[News-Oxcart Network]
Time is not waiting for people, how to weigh self-research or cooperation, is a problem facing the transformation of car companies!
Recently, it was reported that Cariad, a software division of the Volkswagen Group, and Bosch, an auto parts supplier, are about to reach a strategic cooperation agreement in the field of automotive software.
Two years ago, volkswagen group, as a representative of traditional automobile manufacturers, took the lead in proposing software self-research, and internally set up a software department Car.Software (now Cariad), and vowed to increase the proportion of software self-development from less than 10% to at least 60% in 2025.
However, the subsequent progress was not smooth, and the Volkswagen ID model was once deeply involved in the software delivery storm, and later because the software could not quickly adapt to the iterative upgrade, the sales performance was not as good as expected.
According to public data, the company's target for this year is to sell 80,000 to 100,000 pure electric vehicles in China, but the number of insured vehicles in January-October this year is only 32,800 (the exclusive data of Gaogong intelligent cars), far lower than the sales performance of more than 200,000 in Europe.
In contrast, from January to October this year, the insurance volume of Pure Electric Vehicles of Chinese brands was 1.3536 million units (the exclusive data of Gaogong Intelligent Vehicles), accounting for 80% of the entire pure electric vehicle market, and the average price of new vehicles reached 160,100 yuan. This price range was originally the world of joint venture brand fuel vehicles.
The delay in software delivery and the coldness of the ID. series in the Chinese market have cast a shadow over the transforming Volkswagen Group. To this end, Herbert Diess, the current CEO of the Volkswagen Group, almost lost his position.
However, even if it is retained, the radical spokesperson who has been promoting electrification and digital transformation internally has been reduced by some permissions.
As part of the compromise agreement, more power in Diss' hands will be handed over to the current head of the Volkswagen brand, who took office just last year. At the same time, the person in charge will also join the company's board of directors and start managing the company's business in China next summer.
Next, Diess will take full responsibility for the Volkswagen Group's Software Business Unit (Cariad), driving the Volkswagen Group's transformation, but it is also a key part of the internal strategic restructuring it has actively promoted over the past few years.
Of course, in order to promote the transformation of intelligence (software) and electrification, Volkswagen began to find another way, that is, to abandon full-stack self-research and continue to cooperate with external partners such as peers and technology companies to improve the scale, speed and cost-effectiveness of software development.
At present, from the public information, Cariad can receive 2.5 billion euros (about 2.8 billion US dollars) of research and development funds from the Volkswagen Group every year, and in the early stage mainly serves all the brands of the Volkswagen Group, from Volkswagen to Audi, Porsche and so on.
For the software business cooperation between Cariad and Bosch, it is reported that the project between the two sides has begun in November. Next, Cariad has the potential to experiment with new supply chain relationships, changing the traditional single procurement model and instead deeply customizing development.
Obviously, for Dies, it is already a top priority to quickly solve the new model's ability to catch up with the front-runners such as Tesla in terms of software capabilities.
summary:
Traditional car companies choose the software full-stack self-research technology route is difficult and the cycle is long, and abandoning the software full-stack self-development means losing the future initiative. Time is not waiting for people, how to weigh self-research or cooperation, is a difficult problem facing the transformation of car companies.