After the release of the Huawei folding screen mobile phone P50 Pocket, Yu Chengdong, CEO of Huawei's consumer business BG and CEO of Huawei's smart car solution BU, brought a bigger guy - the first model of the AITO brand, the M5.
It's rare to release new cars at the launch of technology products.
AITO is a high-end smart car brand launched by Xilis, a subsidiary of Xiaokang Co., Ltd., which was also recently released.
Yu Chengdong said that the "I" in AITO means intelligence, and the full name is Add Intelligence to Auto. The AITO M5 is the first model of the AITO brand and the first model based on the new pure electric drive extended range platform (DE-i).
But it was the debut of such an important product, which was not managed by Xilix itself, and finally appeared at the winter flagship new product launch of Huawei's consumer business.
I heard that many auto media were confused when they first received the invitation to the "folding screen mobile phone" event, which was also the first time that many people participated in the product launch of technology companies.
Is this a car conference or a mobile phone conference? If it is the HarmonyOS terminal conference, it may be better understood.
At this conference, Yu Chengdong introduced the folding screen mobile phone P50 Pocket in about half an hour, and the one more thing in the finale - smart car, the explanation time was as long as one hour.
Let's start with a brief chat about the car.
AiTO Q&I M5 is an AITO brand launched in pursuit of the ultimate intelligent luxury SUV, with Huawei's leading technology in the ICT industry, this new model brings users a smart travel experience with high intelligence, excellent performance and ultra-long battery life, opening a new era of smart travel.
Prior to this, Huawei and Xilix teamed up to create Huawei Smart Choice SF5. However, for the new brand OFO, the difference is that Huawei has become more involved in AITO, reaching the stage of initial product definition.
This also leads to, in the official definition, AITO Q&I M5 has another important identity - it is the first product equipped with HarmonyOS smart cockpit.
Yu Chengdong said at the press conference that the car includes the appearance, interior and performance, all of which are designed and built according to the standards of the Million Luxury Car, but in the end, it is necessary to give a relatively close price.
Finally, the standard version of the product is scheduled to be 250,000 yuan, the four-wheel drive performance version is scheduled to be 280,000 yuan, and the four-wheel drive flagship version is scheduled to be 320,000 yuan. Since December 23, Q&I M5 has successively displayed real cars in 180 Huawei stores in 42 cities, and since January 20, 2022, it will open test drives and reservations in 500 Huawei stores in 118 cities. Deliveries of the new cars will begin at the end of February next year.
Thousand mile endurance, four-cylinder range extender
It is difficult to tell the relationship between the AITO Inquisition M5 and the Xilis SF5, but from the appearance point of view, the external lines of the former Inquisition M5 are indeed much more concise.
Yu Chengdong said that when he communicated with the team, he always required to be extreme, simple and pure, and strived to achieve high-end, fashionable and young.
When the Q&I M5 was unveiled, it can be said that it was much higher than the previous Cyrus SF5.
But even with the intervention of Huawei's design team, the AITO Q&A M5 is not a kind of "big car" that the Chinese market is very fond of.
AITO Q&I M5 length, width and height are 4770x1930x1625mm, wheelbase 2880mm, the external size is not large. However, Huawei emphasized the performance of the interior space: it has a large space that is rare in its class, the rear seat backrest is 870mm from the front seat, and with a seamless panoramic canopy with a total area of about 2m2, it brings open rear top, side vision and space. With a capacity of up to 369 litres and rear seats adjusting up to 776 litres, it's easy to fit all your travel gear.
In terms of power, the M5 is still equipped with the intelligent range extender control system of huawei DriveONE platform, which is equipped with a 1.5T four-cylinder range extender 3.0 specially created for the range extender system, and the DriveONE platform can independently coordinate with the special range extender, drive technology, battery PACK, intelligent control, etc., and combine more than 860 scenarios to achieve accurate matching, bringing global strong power, low energy consumption, low noise experience. At the same time, the system supports OTA upgrade and continuous iterative evolution.
AiTO Boundary M5 is equipped with an asynchronous AC motor on the front axle and a permanent magnet synchronous motor on the rear axle, and the peak power of the dual motor version can reach 365KW, achieving 4.4 seconds of acceleration from 100 km/h.
At the press conference, Yu Chengdong deliberately emphasized that they had re-calibrated the chassis of the Q&E M5. AITO Q&I M5 adopts the all-aluminum alloy chassis commonly used in Million Luxury cars, which is 30% lighter than the traditional steel chassis, and the suspension uses the front double wishbones, the rear multi-link independent suspension combination, Yu Chengdong also took porsche Macan as an example, saying that such a device brings the vehicle ultra-high stability (small roll gradient) at the same time, stiffness, strength, more stable and safe handling performance.
Under this configuration, the final M5 NEDC has an endurance of 1195 kilometers, WLTC 1102 kilometers, and CLTC 1242 kilometers, achieving worry-free mileage.
What about the HarmonyOS Smart Cockpit?
We sat in the back row of the Mercedes-Benz S-class and discussed the "business screens", which are still multi-level menus, place some functions that we may not usually use, and there is a certain learning cost for the initial start. These comprehensive factors have led to the possibility that the utilization of these screens is not high.
The fundamental reason involved in this is that the explosion of the mobile Internet has made us accustomed to the control logic of the internal app design of the mobile phone, and when designing the car UI interface, the design team does not seem to consider the situation of the device, the scene and the localization in the end. Switching from a mobile phone to a car machine often has a sense of separation.
It can be said that the HarmonyOS smart cockpit is the most anticipated feature of the Q&I M5.
In terms of design, the Huawei team said that they integrated human factors, equipment and environment and other factors, and finally focused on the essence of driving, and the HarmonyOS intelligent cockpit equipped with AITO Q&I M5 brought minimalist interaction, unified notification and control center, and efficient multi-task operation, taking into account driving safety and operation efficiency, and reconstructing the interaction mode between people and cars in the era of intelligent cars.
Most of the traditional car manufacturers take "control" and "map" as the main design source, and the central control of the AITU Q&A M5 seems to be using the idea of "making mobile phones" to create a central control experience.
This picture is from New Travel
Looking closely, the HarmonyOS smart cockpit has a large area of visual interaction area, and there is a resident personalized shortcut bar SmartDock service card below the desktop, which can also be adjusted according to personal preferences, so that most of the settings and information can be directed in one step to achieve zero-level operation.
In addition, the HarmonyOS smart cockpit has built a wealth of window display forms such as full-screen, split-screen, and floating windows to meet the interaction needs of different scenarios.
Judging from the experience on the spot, the control of the HarmonyOS smart cockpit can be described as silky. Huawei did have some hard-core technology in the internal storage management of smart phone devices before, so the central control of the car machine also adopts intelligent background control and memory allocation VIP scheduling scheme, and finally realizes the experience of smooth operation and operation and interface switching.
Apple Carplay is actually the ceiling of the screen projection experience, but it has not achieved full application screen projection. During the experience, what is more amazing is Huawei's screen projection technology, the mobile phone screen can be put into the car machine screen, and the touch operation can be carried out on the car machine...
The interconnection with the products in the HarmonyOS ecosystem will also be a highlight of this automotive product, before, Pin Play/Pin Driving also experienced the "no sense connection" on Huawei Smart SF5 on Cyris, which did give us a lot of shock at that time, simply put, mobile phones and car machines can share the same account. For example, the mobile phone navigation is displayed directly on the screen of the car machine after pulling the car door, and the video, music and other content also supports continuing to watch according to the node of the previous device.
Therefore, how much function development can eventually be achieved on this Hongmeng cockpit is also something that Pin Play/Pin Driving is particularly looking forward to (we will bring a test of this car in January).
Yu Chengdong said that aito M5 has a rich application ecology: pre-installed apps including car maps, Huawei music, Huawei video, Kugou, Himalaya, Pocket Story and Youku. The Huawei application market, which is designed for smart vehicle scenarios, currently has a wealth of apps and convenient services.
Under the open Hongmeng ecology, more applications will continue to be brought in the future.
It is a car, but also a Hongmeng terminal
As the first model equipped with harmonyOS smart cockpit, many of Huawei's technologies in the smart cockpit have also appeared on this product, such as HUAWEI SOUND sound system, AITO M5 equipped with 19 units, "comparable to the million-class luxury car mobile concert hall", in addition to the new car is also equipped with 66W wired charging and 40W wireless fast charging, while the car equipped with charging ports has also been upgraded to Type A and Type C.
To a certain extent, Huawei's deep participation in the "creation" of this car interprets Huawei's understanding of smart cars, which is more like an electronic product, a smart terminal equipped with HarmonyOS, and the integration and iteration of many existing technologies on new terminals.
All along, Huawei's strategy in smart terminals has mainly been the 1+8+N all-scenario intelligent strategy. Huawei hopes to use system-level distributed capabilities to bridge the gap between hardware.
Therefore, after the user gets on the bus, he can quickly log in or automatically switch to huawei id through the 3D face recognition technology or two-dimensional code scanning of financial-level security authentication, and the system will adjust the driving mode and personalized driving habits according to the settings of the corresponding account. Instead of only one HUAWEI ID, users can also preset IoT scenarios through the control center on the AITO Q&A M5 car to realize the interconnection of all scenarios of people-cars-homes.
AITO M5 has a smarter voice assistant Xiaoyi, supports up to 60 seconds of continuous dialogue, and a variety of dialect recognition, almost all functions can be achieved through voice interaction.
Huawei's distributed management capabilities between multiple devices have been recognized by a large number of developers, so its ability to create an all-scenario intelligent experience should not be underestimated.
However, at the press conference, Yu Chengdong still stressed many times: Huawei does not build cars.
It is really not important to build or not, what is important is to let the industry see Huawei's ability to integrate resources.
Although Yu Chengdong popularized a lot of "Million Luxury Car" product configurations at the press conference, the price of AITO Q&A M5 was set at 300,000 yuan. This price segment is actually the current more mainstream price segment of electric vehicles, the fight is quite fierce, its main competitors are Tesla Model Y, Volkswagen ID4, and ideal ONE and extreme Kr 001 and other products.
What surprises the product play/product driving is that this rather "strategic" level product is not "stacked" to the full match because of this unrestrained. The high-end autonomous driving solution on Huawei's High-end Autopilot edition of Huawei's ArcFOX Polar Fox collaboration did not appear - in the end, the AITO Inquisition M5 was equipped with an L2+ level assisted driving solution that integrated a visual perception camera, 3 millimeter-wave radar, 4 APA cameras and 12 long-range ultrasonic radars. Functionally, a 360-degree intelligent panoramic parking system is realized.
After all, it may be regarded as a battle between Huawei and Yu Chengdong at this stage.