Chapter 158: The Car Infotainment System's Devastating Impact – Competitors' Systems Are Just Large MP4 Players

"Snap." The plastic casing let out a crisp, sharp sound.

Lu Jingming casually tucked the lighter back into his pocket.

He curled his index finger and tapped his knuckle twice against the pitch-black car window.

"Knock, knock."

"Hum—" A faint electrical sound slid across the surface of the glass.

The layer of privacy glass, which had originally looked like it was coated in ink, instantly faded, becoming as clear as spring water.

Several foreign executives in the front row stretched their necks forward abruptly, looking like dazed geese with their throats gripped.

Lu Jingming pulled open the frameless door.

His bare feet, wearing a pair of ten-yuan plastic flip-flops, stepped directly onto the velvet floor mat of the driver's cabin.

He leaned back into the spacious leather seat.

The high-definition camera lens was fixed firmly on the open car door.

The high-definition footage inside the car was cut directly to the thirty-meter-wide giant black screen behind the stage.

The Toyota Vice President sat offstage, clutching the voice recorder he used for taking notes.

The plastic casing creaked under his grip. The cold sweat in his palms felt sticky.

"Where are the buttons? Where's the screen?" He stared with bloodshot eyes, his throat parched.

On the giant screen, the dashboard was clean and bare, wrapped in a layer of matte suede.

There were no dense, physical knobs typical of traditional fuel cars, and certainly none of the bulky, ugly LCD TVs that new car manufacturers loved to cram into the center.

The entire center console was so empty it made one feel uneasy.

"Ha, so it's just a half-finished model car!" Old Henry, the R&D director of Mercedes-Benz, scoffed from the side.

He pushed up his gold-rimmed glasses, a look of undisguised mockery flashing behind the lenses.

"It doesn't even have a button to listen to the radio." Old Henry leaned back in his chair. "Does he expect the driver to sing to themselves to pass the time?"

Lu Jingming sat in the car, his left wrist resting casually on the edge of the steering wheel.

The ninety-nine yuan black xinghai bracelet had barely approached the sensor area when, "Beep." A short, sharp buzz came from deep within the cabin.

Before the crowd offstage could widen their mocking grins to the max, a beam of deep blue light shot directly out from a hidden slit in front of the dashboard.

The beam hit the slanted front windshield. There was no reflector, and no grainy, ghosting projection.

A three-dimensional, floating 3D miniature city model was slammed right into everyone's retinas.

That was no ordinary flat navigation. Even the glass windows of buildings by the roadside and the shadows under the overpasses were as realistic as a miniature sandbox set up on the car's hood.

"This..." The Toyota Vice President's mouth hung wide open, a sour, metallic, fishy taste rising in his gums.

Lu Jingming didn't even reach for the phone in his pocket. As soon as the bracelet's data synced, the video conference currently active on his phone instantly popped up on the floating holographic interface.

The music playlist on the side seamlessly flowed over. The album cover of a vinyl record rotated slowly in mid-air, smooth as flowing water, without even a single frame of lag or stutter.

In the backstage control room, the air conditioner was blowing out white mist.

Xia Weiliang was squatting on a large gaming chair with her bare feet, the black dust on the soles of her feet smudging the edge of the leather cushion.

She had a strawberry lollipop in her mouth, the plastic stick bobbing with her breathing.

"Tch, a bunch of country bumpkins who have never seen the world," Xia Weiliang muttered, rolling her eyes so hard the whites showed.

"I spent three sleepless nights writing that cloud computing stream." She scratched her calf with her toes. "They really think that's just a PowerPoint presentation playing."

Chu Xuan stood nearby, the wad of crumpled tissue in his hand soaked through with oily sweat, dripping wet onto the anti-static floor.

"Sis, sis, this trick of yours is amazing." Chu Xuan's legs were shaking, his tongue tied in knots. "This visual effect, it looks just like magic."

Under the spotlight on stage, Lu Jingming leaned forward.

He looked at the group of foreign executives with ashen faces offstage and bared one side of his stark white canine teeth.

"Traditional car companies sell a crappy radio and insist on calling it an 'intelligent in-car system'." His voice came through the lapel mic, dripping with undisguised sarcasm and nonchalance.

"Playing a song lags for three seconds, opening navigation spins in circles for ages." Lu Jingming snorted coldly. "Even the Bluetooth disconnects every other day. That's just an oversized MP4 player welded to the dashboard."

Porsche designer Paul sat in the VIP area, his chest heaving violently. The back of his high-end tailored suit was soaked through with cold sweat, sticking to his skin and sending chills through him.

"He's just pulling a stunt! What's the use of just having a holographic shell!" Paul gritted his teeth, staring fixedly at the big screen.

"Voice control is the core of an in-car system! That crappy system probably can't even understand English with an accent!"

Lu Jingming didn't pick up the microphone; he spoke directly into the air, his speech rapid.

"Navigate to Donghai International Airport, avoid the elevated highway, set the AC to twenty-two degrees with the airflow directed upwards, play a rock song and turn the volume down, send a message to Chu Xuan telling him to book tomorrow's flight."

Five or six chaotic, disorganized instructions, without even a pause for punctuation, spoken as fast as a market lady rattling off a list of vegetables.

Old Henry offstage scoffed, "A madman. Such illogical concurrent commands." He shook his head. "Even if current in-car chips calculated until they smoked, they couldn't process that..."

Before he could finish his sentence, the 3D sandbox on the holographic interface instantly drew a green virtual route avoiding the congested elevated highway.

The hidden magnetic levitation AC vents opened silently, blowing out cold air. Heavy metal rock music began to play in the cabin at a very low volume.

In the top right corner of the screen, a message saying "Book flight" was already displayed as sent successfully. The entire process took less than 0.5 seconds.

There wasn't even a retarded "Processing your request" voice response.

Old Henry's laughter got stuck in his throat, as if he had swallowed a live fly. His face flushed red, and he couldn't even cough.

"It's not just that I can speak." Lu Jingming tapped his fingers twice on the leather edge of the steering wheel.

"Pandora's underlying voice scheduling has ten concurrent channels open." He lowered his eyelids, exuding an arrogance that suggested he was holding his opponents down on the ground to bleed them dry.

"Even if there are ten people in this car, with ten mouths simultaneously shouting to open the window, play music, or adjust the temperature," Lu Jingming curled his lips, "it can distinguish who is who in milliseconds."

"It will even direct the air towards the mouth that is speaking."

The venue with eight thousand people was so deathly silent that one could hear the faint buzzing of the overhead light wires.

This wasn't an in-car system; this was shoving a cloud data center with independent computing power into a car!

The Toyota Vice President's hands were shaking like a sieve. The voice recorder slipped from his fingers, "clattered" onto his shoe, and rolled into the wool carpet.

The flesh on his face twitched violently, his complexion turning as green as a moldy wax gourd.

Their software ecosystem was being rubbed into the ground, and their pride and joy, the smart connectivity, had become a joke.

He gritted his teeth, his jaw muscles bulging into two hard lumps. He stared fixedly at the seemingly cramped interior space on the big screen.

This was the last straw he could grasp.

"What kind of hocus-pocus are you pulling!" The Toyota Vice President's voice cracked. He stood up abruptly from his leather chair, pointing at the screen with his fingernail.

"The exterior lines are pressed so low, the back seat will definitely hit your head! The space must be absolute garbage!"