Huawei, which does not build cars, has once again played its cards: Hongmeng finally "got on the car"

Around 2015, driven by the change of the "new four modernizations" of automobiles and the entrepreneurial trend driven by Tesla, a number of new forces of Chinese Internet car manufacturing were born. In the midst of doubts, many entrepreneurs have broken dreams and left the market in a bleak way, but there have also been head enterprises represented by Weilai, Xiaopeng, ideals, etc., which have gradually stepped out of their own development path.

In 2021, a new round of car-making boom has come, and technology giants such as Huawei, Baidu, and Apple have poured into the car track, or participated in research and development with technology empowerment, or personally made cars. Compared with the previous round of car-making boom from scratch, the huge advantage of technology giants' cross-border participation in the automotive field lies in their deep technology accumulation.

It is worth noting that whether it is "Wei Xiaoli" who stood out from the first round of new car-making forces, or a new round of ICT (information and communication technology) enterprises cross-border car-making power, they reflect a common point: electrification is the foundation, and eventually it will tend to be homogeneous, and the differentiated competition of smart cars is a new opportunity brought about by the transformation of the automobile industry.

Disruption is happening, and with the rapid development of digital and intelligent technologies, software is being put in a higher position in the automotive industry. The intelligence and networking of automobiles will change the existing value distribution pattern of the automotive industry, which also requires enterprises to pay more attention to and strengthen the ability of software development and integration while hardware research and development, and the focus of users is gradually shifting from the mechanical attributes of automobiles to the related attributes of intelligence and electrification. The connotation of "building" cars and building "good cars" is undergoing profound changes.

"Software-defined cars" have gradually become a trend, and the reshaping of the industry pattern has attracted more third-party developers and innovators to enter the game, and the cross-border integration and development of ICT and the automotive industry has become inevitable. In the face of a new wave, Huawei relies on the technical advantages of more than 30 years of deep cultivation in the ICT industry, hoping to empower car company partners through ecology, promote a unified operating system to get on the car, and "build a good car" and "sell a good car" together. AiTO, a high-end smart car brand empowered by Huawei, brings intelligence into the car, makes the car smarter, and officially opens the second half of the smart car.

Firmly do not build cars, be an enabler

As the world's leading ICT infrastructure and intelligent terminal provider, Huawei has accumulated a deep technical foundation in the ICT field, including but not limited to chips, operating systems, algorithms, cloud technologies, sensors, etc., and it is not a whim to enter the automotive field.

Huawei has repeatedly said that it will not build cars, but will focus on ICT technology to help car companies 'build' cars and build 'good cars'. In Huawei's view, when the automotive industry moves from traditional cars to intelligent networked electric vehicles, and then further to autonomous electric vehicles, 70% of the value and composition of the future industry are not in the traditional body, chassis and other fields.

In fact, as early as 2009, Huawei began to develop on-board modules, launched the on-board module ME909T in 2013, and established the Internet of Vehicles Business Department; in 2014, it set up a Car Networking Laboratory, continued to develop and launch related products in the three fields of the end, tube, and cloud of the Internet of Vehicles, and cooperated with Dongfeng, Changan, FAW, etc. in the Field of Vehicle Networking and Intelligent Vehicles; in 2018, Huawei developed rapidly in the field of Vehicle Networking, released chips for on-board terminals, and the Internet of Vehicles Cloud Platform.

In 2020, Huawei, which has repeatedly stressed that it does not build cars, has once again thrown out the "king explosion" - launched the HI full-stack intelligent car solution, including a new intelligent car digital platform, including three major computing platforms (intelligent driving computing platform MDC, intelligent cockpit computing platform CDC, intelligent vehicle control computing platform VDC) and three major operating systems (intelligent driving operating system AOS, intelligent cockpit operating system HOS, intelligent vehicle control operating system VOS), as well as intelligent driving, intelligent cockpit, intelligent electric, There are five intelligent systems of intelligent network connection and intelligent vehicle cloud, in addition to more than 30 intelligent components including lidar and AR-HUD.

Looking at Huawei's layout in the automotive field in recent years, Huawei has gone deeper step by step – from producing and manufacturing parts for smart cars, to joining hands with BAIC, Changan, and GAC to create a new business model, to using its own channels to sell cars, and empowering the whole value chain like the AITO brand.

It is worth noting that as smart cars are transforming from "car-centric" travel tools to "people-centric" "mobile third space", AR-HUD will become a new window for human-vehicle interaction. During this visit to Huawei's vehicle optical network laboratory, the author has a deeper understanding of Huawei's AR-HUD augmented reality head-up display solution.

Huawei has been deeply involved in the field of optical communications for more than 20 years, ranking the world's leading position for 12 consecutive years, and has a deep technical accumulation in optical display chips, freeform mirrors, and space optics. Huawei applies leading optical technology to automobiles, creating intelligent in-vehicle optical products and solutions represented by AR-HUD, and improving the visual experience brought by intelligent vehicles. In the future, Huawei AR-HUD can provide large-angle, large-format instrument information to assist safe driving in the front windshield, and can also provide AR safety navigation information that fits the road surface and covers multiple lanes on demand, and has immersive audio-visual entertainment functions.

Facing the wave of full electrification in the industry, the electric drive system has also become the core component of the differentiation of the power value of the whole vehicle. Huawei has brought more than 30 years of power electronics technology accumulation and seven years of R&D and mass production experience to the car to create the DriveONE full-stack power domain solution. Taking huawei's driveONE all-in-one electric drive system as an example, it integrates seven major components of motor controller MCU, motor, reducer, DC converter DCDC, vehicle charger OPC, power distribution unit PDU, and battery control unit BCU, realizing the deep integration of mechanical components and power components, bringing the unique value of small size, strong power, high efficiency and strong endurance. Compared with the industry's water-cooled motors, the motor volume can be reduced by 20% and the weight can be reduced by 15% at the same power and torque, and the all-in-one solution allows car companies to arrange large-capacity front load compartments up to 60L. Through the leading intelligent oil cooling technology, under the harsh working conditions such as continuous overtaking and high-speed cruising, the stable output of the motor is ensured, the average peak temperature of the winding is reduced by 30 °C, and the life can be doubled. In addition, Huawei's AI flash charge full-stack high-voltage solution released this year can also achieve an excellent experience of charging for 10 minutes and a battery life of 200km.

Hongmeng "get on the car", which is of far-reaching significance

In the trend of automobile intelligence, networking, electrification and sharing, the race with intelligent networking + automatic driving as the core has been fully rolled out, and the core components of the car have gradually changed from the former engine, gearbox, chassis to the "car brain" composed of chips, software and data. The car is regarded as an intelligent mobile terminal, with the help of powerful computing power and operating system, through the continuous development of new features and continuous optimization of the experience, the car has a new attribute of "commonly used and constantly new", so as to meet the consumer's continuous pursuit of intelligent, scenario-based and personalized experience.

Soochow Securities Research Report pointed out that with the rapid development of smart cars, smart cockpits and ADAS functions are constantly upgraded, and the scale of China's smart cockpit market will increase from 56.7 billion yuan in 2020 to 103 billion yuan in 2025.

In Huawei's exploration and practice, the intelligent cockpit is an indispensable part. HarmonyOS intelligent cockpit brings the car into the digital world and becomes a smart travel space for the Interconnection of All Things, with a super intelligent core (HarmonyOS + adaptation chip), it can realize the seamless interconnection of the whole scene of the human car, the human car home and the human car road, providing users with an extreme, personalized, immersive and continuously growing intelligent experience.

HarmonyOS intelligent cockpit from the software, hardware and ecology of the three dimensions to build, with simple interaction, natural fluency, pure and safe characteristics, of which the hardware platform is equipped with Huawei car smart screen and HUAWEI SOUND car audio system, the software platform has HarmonyOS car operating system and HMS car domain incremental development capabilities, ecologically through the software and hardware open capabilities, reduce the difficulty of development, attract rich developers to join, to achieve full-scenario collaboration.

The general consensus in the industry is that the operating system is the core of the intelligent car, but also the soul of the smart cockpit, few domestic companies take the form of self-development to develop the operating system in depth, Huawei is one of them, which also puts forward higher requirements for Huawei's HarmonyOS vehicle operating system.

Gong Ti, president of Huawei's consumer business software department, said at the Huawei Developer Conference a few days ago that the HarmonyOS vehicle operating system that will meet with everyone is not only an upgraded experience for traditional car machines, but also an upgraded experience. In Huawei's view, there are two characteristics of traditional car machines that have been criticized by consumers: one is that traditional car machines are an information island, which is difficult to interconnect with other devices; second, there are few ecological applications of traditional car machines, and the application update is not timely, and the user experience of the application is not friendly.

"The digital base of billions of connections provided by HarmonyOS, as well as the ecology of the intelligent connection of everything, developers can easily enter the ecology of the smart cockpit from the mobile ecology. And when entering the ecology, there is no need for everyone to do multiple choice questions, no need to switch between the mobile ecology and the intelligent cockpit ecology, but it is originally an ecology, and by realizing ecological sharing, it brings greater value and more opportunities to developers. Gong Ti said.

Faced with the complexity of the cockpit software system, the existence of OS fragmentation, the difficulty of customization, and the difficulty of upgrading, Huawei has built a unified, open, and car-oriented HarmonyOS vehicle operating system, decoupled it from hardware such as chips and peripherals, supported plug-and-play use of important peripherals, enabled the rapid development of APP through open APIs, and built a unified ecosystem to meet the needs of multi-screen, multi-user, multi-application, and functional safety.

"Huawei has used the core technology accumulated in the field of communications and ICT for more than 30 years to help AITO build a medium-sized luxury SUV. HarmonyOS will be on board by the end of this year. Yu Chengdong, CEO of Huawei's consumer business and CEO of Smart Vehicle Solution BU, announced that Hongmeng had finally "gotten on the bus", and the first car under AITO was the first car.

On December 2, the new high-end smart car brand AITO was officially launched, and its first smart luxury electric drive SUV will be released on December 23, which will be the first model equipped with Huawei's latest HarmonyOS smart cockpit.

In order to deeply integrate HarmonyOS and AITO, Huawei provides complete hardware and software devices from the end side, chip side, link side to end cloud collaboration. Thanks to Huawei's deep empowerment of the full link in the manufacturing system, AITO's intelligent gene is more profound.

Huawei, which "resolutely does not build cars", injects intelligent technology into the automotive industry chain, while also building an intelligent operating system and an intelligent new ecology. Huawei actively embraces the transformation of vehicle electrification and intelligence, and works with partners to "build" cars and "good cars" to provide consumers with a forward-looking smart travel experience.