On December 23, Huawei released the first model of the AITO brand, the Q&I M5, which is also the first model equipped with the Hongmeng OS system. Yu Chengdong, managing director of Huawei, CEO of consumer BG, and CEO of smart car solution BU, said that this is the first model personally built by the Huawei team, and Huawei's road to "building cars" is deeper.
With Huawei, Baidu, Xiaomi and other Internet giants have entered the game, more and more participants want to divide the car-making "cake", and even the real estate, liquor, and home appliance industries have also come to rub this wave of car-making fever. So, for these "outsiders" in the automotive industry, how effective is cross-border car manufacturing? Behind the boom of "cross-border car manufacturing" is the continuous acceleration of the process of "software-defined cars", and intelligence has become the mainstream of future development. The new entrants have also injected new impetus into the auto market, prompting the upgrading of the technology competition of intelligent cars and becoming a new position for future competition.
Car building has become a new position in Internet competition
This year, Huawei has strongly impacted the automobile market, and the cross-border "car-making" is full of confidence. Huawei's shadow has penetrated deeply into the automotive circle and cooperated with a number of car companies. On April 17, the world's first 3-lidar production car, alpha S, a HUAWEI HI version jointly created by Huawei and the ARCFOX Polar Fox brand, was officially launched, which is considered Huawei's "first car", and Huawei further cross-border into the new track of smart cars.
After the high-profile "car-making", Huawei has become a new password for traffic, and Huawei and Xiaokang Co., Ltd. announced the creation of cars, which not only made Xiaokang shares set several stops, but also made this strange brand Xilis widely known. Previously, the Xilis brand only sold 800 units a year, but the Smart Choice SF5 co-created with Huawei created 6,000 orders in one week after its launch, and the Smart Choice SF5 was sold together with Huawei brand products in offline stores, and the popularity continued to rise.
As automotive intelligence has become a mainstream trend, "software-defined cars" make software an important chip in automotive product strength. Internet companies have the inherent advantage of software technology development, which has become the natural foundation of their "cross-border car manufacturing". Under the natural conditions of cross-border car manufacturing, the automobile market has become a new position in Internet competition.
This year, Huawei, Baidu, Tencent and other well-known Internet companies have entered the game to "get on the car" to provide intelligent solutions for car companies, and the combination of software systems and hardware will make the new generation of cars more intelligent.
At present, Baidu Apollo has realized front-loading on Kia Kahua, the new generation of GAC Toyota Highlander, Kia Smart Run Ace, Genis resid G80, Geely Boyue X and other models, and realized the self-developed vehicle-level certified far-field voice interaction chip "Honghu", which has core capabilities such as real-time processing of far-field array signals and high-precision ultra-low false alarm voice wake-up.
Many Internet car companies not only stay in providing intelligent solutions, but also "radical" independent car manufacturing or investment in car manufacturing. On October 18, 360 Security Technology Co., Ltd. issued an announcement that it invested 2.9 billion yuan in its own funds into Hezhong New Energy Automobile Co., Ltd., and after all the investment was completed, it indirectly held 16.594% of the equity of Nezha Automobile, becoming the second largest shareholder of Nezha Automobile.
Xiaomi also spent 10 billion yuan to establish Xiaomi Automobile Co., Ltd., headquartered in Beijing, to build a vehicle factory with an annual output of 300,000 vehicles, and it is expected that the first car will roll off the production line and achieve mass production in 2024. While the "self-research" is advancing rapidly, Xiaomi has continuously expanded the territory of "car-making", frequently invested in and acquired a number of industrial chain companies in the field of intelligent vehicles, and strengthened the millet car-making industry chain.
Flying Yellow Tengda or Abyss?
With one Internet giant after another making cars, smart cars have become the hottest "fragrant food", so that traditional companies are also trying to share a piece of the pie.
Compared with the advantages of Internet companies, traditional enterprises cross-border car manufacturing is more "simple and rough", relying on sufficient capital accumulation, investment, mergers and acquisitions, etc., directly into the car industry.
Since announcing the car-making, Evergrande Group, which was the most popular group before, has made great strides all the way, signing strategic cooperation agreements with the world's top 60 auto parts leading enterprises in the form of "buying, buying and buying", and incorporating them into its own new energy vehicle "circle of friends".
Evergrande said that in the field of new energy vehicles, it will invest 45 billion yuan in three years to build Hengchi Automobile. At present, "Hengchi 1" has been officially unveiled, Hengchi full range of products have achieved full mass production this year, Evergrande Automobile Guangdong, Shanghai production base put into production this year, the first phase of planned production capacity is 200,000 vehicles.
However, cross-border car manufacturing is not as simple as "buying, buying and buying". After a high-profile car, Evergrande, which has not yet listed any car, has not sold but encountered Waterloo, after which Evergrande has contacted third-party investors to discuss the sale of some assets of Evergrande Automobile.
This also means that as an industry with a certain technical threshold, not everyone in cross-border car manufacturing is making a lot of money. Due to evergrande's huge R&D investment in the early stage of the new energy automobile industry and the long return cycle, Evergrande Automobile has been in the "burning money" stage, and as of the end of last year, it has invested a total of 47.4 billion yuan, of which the R&D investment is as high as 24.9 billion yuan. In May this year, Evergrande Automobile announced that it expects to record a net loss of about 4.8 billion yuan in the first half of 2021, and the loss will further increase.
However, the momentum of cross-border car manufacturing by traditional enterprises is still hot. Wuliangye chose to directly invest 3.7 billion yuan to build a new Kaiyi Yibin smart factory and enter the ownership of Kaiyi Automobile to create the first new car "Xuanjie". In May, Welling Auto Parts, a subsidiary of Midea Group, announced three major product lines, focusing on providing auto parts for car companies and focusing on their own manufacturing advantages. Huang Hongsheng, founder of Skyworth Group, released the Skyworth Automobile brand, taking the new energy passenger car industry as the goal of "striving for another thirty years".
The intelligence of the car will bring about the reconstruction of the entire industrial chain, and then form a new and huge industrial chain, and it is the rapid development of intelligent vehicles that provides opportunities for a large number of cross-border people. The newly entered car-making enterprises do not mean that they can completely subvert the status of traditional car companies, and the coordinated development and cooperation between the two will promote healthy competition in the market, inject vitality into the development of new energy vehicles, and further promote the electrification transformation of China's automobile industry.
[Reporter] Gong Qianshu
【Coordinator】 Guo Xiaoge Shao Yumei
【Author】 Gong Qianshu
【Source】 Southern Press Media Group South + client