One of the major events in the automotive industry of the year must have the article "Huawei does not build cars". When Huawei decided to enter the automotive field, the nerves of both auto manufacturers and industrial chain companies were stirred, and decades of ICT experience coupled with the shaping of wolf culture, this company brought thousands of troops in the automotive territory.
On December 21, Huawei's Intelligent Vehicle Solution Innovation Center in Suzhou was officially put into use, a 2,000-square-meter innovation center located in Huawei's Suzhou Research Institute, which includes 9 exhibition areas and 9 laboratories for MDC, fusion sensing, voice, vision, acoustics, cockpit ecological innovation, in-vehicle networking, and vehicle control innovation. In addition, as a vehicle-level test center, the Yangcheng Peninsula Intelligent Network Test Site is expected to be opened next year.
The Intelligent Vehicle Solution Innovation Center is open to car customers and partners for joint development, testing, verification and display of results. With Suzhou as its base and the whole country as its goal, Huawei understood the word "ecology".
Do not compete with car companies for souls, but seek to "surround" the soul
Wang Jun previously responded to the question of the soul and body on a car, saying, "The core is still the OEM's car itself." ”
Therefore, the direction of Huawei's entry into the automotive circle is the technology and ecology behind the core. Huawei believes that after practicing and summarizing in recent years, the automotive industry has shown four major characteristics: bit management watts; computing power-driven horsepower; software-defined functions; software deeply involved in the definition, development, verification, sales, and service processes of the car, and continuous optimization of each process, bringing users a continuously optimized experience. This change mainly comes from the blessing of digital technology.
Wang Jun said at the 2021 Huawei Intelligent Vehicle Solution Ecosystem Forum, "In the era of intelligent vehicles, digital technology is the core competitiveness." Based on digital technology, Huawei has created three platforms: iDVP, MDC, and HarmonyOS Smart Cockpit, covering three major areas of intelligent vehicle control, intelligent driving, and intelligent cockpit, that is, the intelligence that surrounds the car.
Huawei is the undoubted NO.1 in the ICT field, and the territory of the car is still starting from solving the problem of digital technology.
In the smart car digital architecture, Huawei provides the basic element of the intelligent car digital platform iDVP (Intelligent Car Digital Platform). In March this year, Huawei and Chery Group reached an iDVP fixed-point cooperation to jointly build a new generation of electronic and electrical architecture based on SOA, in order to bring users a commonly used and always new, thousands of vehicles and thousands of intelligent driving experience.
On December 21 last year, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers and 22 start-up members established the SDV Working Group, and Huawei, as one of the important members of the SDV Working Group, has completed system pre-integration with 10 manufacturers and 20 devices based on standardized interface specifications. After completing the pre-integration, Huawei and its partners developed one-click rest and welcome modes, which are typical multi-device linkage scenarios, and the development efficiency is increased by 10 times.
Intelligent driving is the strategic commanding height for car companies to win future competition, and faces three major challenges: long investment cycle, high scene complexity and technical difficulty. Huawei's MDC Intelligent Driving Computing Platform provides developers with a toolchain and rich SDK covering all scenarios, supports software development and porting of partners, and meets the core requirements of intelligent driving applications for vehicle rules and safety. At present, more than 70 partners have joined the MDC ecosystem to jointly promote the pilot and commercialization of intelligent driving scenarios such as passenger cars, ports, mining cards, and parks.
It is reported that the GAC Aean LX Plus unveiled at the Guangzhou Auto Show and the Mecha Dragon of the Great Wall Salon brand are equipped with Huawei MDC. At the forum on the same day, MINIEYE, Easy Control Intelligent Driving, Xidi Intelligent Driving, Momenta, Heduo Technology and other partners respectively introduced the cooperation model and achievements equipped with Huawei's MDC platform.
This year, Huawei HarmonyOS smart cockpit has been put on the car Polar Fox Alpha S Huawei HI version is about to be delivered, and not long ago, it jointly built the Avita smart car brand with Changan and Ningde times, and cooperated with Avita in depth with huawei inside innovation mode. In addition, on December 23, A new generation of Cyrus' luxury mid-size SUV was unveiled, equipped with the innovative HarmonyOS smart cockpit.
HarmonyOS' on-board performance and subsequent developments are the most anticipated. First of all, because there are very few companies in China that do the underlying operating system, only Alibaba's Zebra Zhixing focused on research and development, and its technology development, applicability and promotion are very difficult.
Wang Jun introduced that Huawei aims at hardware modularization, interface standardization, and system platforming, builds an intelligent cockpit ecosystem around the HarmonyOS vehicle-machine operating system, incrementally develops 9 types of vehicle enhancement capabilities on the HarmonyOS operating system, opens 1,517 in-vehicle business APIs, and more than 13,000 HarmonyOS APIs, and provides comprehensive and open tools and technical support to reduce the integration and development difficulty of the cockpit system and help partners quickly develop and migrate applications.
Wang Qingwen, general manager of the intelligent cockpit field of Huawei's intelligent vehicle solution BU, said that we hope to be able to maximize the function of the cockpit space to drive the development of the hardware ecology of the northern and southern lines, and have joined hands with more than 50 hardware partners and more than 100 software ecological partners. The product focuses on four aspects: one is to improve the communication computing power of the module and the car machine; the second is to create a truly universal operating system for the car; the third is display technology; the fourth is the audio system.
How do I make money from cars?
Hua is a communication equipment supplier in its main business, and once served communication operators as the main source of revenue. Huawei's mobile phones have experienced the high point of smart mobile devices, and with the rise of the Internet of Everything, the revenue of consumer businesses, including home terminals, has continued to rise, exceeding 50%.
Huawei's Smart Vehicle Solutions BU division was established in 2019, and last year's structural adjustment was incorporated into the Consumer Business Committee. Yu Chengdong admitted frankly, "Subject to US sanctions, the mobile phone business has been blocked, and although the sales of smart electric vehicles are not as large as mobile phones, they have high unit prices and can make up for the lack of sales of mobile phones." "And simply providing parts to obtain profits is obviously not Huawei's ultimate goal, and going deep into the whole ecosystem of smart cars is Huawei's ambition."
At present, the deepest degree of cooperation with Huawei is Xiaokang shares. During the Shanghai Auto Show, Huawei provided technical support and Xiaokang Co., Ltd. provided products and channels to jointly launch a new category of Huawei Smart Select Ecosystem products- Xilis Huawei Smart Choice SF5. This car is not only equipped with Huawei HiCar solutions, but also enters Huawei stores and opens offline sales.
Subsequently, Xilis produced a high-end brand AITO, and Huawei empowered it in all aspects, including high quality control management, Hongmeng intelligent cockpit system support, and sales channel empowerment. The two are reunited and the cooperation is deeper, which also reflects Huawei's strategic intention of fast attack in the automotive business.
In addition, Huawei has just jointly released the Avita brand with Changan Automobile and CATL, and in this project, huawei has participated in the program from styling to user interface to overall product definition.
Huawei has drawn a roadmap from science and technology to attack in smart cars, and the R&D investment in automobiles in the past two years has also been continuously improved, with the R&D of Huawei's smart car BU department exceeding $500 million in 2020 and the proposed investment of $1 billion in 2021. Huawei insists on investing more than 10% of its sales revenue in research and development every year, and the cumulative R&D expenditure in the past decade has exceeded 720 billion yuan. Core technology is the foundation of Huawei's life, how to make more money in the automotive business, Huawei is in its infancy.
Che Yun summary
The "platform + ecology" that Huawei's smart car solution has been talking about is the product of the new industrial division of labor and cooperation model, so as to improve the scientific and technological attributes of smart cars, expand the circle of friends of the automotive industry chain, and symbiotic new formats.
The so-called "do something, do something" is also Huawei's philosophy.