Written by | Zhao Lingwei
Edit | Chen Hao
Produced | Automotive Sankei
Yang Hongze has seen the "purple sea" of the automotive electronics industry.
In the first five years of the establishment of Chelian Tianxia, he led the team to try almost all the end-of-the-car and cloud products in the automotive infotainment domain, and won nearly 20 OEM project orders, which is also a rare in the industry. But also in those years, Shenzhen's large and small electronics factories from the aftermarket "roll" forward loading, soon killed the red eye.
"It was a difficult five years," Yang recalled.
He has seen many similar companies "buried" in Shenzhen in the "inner volume", but he also perceives that the industry is about to enter the sunset stage.
The changes in 2019 gave him a breather. Seeing that intelligent electric vehicles have become a certain future step by step, Yang Hongze, as the chairman of the auto federation, knows that the transformation to true intelligence is imminent.
This was also the node at which supply chain enterprises were forced to transform at that time. From Tesla to the domestic new car-making forces, the blood of innovation flowed into the dull automobile industry for many years, they completed the initial education market work, when consumers have higher requirements for automobile intelligence, such results have attracted almost all OEMs to follow.
As a result, the demand is pushed back to the industrial chain, and intelligent related parts are bound to replace the traditional solution.
It was also at that time that chelian world met Bosch, and both sides chose to "revolutionize themselves" under similar circumstances and become like-minded partners.
Now, after the first intelligent cockpit domain controller product successfully won orders from Great Wall, Geely, GAC, Changan and Chery, Chery, Chelian Tianxia and Bosch will open the research and development of next-generation products and help Chinese car companies knock on a new door for the future market with technological innovation.
A two-way journey with Bosch
Before Yang Hongze met Li Yin, president of Bosch Intelligent Driving and Control Business Unit in China, they were making an almost identically difficult and correct decision.
In 2019, the field of smart electric vehicles went to the primary field in the first round of screening. In the context of the rapid change of automotive products and intelligent technology, Tier 1 has also been involved in a situation that has to be transformed.
It is understood that that bosch spent a huge time cost and financial cost that year, re-planning the proportion of traditional business and intelligent business, and even cut off some cooperation that was not low in revenue at that time, and this was to focus more on smart cockpit products.
Software is becoming an increasingly important part of smart cars and is key to Bosch's business development. On January 1 this year, Bosch's new Intelligent Driving and Control Division was established with a team of 17,000 people worldwide, including hardware experts, electrical and electronic architecture experts, software experts and business teams. But to grow in China, an important market, localization is just as important. Cooperation with local enterprises has become the path for Bosch domain controller products to land.
Chelian Tianxia did something similar from the end of 2018 to the whole of 2019: completely abandoning traditional automotive electronics.
Although this needs to bear great pressure - from 2018 to 2020, the revenue of chelian world has fallen from nearly 700 million to only 200 million. But Yang Hongze still insisted, "If we insist on doing some traditional business, one day we will not be able to live, on the other hand, if we still hold on to these traditional businesses, we will certainly not be able to do new business, new products."
Yang Hongze Chairman of Chelian Tianxia
Perhaps it is the two sides that have invariably made the same transformation at the same time, which has become an important prerequisite for their cooperation. "We and Bosch have an absolute consensus on the direction of the future development of smart cockpits, and we will not hesitate to cut a business with hundreds of millions of flows."
The cooperation model between the two parties is "A+B", Bosch is mainly responsible for platformization and standardization technology, and Chelian Tianxia is mainly responsible for the improvement of marketization, personalization, customization and service. In terms of customer service, the two serve as a group.
In April 2020, Chelian Tianxia and Bosch jointly obtained the Great Wall V3.5 platform cockpit domain control project, and in April 2021, the world's first 8155 domain controller rolled off the production line at the Shenzhen plant of Chelian Tianxia.
In the past year, Chelian Tianxia has successively obtained 8155 cockpit domain control orders from GAC Trumpchi, GAC Aegean, Chery, Geely and Changan UNI-T.
It is expected that by the first half of 2022 , under the Great Wall alone, a total of 14 models will be loaded with intelligent cockpit domain controllers jointly produced by Chelian Tianxia and Bosch. By the end of next year, Chelian Tianxia may become the world's largest first-tier supplier of 8155 intelligent cockpit domain controller products.
At present, the first phase of Wuxi Headquarters of Wuxi Auto Union is planning a total of three production lines, and it is expected to achieve an annual production capacity of 900,000 units in June 2022. The second phase of the industrial park plan is also being planned, with five production lines achieving a production capacity of 1.5 million units, and it is expected to be completed in July 2022.
At the press conference, Chelian Tianxia said that from 2022 to 2025, smart cockpit products will provide the company with an annual revenue of 1.6 billion yuan to 6 billion yuan, and achieve an installed capacity of 40% on new cars of its own brands.
Be the knocker of new technology
On December 21, the Wuxi Headquarters Base of Chelian Tianxia was officially completed, and the digital intelligent factory (Phase I) was put into operation, which is also the first fully automatic automotive domain controller production line built and put into operation in the world.
Therefore, on the basis of the phased results achieved by the 8155 intelligent cockpit domain controller, Bosch and Chelian Tianxia began the research and development of next-generation products.
According to Bosch's logic, the development of the electronic and electrical architecture of the intelligent cockpit can be roughly divided into four stages: the distributed stage - the intra-domain fusion stage - the cross-domain fusion stage - the central computing stage. At present, most of the functions such as in-vehicle infotainment systems and advanced driver assistance systems are still independent and integrated within the region. In the future, decentralized data computing will continue to be centralized, and the functions will be further upgraded.
"In the smart cockpit market, China's local auto companies have invested in technology, products, business models, and even the introduction of mobile Internet resources and business models far faster than the world."
In order to meet the needs of the entire market and promote the development of intelligent vehicles in China, Bosch and Chelian Tianxia began the pre-research work of intelligent cockpit system based on Qualcomm 8295 chip to prepare for future cross-domain fusion technology.
For the next generation of technology, Yang Hongze believes, "As a supplier, we and Bosch, or even more upstream chip suppliers, are the promoters of new technologies, with earlier pre-research investment, ready for the introduction of new technologies." Vehicle companies, on the other hand, choose the appropriate technical route according to their own vehicle electronic architecture. In the decision-making process of this technical route, the depth of synergy between the two sides and even multiple amplifiers is much higher than that of the traditional model."
In a certain sense, the research and development of technology by supply chain enterprises is also leading the layout of the next generation of intelligent products in the main engine factory.
Li Yin believes that cross-domain integration will be realized within 5 years. However, he also stressed that "even if it is cross-domain integration, it is also on high-end intelligent cars."
Yin Li, President of Bosch Autonomous Driving & Control Business Unit in China
The complex personalized customization requirements of Chinese independent brands for software products are far more than those of joint venture brands in the development process and the continuous iteration after production.
If the new technology can gain a firm foothold in the Chinese market and push it to a larger market, it is equivalent to a kind of "dimensionality reduction blow".
Chinese car companies, on the other hand, are significantly ahead of joint venture car companies in terms of the speed of launching new technologies, plans for mass production, and the breadth of coverage product lines.
"Redefining Global Car Companies"
The achievements of the auto federation in the past two years are also a microcosm of the auto market in recent years. From a parts company, we can see the development logic of China's vehicle enterprises and China's entire automobile industry.
After 2019, the wave of smart cars has struck, and more and more "world-first" technologies and products have taken the lead in appearing in the Chinese market, and even led by Chinese companies. At least in the new energy track, automatic driving track, intelligent network league road, Chinese car companies and parts companies rush to run and accelerate, is significantly ahead of the global counterparts.
Perhaps, it is time for the camp of global car companies to face a reshuffle.
Judging from the strategies publicly released by leading enterprises of independent car companies such as Great Wall, Geely, Changan, Chery, and BYD, in the next five to ten years, they will invest massive resources in the global market, and at the same time have higher expectations in sales.
Yang Hongze analyzed that in order to achieve the sales target of three or four million in 2025 like the Great Wall, Geely, Changan and other car companies, there are only two paths in front of the car companies, one is to accelerate the occupation of new energy product lines, and the other is to lay out the global market, which is indispensable. The products cooperated between Bosch and Chelian Tianxia will be globalized in tandem with the process of globalization of local customers.
"In 2025, great wall, Chery, Geely, and GM, Ford, Mitsubishi, Fiat, etc., who is a global enterprise"? China's auto parts head companies, and the current global parts giants, who has more opportunities? This may be the soul of the entire Chinese automotive industry.
"Not necessarily," he said. Perhaps, when Yang Hongze said it, he already had his own answer in his heart.
In the era of intelligent cars, it is not only the blue ocean of smart cockpits, but also the opportunity for Chinese car companies to obtain qualitative changes in their global positioning.