"Openness can quickly promote scientific and technological progress, and ecological enterprises are most needed in this era."
Text | Song Beanie
The ambitious Huawei is trying to penetrate deep into the "soul" and "body" of the car.
On December 23, Huawei's high-end AITO brand's first medium-sized luxury SUV, the Qingjie M5, was officially released and announced the pre-sale price, which was 250,000 yuan for the standard version of the rear drive, 280,000 yuan for the four-wheel drive performance version, and 320,000 yuan for the four-wheel drive flagship version. The car is the first model to carry Huawei's latest HarmonyOS cockpit, which is crucial for Huawei to ask for directions in the automotive industry.
At the two-and-a-half-hour Huawei winter flagship new product conference, following the release of folding screen mobile phones, the first Hongmeng glasses, watches and other new products, Yu Chengdong, CEO of Huawei's consumer business and CEO of smart car solution BU, spent 70 minutes introducing the M5, full of passion, and even shouted "comparable to a Million Luxury Car".
"In addition to providing key automotive hard components, Huawei's mobile phone industrial design team, software team, and user experience team are also involved in cooperation, and the research and development between car companies is closer, hoping to help solve the pain points of fuel vehicles and electric vehicles."
Yu Chengdong's remarks seem to confirm the rumors - the M5 from the early planning, product design, to the later marketing, sales are all led by Huawei, but also the use of Huawei intelligent car solutions.
In fact, Huawei's "ambition" to participate in car manufacturing is self-evident, aito asked the world M5 from audio to smart cockpit, in addition to the car itself, almost all components are printed with Huawei's logo.
The business of smart cars accounts for an increasingly high proportion of Huawei's future business landscape, from the production and manufacture of parts for smart cars, to the new business model of joining hands with BAIC, Changan, and GAC to create HUAWEI inside, to using Huawei's own channels to sell cars, and then to "participating" in car manufacturing, Huawei's automotive bureau is getting deeper and deeper. Huawei's car dream is not just to become "Bosch in the era of smart cars", but to take itself as the center, broaden the circle of friends, and create a complete ecology.
Deeply build "platform + ecology"
At the press conference on December 23, Yu Chengdong once again stressed: "Huawei has done every core component of the car, we only make components, do not build cars, and help car companies build good cars." Not only to build a good car, but also to sell a good car. ”
In the past two years, Huawei has repeatedly reiterated that it "does not build cars". Some people close to Huawei told the think tank Jun that the reason why Huawei is reluctant to build a car, on the one hand, building a car is a money-burning thing, and the demand for funds is huge. After Huawei's mobile phone business was stuck in the neck after the US sanctions were imposed, HUAWEI CLOUD, digital energy and other businesses needed financial support, huawei founder Ren Zhengfei said at the beginning of this year, "We can't simply take Ali, Amazon... The same path, we don't have that much money, they have endless money from the U.S. stock market. ”
On the other hand, considering geopolitics and partnerships, such as Germany's strong support for Huawei 5G, which is one of the few developed countries that support it, but cars are also the core interests of Germany, and if Huawei builds a car, it will threaten the existing cooperative relationship.
In the era of software-defined cars, algorithms, operating systems, data, etc. are the core of competition, and intelligent hardware is the basis for technological development. Having sufficient strength and technology accumulation in intelligent hardware and software is an important reason why Huawei can quickly enter the automotive industry.
Despite repeatedly stressing that it does not build cars, Huawei is ambitious in action - in the face of the intelligent era of the Internet of Everything, the core of Huawei's goal in the automotive circle is the technology and ecology behind it, creating a new ecology and doing it thoroughly, which is the key breakthrough for Huawei to help car companies build good cars.
"Openness can quickly promote scientific and technological progress, and ecological enterprises are most needed in this era." On December 21, at the 2021 Huawei Intelligent Vehicle Solution Ecology Forum, Yu Chengdong repeatedly emphasized the word "ecology". In his view, compared with traditional cars, the essence of smart cars has changed, computing and software have become the core of the car, the scale of software code has increased by hundreds of times, and the complexity of development has increased greatly, which requires the industrial chain to work together to solve the problem.
Thanks to the blessing of digital technology, the scale of communication bandwidth, computing power and software code has increased by hundreds or even thousands of times, and how to develop efficient and high-quality development systems is a huge challenge for the industry. In order to better cope with the challenges, the traditional vertical integration development model, talent model and supply chain system are changing, based on new digital architecture, technology and engineering, to cross-border integration of the "platform + ecology" cooperation model evolution, that is, user-centric, industrial chain in-depth collaboration, joint innovation, software and hardware iterative development, continuous delivery of vehicle characteristics, continuous optimization of user experience.
What is Huawei's thinking?
Wang Jun, Chief Operating Officer of Huawei's Intelligent Vehicle Solution BU and President of the Intelligent Driving Solution Product Line, said that under the new industrial division of labor and cooperation model, Huawei adheres to the development strategy of "platform + ecology", focuses on ICT technology, and builds its own ecosystem around the three major platforms of iDVP (Intelligent Vehicle Digital Platform), MDC (Intelligent Driving Computing Platform) and HarmonyOS Intelligent Cockpit, and works with partners to help car companies build good cars.
Among them, iDVP includes computing and communication architecture CCA, on-board operating system, multi-domain collaborative software framework HAS Core and perfect tool chain, builds a hardware ecology and software ecology, and jointly defines hardware interfaces and software interfaces with partners to achieve hierarchical decoupling of software and hardware, with the purpose of helping car companies quickly develop cross-vendor and cross-device applications.
As the strategic commanding heights for car companies to win future competition, intelligent driving 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 SDK (Software Development Kit) with full-scenario coverage, supports software development and porting of partners, and meets the core requirements of intelligent driving applications for vehicle regulations and safety. At the Guangzhou Auto Show in November, GAC Aean LX Plus, which debuted, and Mecha Dragon of the Great Wall Salon brand, both chose MDC as the intelligent driving computing platform.
"The future is not the intelligence of independent intelligent cars, but we must do everything we can to integrate it into the ubiquitous intelligent world." Wang Qingwen, general manager of the intelligent cockpit field of Huawei's car BU, said that he hopes to maximize the function of the cockpit space to promote the development of the "northbound" application and the "southbound" hardware ecology, and has joined hands with more than 50 hardware partners and more than 100 software ecological partners.
"In the past, everyone thought that ecology refers to the ecology of a certain depot, but in fact, it is the ecology of the entire automobile industry." Wang Jun said, "Just like the ecology of the mobile phone operating system Android, if any car factory wants to do ecology, the cost of many application development will be very large, so we open source Hongmeng to become everyone's, so that we can really do the ecology." The core purpose is to make it easy for many innovative applications to enter this ecosystem. ”
It is understood that huawei currently 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 1517 in-vehicle business APIs, and more than 13,000 HarmonyOS APIs, and provides comprehensive and open tools and technical support to reduce the difficulty of integration and development of cockpit systems and help partners quickly develop and migrate applications.
In Huawei's planning, Huawei hopes to build a full-scenario smart life centered on HarmonyOS and focusing on smart home, smart office, smart travel, sports and health, and audio-visual entertainment. Looking back at AITO M5 again, Yu Chengdong used "intelligent terminals with wheels" and "important solutions for smart travel scenarios" when introducing them. In other words, compared with whether to build the car itself, whether it can occupy the commanding heights in the future era of internet of everything and let more products use the same ecology is Huawei's pursuit.
This also means that if "Hongmeng" can enter more models, it is possible for Huawei not to build cars for three years or even for a long time; but if the strategy of all-scenario smart life fails to meet expectations, it is only a matter of time before Huawei builds cars.
Since the announcement of entering the automotive industry in April 2019, "bit management watts, computing power-driven horsepower, software-defined functions, and software deep involvement in the process of car definition, development, verification, sales, and service" have been the trends that Wang Jun has personally felt in the past 2 and a half years.
It is worth mentioning that in the past two years, Huawei's R&D investment in automobiles has continued to increase, with the R&D of Huawei's intelligent vehicle BU department exceeding US$500 million in 2020 and the proposed investment of US$1 billion in 2021.
"Soldiers are divided" in two ways
The industry believes that the self-research and full-stack self-research of the main engine factory is to control the core technology in their own hands and avoid passivity. However, from the perspective of the whole industry and the whole society, the repeated research and development and repeated investment of the respective operations are a waste of resources and violate the efficiency principle of social division of labor.
According to Huawei's vision, there are two business models for its participation in the automotive business: one is to sell parts and technical solutions to vehicle companies as a parts supplier in the traditional Tier 1 and Tier2 identity, and the other is the Huawei Inside model, which applies Huawei's full-stack intelligent vehicle solutions to products, and jointly defines and jointly develops them with partners to create a brand. Huawei has revealed that the Huwei Inside model only chooses three domestic partners - BAIC, Changan and GAC, "Although there is a standardized general platform, but for each cooperative brand to have a customized adaptation, the investment is too large, no more can not be done." ”
Tan Benhong, chairman and CEO of Avita Technology, previously said in an interview with the think tank Jun that the cooperation between Changan, Huawei and CATL is not a "buying and selling model" and there is no development fee for each other. "In the past, when we worked with some Tier 1 suppliers, we first had to pay the development fee, followed by the sample fee, which was generally 10 times or even 20 times the price of normal parts."
Taking the CHN vehicle platform created by Changan, Huawei and Ningde times as an example, the battery management system is made by Huawei, the battery is used in the Ningde era, and the chassis is designed by Changan, Wang Jun said that if everyone works together, the data is connected, the efficiency will be higher, and the performance will be better.
In other words, Huawei can obtain a large number of parts orders from the Avita project; under the HI model, Avita purchases full-stack intelligent vehicle solutions from Huawei, covering digital platforms, smart cockpits, MDCs, etc., which are of considerable value; software charging and ecological profitability based on software formation benefit Huawei.
However, there are no development fees and trial production fees, which means that the sales performance of Avita's first model after the launch next year will also affect Huawei's profitability. This also derives new thinking - if the sales of new cars equipped with HI next year are still unsatisfactory, the official announcement of the next car may be put on the agenda by Huawei, after all, Baidu is going around - from using Apollo to expand car partners, to the establishment of Jidu in conjunction with Geely, and finally personally built a car.
From the ICT field to the intelligent automotive industry, Huawei's smart car products and services in the Tier1 and Tier2 modes mainly focus on five major systems - intelligent driving (platform), intelligent cockpit (Hongmeng car machine OS as the core), intelligent electric, intelligent networking, and intelligent vehicle cloud (intelligent vehicle control and intelligent cloud services).
In terms of intelligent electric, Huawei and 5 car companies have cooperated in mass production, and 15 have been fixed; in the field of intelligent cockpit, equipped with Huawei's Kirin module jiahongmeng operating system, it has cooperated with 7 OEMs at fixed points; in the sensor field, Huawei has millimeter wave radar, lidar, cameras, and 8 car companies have fixed-point cooperation; in addition to serving overseas customers, there have been 10 fixed-point cooperation in China; Huawei's intelligent driving computing power platform (MDC) has been fixed with 6 car companies. At the same time, it has also reached cooperation with more than 70 partners, MDC can be equipped with third-party autonomous driving software, including passenger cars, commercial vehicles, products including minerals, ports, closed parks, trunk logistics, agricultural machinery.
Wang Jun revealed that 90% of the current revenue of Huawei's smart car solution BU comes from the sales of components.
In addition, there is a model that uses Huawei's sales channels to help car companies sell cars. During this year's Shanghai Auto Show, the Xilis SF5 jointly built by Huawei and Xilix was launched, and its four-wheel drive version was sold in Huawei's flagship store, which is also the first car sold by Huawei. But so far, sales of the Cyrus SF5 have not been ideal. According to the data of the Association, from April to November this year, the sales of the Cyris SF5 only exceeded 7,000.
In the same period, the delivery of new car-making forces including Weilai, Ideal, Xiaopeng and Nezha continued to rise, and the monthly deliveries of Weilai, Xiaopeng, Ideal and Nezha exceeded 10,000 units in November, and the cumulative sales of second-tier new car-making enterprises such as Weima and Zero Run reached about 40,000 units in the first 11 months of this year. Traditional car companies also collectively counterattacked, and the single-month sales of the Volkswagen ID. family and GAC Aeon have all been among the 10,000-car clubs for many consecutive months.
In fact, Huawei, which has repeatedly stressed that it does not build cars, is also coveting the "body" while looking at the "soul", as evidenced by aito Q&A M5. At the same time, from the MDC 810 in the field of intelligent driving, the octopus of the open platform for automatic driving, to the Hongmeng car machine OS and AR-HUD in the field of intelligent cockpit, to the electric drive system DriveONE, the hump intelligent electric drive range extender system, etc., Huawei's product line continues to expand, but where Huawei's car end is headed, it remains to be verified by time and the market.
"After three consecutive years of sanctions, Huawei has experienced the longest winter. At present, we are passing through the cold winter, and the spring is in full bloom. Yu Chengdong's closing words have the firmest vision.