A year ago, Chelian Tianxia moved from Beijing and Shenzhen to Wuxi; a year later, the company handed over an examination paper.
On December 21, under the joint witness of Wuxi city and district leaders, strategic partners and customer representatives, the inauguration of the ABP and the commissioning of the digital intelligent factory were launched. At this time, only 8 months have passed since the construction of the manufacturing line of Wuxi Auto Union Began.
At the event site, Geely, Chery, Great Wall, Changan, GAC and other head independent brands came to the scene to help. These companies are also important customers of chelian world. In January 2021, Chelian Tianxia obtained the gac Trumpchi 8155 cockpit domain control order; in June, it obtained the gac Aeon new generation 8155 cockpit domain control order; in September, it received the order for chery Automobile's new next-generation platform 8155 cockpit domain control; in October, it received the Geely brand 8155 seat domain control order; in November, it received the order for Changan Automobile UNIT8155 cockpit domain control...
In addition to orders, looking back on the past year, the world has gained a lot, such as the release of Autosee intelligent cockpit; the completion of multiple rounds of financing; GAC Group, Auto Federation, Bosch joint release of intelligent cockpit and so on. It is worth mentioning that in the process of business expansion of Chelian Tianxia, we have to mention an important partner - Bosch, an international veteran automobile supplier with a history of more than 100 years.
It is understood that since the beginning of cooperation in 2019, a close cooperative relationship has been established between the two teams. At present, Bosch is one of the largest customers of Chelian Tianxia and the second largest shareholder of the company. In 2020, the direct purchase amount from Bosch reached 861 million yuan, accounting for about 6.68% of the total revenue. The chelian tianxia in this shareholding is Bosch's domestic strategic partner in the cockpit field.
What brought together a 135-year-old German team and a young Chinese team? Can the relationship between the two parties be sustainable and sustainable in the future? As an automotive supplier providing intelligent driving technology for the future, how to deal with the current trend of full-stack self-research of car companies? At the same time, in the future where intelligent technology is the core competitiveness, how will we balance the relationship with OEMs?
Focusing on the above questions, Cheyun.com was invited to interview Yang Hongze, chairman of Chelian Tianxia, Liang Guofeng, CEO of Chelian Tianxia, and Li Yin, president of Bosch Autonomous Driving and Control Division in China.
Absolute consensus: the basis and prospects for cooperation between the two sides
Bosch chose to cooperate with Chelian Tianxia, starting from a revolution in Chelian Tianxia.
In 2019, Chelian Tianxia underwent a major transformation, drastically reducing the traditional cockpit business and abandoning traditional products such as LCD instrument assemblies, central control navigation assemblies, and T-Boxes, which already had a large share in the market.
This reform caused the company's annual sales revenue to fall from nearly 700 million yuan to 200 million yuan.
However, at the beginning of 2020, after fully investigating the future development of the vehicle's electronic architecture and intelligent network technology, Chelian Tianxia officially committed to intelligent networked vehicle related products and services, and chose to enter the field of intelligent cockpit.
It is this choice of chelian world that has created the foundation for cooperation between the two sides.
Speaking of the decline in revenue caused by choosing to abandon traditional businesses, Yang Hongze said: "On the one hand, I think if we insist on doing some traditional businesses, we will not survive, nor can we do new business and new products. Therefore, we and Bosch have invariably done the same kind of thing at the same time, which is an important premise for our cooperation, that is, the two sides have an absolute consensus on the direction and path of future intelligent cockpit development. ”
When it comes to the reasons for choosing Chelian Tianxia, Li Yin, president of Bosch Autonomous Driving and Control Division in China, believes that there are three aspects: "First of all, the partners are determined according to the cooperation strategy, and there are three main reasons: the partners should recognize this strategy from the bottom of their hearts, and Yang Hongze recognizes this strategy, so he will focus on this matter." Otherwise, if you choose a partner and use 20% of your energy to work with us and 80% of your energy to do other things, it will not be successful. ”
"Second, I think the two sides are complementary, we need this partner who understands the Chinese market better, and at the same time can speed up our software and iteration speed; third, we also investigated a circle in the selection of partners, and at that time, we learned that Yang Hongze's reputation in the industry is very good, which makes us very relieved."
We saw that in April 2020, Chelian Tianxia and Bosch jointly obtained the Great Wall V3.5 platform cockpit domain control project and signed a 15-month mass production delivery development and supply agreement. In the same month, the world's first 8155 domain controller rolled off the production line at Chelian Tianxia's Shenzhen factory.
It is reported that the intelligent cockpit domain controller adopts a 7nm process and meets the requirements of the vehicle specification level, and the virtualization technology can support two sets of operating systems of Android and QNX. Support up to 6 screens and 12 cameras, as well as W-HUD, AR-HUD, 4MIC and multi-channel digital analog MICs, interconnected with vehicle data, support full vehicle OTA remote upgrade.
It is understood that Chelian Tianxia and Bosch adopt a new supply chain collaboration system "A+B" model in the industry.
Yang Hongze believes: "The so-called 'A + B' model is not the so-called combination of strength and weakness, but the 'marriage' between door to door. This marriage will not be easily destroyed. We will continue to strengthen our strengths, while constantly communicating with each other to improve adhesion. As far as the current 'A + B' model is concerned, Bosch is mainly responsible for the platformization, standardization and basicization of smart cockpit products, etc., and Chelian Tianxia is mainly responsible for product personalization, branding, entertainment, etc. The cooperation between the two sides is based on equality, mutual trust and win-win, and jointly creates a new generation of intelligent cockpit products to achieve the purpose of win-win cooperation. ”
"Body and Soul": How to balance the relationship with the main engine factory?
It is understood that based on the cooperation between Chelian Tianxia and Bosch in the project on the intelligent cockpit, in the future cooperation, the two sides may cooperate in depth in the automatic driving function.
Yang Hongze said: "The next generation of Qualcomm cockpit chips, itself already has a certain amount of AI computing power, this is for the function of automatic driving to prepare, once we start to cooperate, it will naturally enter the cooperation of automatic driving, the main engine factory chooses such a chip, definitely hope that we can use the COMPUTING power of AI, the low-speed, high-speed function to do a good job, if the car can bring empowerment to Bosch, reflect more of its own advantages, then it is entirely possible for us to carry out all-round cooperation." ”
Since the "software-defined car" slogan was coined, there seems to be a new point of growth for automotive suppliers. But with that comes the contradiction.
At present, we see such a phenomenon, car companies are strengthening are beginning to lean towards front-end resources, will it be a kind of pressure for the world of car association? Moreover, this year, SAIC's argument about Huawei's "third-party automatic driving solution" has attracted great attention from the industry, and how will Chelian Tianxia, which is also an intelligent driving supplier, look at and deal with the relationship between "soul" and "body"?
Yang Hongze said: "On the one hand, all OEMs who really want to do their own business in China and even the global market must have their own core capabilities. Therefore, through the cooperation model between some car companies and Huawei, there are phased goals and limitations, and I don't think this model can be fully copied. Second, in the 135-year history of automobile development, OEMs at all levels have a clear division of labor and logic, which is the inevitable result of the development and evolution of the entire automobile industry and even the manufacturing industry. ”
"No car factory says it can say that it is 100% done by itself, it is impossible. No car factory will have so many resources. Liang Guofeng believes: "We will definitely have good development in this field." However, the future is definitely to be considered, and the direction of thinking may be the differentiation of the service system. The ongoing investment in this area may be different for every business. ”
Yang Hongze added: "The evolution of the future automotive technology product route is a multi-path, multi-choice and open cooperation model. At the same time, we in turn ask the traditional gasoline vehicle companies, when will they really master the technology of powertrain? Around 2015, when the development and manufacture of engines and automatic transmissions, China's own brand enterprises had just mastered. ”
At present, under the joint efforts of both the world and the model, the results achieved are gratifying. As of the end of December this year, Chelian Tianxia has received orders for cockpit domain control from six major domestic independent brands such as Great Wall Motors, Chery, Geely, Changan, BYD and GAC.
However, we have also noticed that from the current point of view, the customers of the car federation are still mainly independent brands, and Bosch, as a brand with great international influence, has the intention or strategy to promote business globalization in the future cooperation process between the two sides?
Li Yin said: "There must be such a plan. First of all, Bosch's first model to cooperate with the car federation has just been put into production this year, and we need to make more achievements first, so that all markets can see our reputation. ”
"Second, the international market has great expectations for Chinese software. After a few years, with the continuous development of Chinese software in the international market. We are more and more likely to 'go out', and at that time, what we need is the transcript of cooperation in recent years, and the acceptance of us in the international market as a whole, and this success is easy to go international. ”