"No car" was once the proudest promise of technology companies, but Baidu is the first one to "break the contract", will Huawei be the second?
This statement is not empty, and Huawei's cooperation in car-building projects has encountered difficulties. According to the latest data from the Association, the sales volume of the Xilis SF5 jointly created by Huawei and Xiaokang Co., Ltd. in 2021 (April-November) was only 7080, and it only ranked 147th in the sales list of SUVs in the whole year. Monthly sales of three or five hundred, not only can not compare with "Wei Xiaoli" and other new car manufacturers, and even compared to the new brands such as Extreme Kr, Nezha and other new brands sell more than 2,000 vehicles per month, the performance of Cyrus SF5 can not be taken out.
At the same time, as of November 2021, the latest monthly sales of the Polar Fox Alpha S launched by Huawei and BAIC are 477 vehicles, and the cumulative sales volume in 2021 is more than 2100 vehicles. Not to mention the entire travel market, in the smaller range of electric vehicle markets, the presence of the Polar Fox Alpha S is not strong, and it does not show the appearance of market subversive power.
Of course, Huawei also has a few hole cards. For example, GAC Aean and Changan Avita, which will be launched in 2022. However, Yu Chengdong, managing director of Huawei and CEO of Huawei's intelligent car solution BU, personally led and arranged the Sales of Xilix SF5 in many Huawei stores, and the market performance is still so, and whether other models can break through must also be a question mark.
Although Huawei's rotating chairman Xu Zhijun has repeatedly publicly emphasized: "Huawei will not build cars." But for Huawei, after the chairman of SAIC Motor publicly declared that he "does not want to lose his soul", many car companies have realized that the cooperation between traditional car manufacturers and Huawei will not be a "love" of equal strength.
Will Huawei one day suddenly understand Baidu's transformation? Baidu from the very beginning of the use of the automatic driving system Apollo to expand car partners, to invest in the new car manufacturer WM, and finally decided to personally build cars, and jointly with Geely to establish "Jidu Automobile", are all changes promoted by cooperation.
"OEMs are jealous of Huawei, and it is not impossible to do it in the next scene, but this is also a huge challenge for Huawei, and Huawei's automatic driving is not outstanding." Li Qiang, an investment institution, told Tech Planet that Huawei is strong in comprehensive strength, whether to follow the example of Baidu, an Internet company to build a car personally, in fact, there must be a lot of thinking.
Huawei and Baidu both want to make more friends
So far, Huawei's new car-related products have made overall appearances at the Shanghai Auto Show held in April 2021.
At the auto show, Huawei showcased the Intelligent Driving Computing Platform, the Intelligent Cockpit Computing Platform, and the Intelligent Vehicle Control Computing Platform, as well as more than six core in-vehicle systems, including AOS (Intelligent Driving Operating System), HOS-A (Intelligent Cockpit Operating System), and VOS (Intelligent Vehicle Control Operating System).
In the core area of Huawei's booth, Huawei demonstrated these core systems through a plastic car chassis model. Although there are no physical objects such as wheels, suspension and chassis, the model is clearly marked with on-board intelligent control systems such as VIU and MDC.
Huawei's on-site explainers said that this PowerTrain system can constitute the main control system of future smart cars. That is, with four wheels, two sets of sofas and a shell, smart cars can be built, and the threshold for new cars will be greatly lowered.
At the Huawei Smart Vehicle Solution Conference on December 21, Yu Chengdong planned these capabilities as the three digital bases of the smart car industry, and announced that there were already 300 upstream and downstream partners.
This is also where traditional cars are more defensive about Huawei, the three words of "smart car", Huawei controls "smart", leaving only the "car" that needs OEM. Even similar to cooperative companies such as Xilisi, the sales channels are also in Huawei's mobile phone stores, and car companies can do too little.
At that time, the booth between the Shanghai Auto Show and Huawei was Geely's new energy vehicle booth. In addition to the new Car of Extreme Kr 001 that has not yet been mass-produced and delivered, there is also the foundation of Geely's car-making - SEA Haohan Architecture. Compared with Huawei's model chassis, the vast architecture of physical display lacks media attention.
SEA Haohan Architecture is the first pure electric architecture automotive chassis with a tuned chassis and air suspension system. The emphasis on the architecture of the basic body has attracted the attention of many transformation car manufacturers. For example, Ali's geometric car, and Baidu's Jidu car.
The purpose of THE SEA Haohan architecture is to help industry players reduce the threshold of car manufacturing, Baidu is to see this feature of Geely, using Apollo to output all intelligent technologies to the set, Geely is responsible for the manufacture of traditional car parts, the two cooperate, in order to catch up with the tide of new car manufacturing that has lagged behind.
Now, one year after the release of the Haohan Architecture, the cooperative companies have 7 brands and 16 models. The progress of "making a friend" is slightly smoother than that of Huawei PowerTrain and Baidu APollo. Even if the vast architecture has a performance gap with the modern E-GMP platform and Porsche's J1 platform that apple has adopted, it is to help smart car companies shorten the time to build cars, not similar to Huawei and Baidu, which is to enter the soul of new cars, which is the reason why the car development platform is popular and the intelligent control development platform is difficult to find partners.
Therefore, a car company like BAIC that needs soul injection but cannot fully accept being controlled by a soul has cooperated with Huawei to launch the Polar Fox Alpha S, and at the same time cooperated with Baidu to launch the shared unmanned vehicle "Apollo Moon". In Li Qiang's view, "it is a bargaining chip for traditional car companies to compete for the dominance of the era of smart cars and to establish future smart service revenue." ”
Baidu stepped on the pit, when will Huawei understand?
Baidu is one of the hardest working and most firmly optimistic about smart travel in China, and I believe that everyone will not have objections to this. However, Baidu's entry into the smart travel market has many twists and turns, and everyone can see it.
Baidu first began to promote the research and development of the autonomous driving business in 2013, and the scene it first actively created was robotaxi (self-driving taxi). As of 2021, by "Apollo Moon" has evolved to the 5th generation. Public data shows that Baidu Robotaxi has operated more than 400,000 people.
And Robotaxi has previously predicted that in 2025, Robotaxi's single-day service orders will exceed 50 million, and the cost of Robotaxi will be one-fifth of the current express. Now that we have only 3 years to go, we must expect a sudden outbreak of Robotaxi to achieve this goal.
Huawei realized very early that the route of Robotaxi and Robobus is not good, and Su Jing, president of the former Huawei intelligent car BU and ADS intelligent driving product line, said bluntly in a public interview: "Fighting to death will not do Robotaxi, and at this stage, companies that do Robotaxi have to be 'finished'." ”
And explained why, "Robotaxi is the outcome rather than the business goal, and the current ride-hailing experience in China is already good, and autonomous driving will not make this experience better." Although Baidu does not agree with the remarks of the director who was eventually dismissed by Huawei, Baidu also realized earlier that in addition to automatic driving, many intelligent scenarios may land earlier in new energy vehicles.
For example, in the research and development of in-vehicle interactive systems, Baidu is also very hard.
The smart cockpit is the product that interacts with the user most directly in the smart car. Intelligent cockpit enterprise Yijiatong and Huawei, Baidu, Tencent and other giant enterprises have cooperated, according to Yang Yuan, an internal employee of Yijiatong, cooperated with Huawei in the Hi Car projection project, and then Huawei turned to promote the independent research and development of harmonyOS intelligent cockpit project.
The interactive screen of Lynk & Co 09 is the flagship project that Baidu wants to do, but this project also has Tencent TAI 3.0 to provide car networking services, and the two sides argue endlessly about who will provide music, maps and other products, "Arguing many times at the meeting, and finally Geely General Hospital decided to use Baidu." "Probably would rather have four wheels than a piece of software," Yang Yuan described as the dispute, which was eventually easily resolved along with Baidu's investment in Yijia.
In the long development process of smart cars, it is not uncommon for partners to have many concerns, and it is not uncommon for investment holdings to get the right to speak, which is also the hard truth that Baidu has gradually mastered.
In 2017, Baidu took out 1 billion yuan to lead the investment in Weima Automobile, a new car-making force. According to Tencent Periscope, at that time, Baidu proposed to bundle the Apollo plan to land, and both Weilai and Ideal had difficulty accepting the agreement that smart driving, maps and other businesses must use Baidu products, and only WM agreed to this appeal.
However, Baidu also cannot invest in more car companies, not only "Wei Xiaoli" self-developed automatic driving system, but also traditional car companies such as SAIC that lack intelligent genes also refuse the "empowerment" of Huawei and other companies, which may be related to the injury of SAIC's cooperation with Ali YunOS that year. At present, Baidu and Huawei can invest in new car companies do not have many choices.
Therefore, the first batch of partners selected by Huawei are more niche, and the model of establishing independent companies to operate, in this cooperation model, the voice is relatively larger. For example, Xilis is a van production company in Chongqing, while Avita is an independent branch of Chang'an. During the period, Xiaokang and other enterprises repeatedly spread the news that Huawei wanted to invest in shares, trying to increase the ability to control cooperative enterprises, but they were limited to the high-pressure order of "Huawei does not build cars", which became rumors.
Huawei's cooperative car companies are not selling well, Baidu's cooperative car companies also lack explosive models, before Huawei explored the smart car route of Baidu, but also earlier to realize the principle that you must build your own car, Jidu is the product of this logic.
It is reported that the intelligent financing innovation group under Baidu Intelligent Driving Business Group (IDG) is dedicated to docking and supporting the intelligent business of Jidu Automobile. With its own new car company, Baidu can apply all its automotive network products such as autopilot Apollo, Xiaodu in-vehicle 2020, and vehicle-grade Baidu Honghu chip without reservation.
For Huawei, the sales of the Xilis SF5 in the smart selection mode are not good, depending on the performance of the Nezha S listed next year; the performance of the HI (Huawei Inside) model of the Polar Fox Alpha S HI version is also not good, and it also depends on the performance of the GAC Aehn and Changan Avita HI versions that debut next year.
What is the real resistance that Huawei does not want to build a car
At present, Huawei's strategy in the field of new car manufacturing is very clear, that is, to concentrate resources and energy to cooperate with car companies to develop smart models for energy production and sales.
Huawei is a strict realist, which is completely different from Baidu's idealism. Li Mei, an entrepreneurial self-driving company, told Tech Planet, "Baidu is still quite persistent about Robotaxi, and although the Robotaxi of several car companies such as Hongqi has not yet been mass-produced and commercialized, the price of the car has reached the lowest level in the industry." ”
They have recently established strategic cooperation with a head OEMs and a local ride-hailing platform. "A lot of things, not just technical things." In Li Mei's view, unmanned taxis are not costing more than 400,000 yuan, even if they are successful, who is willing to build these shared cars on a large scale (affecting the sales of individual commercial vehicles of car companies), where do the orders come from (Baidu's "Pineapple Run" can compete for online ride-hailing platform users).
But Baidu is willing to pay more costs, and more time, until the day comes when the market structure and logic are subverted.
For Huawei, after the smartphone business is stuck in the neck of the chip, HUAWEI CLOUD and digital energy need a lot of financial support. Even Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei mentioned internally: "We can't simply take the same path as Ali and Amazon, we don't have that much money, they can't use the money of the US stock market." ”
For example, Bosch's wire control system and the car manufacturer cooperate with a model, which may cost 20 million US dollars in development fees as soon as it comes up." Investor Li Qiang said that building a supply chain and subsequently building a car factory requires a lot of investment.
Huawei does not want to use funds to these "repeated wheels" field, Huawei has invested a lot of resources in the field of on-board intelligent systems, and has laid out more than a dozen intelligent R&D centers, which are listed in Shenzhen, Suzhou, Dongguan, Wuhan, Nanjing, Xi'an and other places. Wang Jun, chief operating officer of Huawei's Smart Vehicle Solutions BU, has said that Huawei has invested more than US$1 billion (about 6.37 billion yuan) in the research and development of auto parts, with a total R&D team of 5,000 people.
But for Huawei, there are still many compromises in the automatic driving system in a short period of time. "Whether the L4 level autonomous driving system can be reduced to less than $10,000 is a threshold for R&D companies." Investor Li Qiang told Tech Planet, "The cost of using the machine solution of lidar cannot be reduced, and the mass production solution must be on MEMS." ”
Therefore, many new car autonomous driving solutions are L2++, and for Huawei, the Hi car model, as more car companies enter the consumer market, at least recover the early NRE (development fees), is also a realistic choice.
Of course, there are also two routes within Huawei, although Yu Chengdong obeys the organization's arrangements to no longer build cars, but if the sales of several hi car models next year are not satisfactory, personally building cars may be put on the agenda by Huawei.
After all, Baidu's spin around and finally build a car, and Huawei, which is involved in smart car software and hardware, also has a better chance. Of course, the main engine factory is jealous of Huawei, which is even worse than Baidu.
Therefore, Yu Chengdong's latest speech mentioned that the golden age of smart cars is coming. But in fact, there is not much time left for Huawei, which is the most anxious thing. Direct car building is not feasible, in short, to wait for the market performance of several Hi Cars next year; without building cars, how difficult is the road ahead of Baidu's intelligent travel, and is Huawei confident that it will succeed in breaking through?
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