even to be able to stream movies and audio and other content to your car. As you bring your digital life into the car, automotive standards, will they be um the same

around the globe. Ultimately, we're trying to you know, we're trying for that global harmonization, particularly with the V two X are connecting the car to the world around it. We're really turn to harmonize a on a specific spectrum, a specific set of goals and object is so that you can have this common experience across the entire globe. We really do learn from each other in North America, Europe, Asia, we we have this common network in the industry and

we really do learn from each other. So hopefully there'll be a nice harmony now in sigula V to X. China is definitely ahead. They announced the spectrum well ahead of the other territories. And it's what I was mentioning to you before. They're they're a little bit ahead of everyone because of their decisiveness on on V V two X technology. Um. But yeah, we try to harmonize these capabilities in these functions across the globe, and automakers like it that way. They don't like to have to do

a model for Europe model for North America. They like to be able to have a lot of leverage in their investments across all territories and frankly from the smallest car or from the low end car to the premium car. They want that leverage as well. Right, all right, we'll have a great show. Patrick Little, senior Vice president and general manager of Qualcom Global Automotive. He joined us on the phone from Tanyo, headed to Vegas. Some big announcements

from Qualcom. Sounds like cars moving from sort of the back lot to the main aisle there at the big electronic show in Vegas. Baby, Yeah, pretty cool. And we'll watch for some of the announcement that comes out over the next week, so definitely following that.