If you're prepared for grey rhinos, you don't need to fear black swans
Text | Lee Woo Yin
Edit | Zhao Cheng
Over the past three years, things have changed. Suppose someone travels back ten years, with hazy memories, and writes down today's "push back map" in Baidu Tieba bar, I am afraid that I will laugh and be generous.
Three years ago, China's auto consumer market suddenly weakened, when everyone was still wondering why the gold, nine and silver were not enough. We once wrote the cover of the magazine "The Darkest Hour of the Automotive Industry", taking the maturity of China's automobile consumption and being in a downward exploration cycle; the competition pattern of the global automotive industry is changing, and the voice of the automakers is weakening. The above two points set the agenda for a group of interview rooms in Pazhou, Guangzhou that year...
I remember the focus of the media and corporate interviews at the time: How do you think about next year's sales? When will new energy products come out? Does the new four modernizations have a layout? That's all.
After three years, in 2021, from Shanghai to Guangzhou, car company leaders and media, three sentences without leaving the chip. "Core chaser" and "chased" are quite difficult. When Malaysia shut down the factory due to the epidemic and refused to open it for a long time, so that Bosch's senior Chinese officials were ready to "jump off the building" with self-deprecation; at that time, Geely had used proton's relationship to speed up multi-party communication and gradually resume production; behind the bottoming out of Dongfeng Citroen with the help of the Versaille racing type, it was also the result of Dongfeng Chairman Zhu Yanfeng's handwriting, Landis Chairman Tang Weishi, and the two global guarantees. Xu Linhao, vice president of BDStar Group and chairman of Beidou Zhilian, told me that according to his observation, this year, because of the lack of core supply, under the pressure of heavy work, people in the circle are generally fat, less than a few pounds, more than dozens of pounds ...
Unexpectedly, at that time, some people began to plan their own chips. Could it be that he crossed?
As far as I know, in 2018, Li Shufu communicated with Shen Ziyu and began to lay out self-developed chips. In November 2019, Egatong Technology and semiconductor manufacturer ARM China jointly funded the establishment of Core Optimus Technology. Today, the Dragon Eagle 1 7nm high-performance intelligent cockpit chip created by the two sides has been successfully tape-out, and mass production will be achieved in the second quarter of 2023.
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The first domestic vehicle-grade 7nm intelligent cockpit chip, Dragon Eagle I, independently designed by Core Qing Technology, was successfully tape-out in October 2021
Founded by Shufu Li and Ziyu Shen in 2016, Yijiatong Technology has set up branches and R&D centers in Hangzhou, Beijing, Shanghai, Wuhan, Dalian and Gothenburg, Sweden, with a R&D team of more than 1,000 people.
7-nanometer chips are not easy to do, accompanied by China's corresponding vehicle-grade chips to achieve a breakthrough of zero, so that domestic car companies in the face of international brands, ushered in the right to choose.
The chip panic that has been troubled for a long time will usher in the dawn.
Automakers do need chip companies that understand car companies. At present, a car is often equipped with different company chips, but also to continuously communicate and coordinate with each other, do software self-research, the intermediate links are very complicated. In the era of software-defined automobiles, OEMs should no longer fall into simple integration work, and need to use a large OS (operating system) concept to highly centralize software.
Mr. Shen Ziyu, Chairman and CEO of Yijiatong Technology and Chairman of Core Qing Technology, explained the layout of high-end digital cockpit solutions
Unity of knowledge and action is not easy. Automakers are always caught in the struggle of "spirit and flesh", and always dare not regard themselves as treasures and fake hands on others. To this end, The core engine chose to open the chip external supply, and YiJiatong chose to open source the middle and upper-level code, so that OME can make its own system, so that the automaker "keeps the inner soul".
Shen Ziyu told me that the ultimate goal of longying no.1 chip plus EAS Core is to create a core platform that promotes the development of the entire intelligent car industry. Through chips and new nuclear software, the two converge to strive for mutual achievement, and constantly calibrate and improve on Geely's related models. Egatong will serve OME and also serve Tier1, but as a chip company, Core Engine Technology will only serve Tier1.
Thanks to the internal circulation of geely's system and the collaborative research and development of software and hardware, from the success of tape-out to the mass production of the whole vehicle, the time is very fast. The chip will be certified by the end of 2022 and mass production of vehicle products in the second quarter of 2023. In 2024, four OEMs will release mass production vehicles in the European market.
On the spot, Yijiatong Technology and Xinqing Technology signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Desay SV, Neusoft Group and Beidou Zhilian. These are summarized together, basically covering 80% of the platform solutions of China's own brands, originating from China, or starting from Chinese cars, working together to create a real Chinese platform solution.
In the past few years of cooperation between Neusoft and Yijiatong, the platform developed by the two sides has been mass-produced at home and abroad. In this regard, Meng Lingjun, vice president of Neusoft Group and general manager of the Automotive Electronic Solutions Division, sighed that Neusoft has been doing intelligent networking for thirty years, hoping to take software as the core, hardware as the carrier, do technology and two-page mode innovation, create a local supply chain, and hope that this "circle of friends" can be gradually expanded in the future.
Xu Linhao told me that although the business between partners will intersect, I hope that each other can achieve reuse, rather than repeated investment. This track is large enough and wide enough that one can't finish it, and we can do it together to do domestic substitution, and then global substitution.
Yijiatong Technology, Core Qing Technology, Desay SV, Neusoft Group and Beidou Zhilian will jointly build an advanced cockpit industry ecology
At the same time, Dr. Wang Kai, director and chief CEO of Core Qing Technology, told me that basically from the current global situation, chip foundry is still the mainstream situation of most chip manufacturers. China has begun to actively plan chip production, it is estimated that it will take several years.
Shen Ziyu confided in his heart: Yijiatong gave Geely a Tier1 because we need to understand the car very urgently, and also promote a variety of changes in the car, including the architecture of electronic appliances. This is the responsibility of the automaker, we are helping and promoting the change of Geely and the industry, which is also the main demand of Chairman Li Shufu and me to start the company together...
Quite an interesting interlude of a tidbit. In addition to using Core Qing Technology and Yi Jia Tong, one to do chips, one to do software, each other to package as a platform, to help car companies including Geely, to create future cars.
Shen Ziyu and Li Shufu also have a project that seems to be incompatible with car building - making mobile phones. Previously, I wrote an exclusive report (exclusive 丨 Li Shufu wants to build a mobile phone, will set up a company in Wuhan, Shanghai and other places) to disclose this matter, and restore the logic here (Li Shufu made mobile phones, Lei Jun made cars behind: technology giants devote themselves to creating new species). It should be known that the entire industrial chain of mobile phones plus automobiles accounts for about 10% of GDP. In my opinion, whether it is a mobile phone, a car, or a chip, it is all connected by a key.
When the outside world wondered why Li Shufu wanted to build a mobile phone and why he wanted to build a chip, he felt that the flowers were charming. In fact, a key can open ten thousand locks - Li Shufu still wants to build a car, or wants to build a future travel tool, he wants Know How.
What's more interesting is that people often feel that setting long-term goals and looking at them from a distance tends to ignore short-term mutations; on the contrary, if you look at the big changes in the future and hold a long-term mentality. Ready for the grey rhinoceros to come, what black swans are you afraid of? This is precisely the biggest gain when thinking about why Li Shufu wants to lay out the chip.