Pioneer NVF-0028ZT Head Unit Teardown

Overall Significance

This teardown is of a Pioneer aftermarket head unit that is sold as a "Toyota Original Accessory", for installation by Toyota dealerships who sell the unit as a dealer "upgrade'. The system is part of a whole portfolio of Toyota accessories which are sold by Toyota - which range from the NSCP-W62 which is near the bottom of the range (at 81,900Yen) and go up to 343,350 Yen (selling price) at the high end of the spectrum (NHBA-X62G). This type of OEM-sanctioned accessory sale is very different from the North American market where the distinction between OEM and aftermarket is less blurry.

Feature Significance

This aftermarket head unit features a 7" diagonal VGA (480x800) display with LED backlighting and a resistive touchscreen overlay, a bundled 4GB SD card, Bluetooth (v1.4 per literature - chip is v2.1) connectivity, a CD drive, One-Seg TV tuner, built-in microphone for handsfree, and of course, AM/FM radio functionality. The system also is a fully functional navigation unit. Toyota even offer an app for smartphones that allows users to link mapped destinations on their phone to the GPS unit.

Design Significance

The display is a 7" Sharp 480x800 resolution color TFT display (with 24 white LEDs for backlighting). The touchscreen is a traditional 4-wire resistive screen. The CD drive is not from an identifiable source.

The core of the design is a Renesas GPS / GPU system-on-chip (R8A77770DA01BG) which provides the bulk of processing power in a single chip. Other significant IC content includes a Toshiba Semi video processor (TC90A96BFG-S), and two Sony video data serial transceivers (CXB1465R and CXB1466R-W). Other interesting choices include CSR BlueCore 6 chip for Bluetooth connectivity, a Lapis Semiconductor dual echo cancelling / noise reduction chip (ML7037-003), and an AKM Semi GPS receiver (AK1512) chip. There is a lot of IC content in this design, and most items appear to be "off the shelf" items from integrated circuit manufacturers.

The design, as is typical for Japanese OEMs such as Pioneer, is heavily weighted towards Japanese IC and component vendors including Renesas and Toshiba overwhelmingly.

Target Market

Toyota Aftermarket

This is a Toyota "Original Accessory" which is a branded aftermarket accessory.

Released

Unknown

This design is currently available from Toyota - and as an aftermarket accessory is assumed to have a shorter product lifecycle than OEM installed units. This should be a fairly recent design.

Pricing and Availability

81,900 Yen MSRP Toyota Japan

There are several pricing options offered by Toyota which can be found on the Toyota website. The 81,900 Yen price includes sales taxes.

The Toyota portfolio of aftermarket systems go up to 343,350 Yen (selling price) at the high end of the spectrum (NHBA-X62G).

Japan Market

Sold by Toyota dealers in Japan.

Volume Estimations

192,600 Total Units
2 Total Years

For the purposes of this teardown analysis, we have assumed an Annual Production Volume of 192600 units and a Product Lifetime Volume of 1.5 year(s).

Teardown volume and production assumptions are primarily used for our cost analysis in terms of amortized NRE and tooling costs, especially for custom components specific to the model being analyzed (mechanical components especially). Unless assumed volumes are different by an order of magnitude, minor changes in volume (say 1 million vs. 2) rarely have a large net effect on our final analysis because of this.

Market Performance

According to IHS Automotive research: Navigation and Telematics systems will lead growth in both established and developing markets:

USA - Will eventually offer "hybrid telematics" solutions in close to every vehicle on the market by 2017.
China - Using auto sales volume, it will come close to surpassing the US market in navigation system sales.

APAC - bolstering volume in China and penetration in Korea & Japan will surpass 10 million in embedded telematics sales alone in 2018, but will also offer almost twice that in mobile-device based telematics.

EU - Once eCall is finally implemented and OEMs begin taking steps to deploy solutions, the region will surpass the US in telematics annual sales in 2017 with over 12 million units.

Cost Notes

The world of automotive electronics (for head units at least) breaks into two major categories or component selection and therefore two major (and very different) tranches of pricing: one for the aftermarket, and another world of component selection and pricing for the OEM world. Because of the tight requirements of automotive OEMs, especially with respect to MTBF, those requirements, when passed on to component vendors, ultimately result in elevated pricing.

One of our goals with this analysis was to clarify, at the component level, which components could be clearly identified as having some sort of special specifications, whether it is AEQ certifications, extend temperature ranges, etc. we have added a column in the bill of materials analysis to flag how each component was identified before pricing was performed. All components are categorized into 4 categories: those which can either positively be identified as either having "special" requirements, or not, and those which we assumed to have special requirements or not. Some components fall into the "not applicable" or "none of the above" categories - such as mechanical components which should not be affected by such requirements, and have cost drivers that are different from typical electronic components.

There can be a high degree of differentiation between consumer grade and automotive, or "high spec" parts, and despite performing this nuanced pricing exercise to the best of our ability - there can still be a high degree of pricing variability in such components, which makes accuracy in estimating a greater challenge in such exercises. Every component and category of component will have different "adders" or multipliers that will vary from product to product and manufacturer to manufacturer. This system appears to be built predominantly with "consumer" or "standard" spec electronic components and is built to the same standard as other consumer products - however a handful of components meet special AEQ specs, and several were "assumed" to be automotive grade in this pricing analysis.

Software is a major cost element in Navi systems and is not accounted for in this analysis (software is not part of standard teardowns which are "hardware-only" analyses. Note that Toyota sell a foreign-language GPS option for this device for a separate fee of 28,140 Yen (including consumption tax).

Main Cost Drivers below

Sharp LQ070Y5DG09 Display Module - 7" Diagonal, 262K Color TFT, 480 x 800 Pixels, 168um x 192um Pixel Size, 80.6mm x 153.6mm Viewable Area, 24 White LEDs Backlight- (Qty: 1)
CD Drive - Slot Load, Internal- (Qty: 1)
Touchscreen Assembly - 7" Diagonal, 4-Wire Resistive, ITO Film Over Glass, w/ Flex Kapton PCB- (Qty: 1)
Renesas R8A77770DA01BG GPS / Graphics Processor - SoC, SH-4A CPU Core, 960MIPS, 533MHz, 64KB Cache, 32KB On-Chip RAM, Renesas 2D/3D Graphics Processor, GPS Baseband Processing Module, FM Multiplex Decoder, CAN Interface x 2 Channels- (Qty: 1)
4-Layer - FR4, Lead-Free- (Qty: 6)
Panasonic EWTS86JE Gyroscope - 1-Axis- (Qty: 1)
Tuner Module - FM/AM/RDS, Contains Pioneer PN5004A & PN5008A- (Qty: 1)
Toshiba Semiconductor TC90A96BFG-S Video Processor- (Qty: 1)
8-Layer - FR4 / RCF HDI, 3+2+3, Lead Free- (Qty: 1)
Sony CXB1465R Video Serial Data Transceiver - 24-Bit Color, w/ On-Chip PLL Synthesizer & Adaptive Cable Equalizer- (Qty: 1)

Not Included in Analysis

The total materials and manufacturing costs reported in this analysis reflect ONLY the direct materials cost (from component vendors and assorted EMS providers), AND manufacturing with basic test. Not included in this analysis are costs above and beyond the material manufacture of the core device itself - cost of intellectual property, royalties and licensing fees (those not already included into the per component price), software, software loading and test, shipping, logistics marketing and other channel costs including not only EMS provider and the OEM"s margin, but that of other resellers. Our cost analysis is meant to focus on those costs incurred in the manufacture of the core device and exceptionally in some circumstances the packaging and literature as well.

We do provide an Excel tab "Overall Costs" where a user can enter their known pre and post production costs to build a per unit cost reflective of theirs actual expenditures.

Manufacturer Notes

Pioneer is amongst the top 20 worldwide infotainment suppliers as ranked by IHS Automotive, and is a large player in aftermarket systems. Pioneer has about 2 to 3% of worldwide market share (as measured in 2010 and the first half of 2011).

For the purposes of this analysis we are assuming that this device is built in house by Pioneer.

Country of Origin

For the purposes of this analysis, we are assuming the following country(ies) of origin for each level of assembly, based on a combination of "Made In" markings, and/or assumptions based on our knowledge of such equipment.

Box Contents - Thailand
Display / Touchscreen - Thailand
Main PCB - Thailand
Misc PCB Assemblies - Thailand
Other - Enclosures / Final Assembly - Thailand

Country of origin assumptions relate directly to the associated cost of manufacturing, where calculated by iSuppli. In the cases of "finished" sub-assemblies (such as display modules and hard drives), we do not calculate internal manufacturing costs, but rather assess the market price of the finished product in which case country of origin assumptions may or may not have a direct effect on pricing.

Labor rates are applied directly only to hand inserted components and systems in our bill of materials, and although regional assumptions do, these new rates do not have a direct effect on our modeled calculations of placement costs for automated SMD assembly lines. "Auto" inserted components (such as SMT components) placement costs are calculated by an iSuppli algorithm which allocates a cost per component based on the size and pincount of the device. This calculation is affected by country or region of origin as well.

Design Complexity

Component counts by assembly and the number of assembly are indicators of design complexity and efficiency.

Component Qty: 1607 - Main PCB
Component Qty: 1059 - Misc PCB Assemblies
Component Qty: 162 - Other - Enclosures / Final Assembly
Component Qty: 2 - Display / Touchscreen
Component Qty: 9 - Box Contents
Component Qty: 2839 - Grand Total

At a total count of 2830 components (excluding box contents) this is a complex system overall (with 12 subassemblies - there are 8 subassemblies in the "Misc. PCB Assemblies" assembly aggregation) and has the equivalent of about 2 to 3 smartphones worth of components. This elevated count does not even account for the sub components in the display, touchscreen, or CD drive: those are treated as single units as they are purchased in that way.

Overall - this is a complex system but in line with other high end navi or infotainment head units we have analyzed. Complexity is usually a function of feature set chosen - the more features applied, the higher the component counts typically - especially for head units. As a point of reference - even some "inexpensive" head units recently analyzed for the Chinese market have component counts above 2000 whereas the most complex systems we saw for the Japan market ranged from 4000 to nearly 6000 components in all.

Design Notes

The major cost drivers and modular design elements of this system are the display/touchscreen assembly (worth about 20% of the overall budget), the CD Drive and the core Renesas processor.

The display is a 7" VGA (480x800 pixel) resolution screen from Sharp (LQ070Y5DG09) - it features a 4-wire resistive touchscreen which is a mature, legacy technology that is cheap to produce.

The CD drive is from an unknown source and appears to be "conventional'.

The key IC that runs the show on this device is the Renesas R8A77770DA01BG, which is a GPS / Graphics Processor system-on-chip (SoC), which features a SH-4A CPU Core, and operates at 960MIPS / 533MHz, with a 64KB Cache, 32KB On-Chip RAM, and a Renesas 2D/3D Graphics Processor, GPS Baseband Processing Module, FM Multiplex Decoder, and a 2-channel CAN Interface.