FF Releases New In-Car Software Updates

With our pre-production vehicles continuing their on-road testing, the team at FF has been continuously enhancing the In-Vehicle Infotainment experience for the FF 91. I’m delighted to introduce a few product highlights we have built out.

A flexible Driver Control framework

In OTA (over-the-air) update enabled consumer products, the software has been known to outgrow its hardware capability constantly. While building the steering wheel control experience, we have chosen to replace the conventional single-action hardware buttons with generic 5-way controllers and designed a contextual-aware digital user experience to work hand-in-hand with the controllers. This effort allows drivers to control the interfaces without the limitation of pre-determined hardware functions. It also enables FF to continuously innovate on behalf of the users without the hardware constraint.

OS-level integration with voice AI

At FF, we believe the AI-enhanced voice experience will lead the future of connected vehicle interactions. Guided by the Voice First principle, we are immerging FF’s first-party voice assistant, the FFAI, deeply into the vehicle OS, enabling it to work omnipresently with as many user touch-points as possible. Carrying this mission, we have built out the Overview — a dedicated “I/O screen” for the AI, where we streamlined the input and output between the user and the AI. This is all supported by our unique compound commands understanding capability.

Share locations to your FF 91 from anywhere

With eleven displays inside the car, sharing between displays has never been more critical. We have built out a sharing experience called Sharedrop to allow content to travel more freely.

As a first step, we are introducing an effortless phone-to-car sharing experience: just like sharing to your friend’s phone, you can share a location to your FF 91 via many popular apps like Yelp. This experience works anywhere with an internet connection, so you can share whether you are inside or outside the vehicle.

Messaging playback

Staying informed while driving on the road is desired by many users, so we have built out the incoming message readout function for many popular messaging apps like SMS, Whatsapp, WeChat, and more. We are building the experience with full awareness of customer’s privacy and safety, so the message will only play when selected by users, and users can turn off the feature through the settings at any time.

While these represent just a few of our innovative software updates for the upcoming FF 91, there will be many more exciting product experiences to be introduced as we come closer to production. We will continue to iterate as on-road testing and customer feedback come in.

About the Author

“Made” in China, “Refurbished” in Germany, and “Imported” to the US: Shuai Yang is a tri-lingual Lead Product Manager who spent the past decade building products in the automotive, mobile, consumer electronics, and e-commerce space. For the past four years, Shuai has led the efforts to build FF 91’s branded Operating System, Driver Controls, and Voice AI. Before joining FF, Shuai worked for Amazon and HTC, where he launched products that served millions of customers worldwide.