IAUTO
Speed Depth Attitude
Introduction |
2022/01/02
Supply chain relationships are ushering in new subtle changes, because many companies with goals and abilities, disruptors and even future leaders need to take the right to speak in their own hands.
Reporter 丨Du Yuxin
Responsible editor 丨 Yang Jing
Editor 丨Zhu Jinbin
In October this year, Apple officially unveiled the M1 Pro and M1 Max two true "professional-grade" processors at the autumn new product release, which became a hot topic in the technology circle for a while.
The reasons for the popularity are nothing more than two, one is that these two self-developed chips have completed a multiple of performance jump on Apple notebooks, crushing the intel processors of the same level; the other is to mark the real realization of Apple's desire to get rid of the Intel chipset ten years ago.
For the "toothpaste factory" Yinglt, although this result has long been predicted and confirmed, it is undoubtedly a big blow. As a big manufacturer of computer processors, it not only lost a core customer, but also transformed itself into its own competitor.
It is not difficult to understand that the processor is the brain and heart of the computer, and no one wants to give the most core things to others. Apple fully switches the self-developed M1 chip on the computer, integrating chips, software, and algorithms, and the comprehensive performance and user experience of the product are immediate, which undoubtedly provides a new idea for scientific and technological innovation.
This kind of thinking is not only in the field of consumer electronics, but also in the automotive industry. When the era of "software-defined cars" arrives, the core of the car has changed from the past engine, gearbox, chassis, to batteries, motors, electronic controls, as well as chips and a series of intelligent algorithms brought around the chip, track switching, new players into the game.
What will the automotive world of the future look like? Imagination may be far from keeping up with the progress of the times, but from the past procurement to joint development, from the current full-stack self-research to the future of the global self-research, from the transformation of technology companies to the era of intelligent electric vehicles, the functions and discourse rights of traditional supply chain manufacturers are ushering in new challenges.
Including many enterprises with goals and capabilities, hoping to enter the new track, using the past reserves in the IT field, sharing the cake of the automotive industry chain, and those subversives and even future leaders are eager to take the right to speak in their own hands, the automotive industry chain, supply relationship, discourse power and dominance are ushering in a new reconstruction.
And by handing over the core part of what determines the strength of a product to your opponent, you never know when there will be a more disruptive transcendence. From Apple in the field of mobile phones to Samsung, including latecomer Huawei, they are all starting from the chip at the core of the product, establishing strong advantages and barriers, and promoting enterprises to become giants in the field.
The appeal of the strength of the German and Japanese automotive industries in the global automotive industry has affected the development process of automobiles in the past hundred years. The engine's high-pressure common rail technology, transmission control logic, four-wheel drive system, etc., almost every field has thresholds and barriers, strong car companies have the ability to optimize the supplier's technology independently, and the product homogenization of weak brands will also bring them into the abyss.
The emergence of Tesla, the freedom of core components such as motors, electronic controls, and chips, has promoted it to become the leader of the new automobile era. Coupled with the "lack of core" problem that has plagued the industry in the past one or two years, the card neck problem extends from the mobile phone to the automotive field, and there is no doubt that more centralized domain controllers and core algorithms have become the trend of the future automotive industry.
On the surface, more capable car companies have announced that they have embarked on the road of self-research, but secretly, they are always considering how to get rid of the dependence of supply chain manufacturers such as Bosch and take the absolute right to speak in their own hands. Even the battery giant Ningde era in the new energy era is also expanding infinitely and many car companies are studying the battery's inner small nine-nine, and they are full of anxiety.
Coupled with a large number of technology companies entering the game, from Huawei, Xiaomi, to Baidu, Foxconn, including Apple, which has been brewing to enter the automotive industry, some of them want to become Bosch in the new era of automobiles, some want to follow the new era or even want to subvert Tesla, and some are exploring new business models and looking forward to opening up a different car world.
However, in the change of the times and the switching and upgrading of the automobile industry, the advantages established by traditional Suppliers in Europe and the United States such as Bosch and Continental have cracked under the general trend of the rise of Chinese brands and the era of intelligent cars. This is also the direction of the times, and it is also an unstoppable trend of the global automotive industry's focus shifting from the West to the East.
Recover lost souls
The term "lost soul" was ignited by the refusal of the chairman of SAIC to cooperate with Huawei.
As a technology company, Huawei has long coveted the automotive industry. Although Huawei is not involved in the vehicle industry at present, Huawei's determination to go deep into the automotive industry is still the same, according to Huawei's repeated emphasis - to become bosch in the automotive industry, to provide systematic solutions for car companies, to create its own Inside model, to become the Tier1 of the automotive industry, to help enterprises build good cars.
In the face of the "invasion" of technology companies, as well as new tracks and new opportunities, those traditional big car companies that used to have a good market share have also tried to challenge and break through, trying to regain some of the right to speak. "If you can do it yourself, you will do it yourself, and you will never give up the right to speak." This is the inner monologue of Chen Hong, chairman of SAIC.
Chen Hong said that SAIC will not cooperate with Huawei, otherwise Huawei will become the soul, SAIC will become a body, SAIC can not accept the loss of the soul, the core technology must be in its own hands.
After all, after nearly 40 years of China's joint venture history and volkswagen GM's two international giant brands, no one knows better than Chen Hong the importance of core technology and discourse power to a company. So much so that Chen Hong also ignored that cooperation with Huawei was originally a way to make Chinese cars bigger and stronger, but SAIC chose a more difficult path.
The development of the century-old automobile industry has formed a mature vertical automobile industry chain system, and the automakers have assembled all the parts, completed the test and verification, and delivered to consumers. In the era of fuel vehicles, the soul of the car is the engine, gearbox, chassis, known as the three major parts in the traditional sense. At that time, Chinese brand cars could only follow, or imitate, or hand over research and development and calibration to suppliers, and it was difficult to have independent discourse, of course, there was no so-called soul to speak of.
But the changes in the era of smart cars have directly broken this situation. In the early days of smart cars, traditional car companies added some ADAS and digital cockpit functions, and new functions can be handed over to suppliers. However, with the deepening of intelligence, computing and communication capabilities have become dominant, and chip and software development for automatic driving and intelligent cockpits have become the core of the value of intelligent cars.
As Professor Zhao Fuquan of Tsinghua University said, "What is visible is the same, and what is invisible is different." Through software to sublimate hardware, through data to make cars continue to evolve, the depth of "integration" of software algorithms and hardware will open up the gap between head enterprises and ordinary enterprises.
Therefore, when the intelligence of the automobile reshuffles the original fragmented and highly barriered industrial links of the automobile industry. Especially from Tesla's self-developed FSD chip, we can see that the integration of software and hardware collaborative development is the best way, and the soul of the car is gradually recycled into the hands of the automaker.
Through vertical integration and full-stack self-development, shorten the supply chain and narrow the distance with users, in order to quickly perceive user needs and vulnerabilities. Only by firmly grasping hardware development, software algorithm development and data in their own hands can we achieve rapid iteration and pushing of products and functions, and continue to maintain competitiveness.
Judging from the current situation, local enterprises have also found a new direction, not only SAIC motor seeking to regain the soul, but also enterprises such as BYD, Geely, Chery, Great Wall and so on, constantly increasing investment in research and development, taking internal incubation or strategic investment, cultivating their own technical capabilities and supply chain foundation, and continuously strengthening the full-stack self-research system.
Although the new forces of car manufacturing lack technical reserves and supply chain foundation, but also do not bear the burden of historical baggage, well aware of the importance of core technology, Weilai actively announced that it wants to develop its own chips, Xiaopeng also claimed full-stack self-research, zero running is to declare global self-development, to achieve a complete closed loop of intelligent car software development, the soul clasped in the hand.
Bosch's obstacles
Bosch, a parts giant with hundreds of years of accumulation in the parts industry, including internationally renowned first-line brands such as Continental and Denso, plays an extremely important role in the automotive industry. Once upon a time, especially when independent brands were doing brand promotion and promotion, these international supply chain manufacturers undertook an important halo task, and in the past, the supply chain system of automakers and suppliers was also very stable, the needle could not be inserted, and the water could not be spilled.
However, with the advent of the era of intelligent electric vehicles, automotive technology is mainly reflected in the field of intelligent driving and intelligent cockpit, and its core is advanced computing and communication. For example, the perception, decision-making, and execution required for automatic driving require high-computing chips and advanced algorithms; such as intelligent interaction, cloud computing, big data and other advanced technologies required by smart cockpits, intelligent operating systems, application software ecology, in this field, ICT technology companies such as Huawei and Apple have shown innate advantages.
Therefore, at present, and even in the future, it seems that car brands that take the road of intelligence no longer put the name of Bosch in an absolutely important position, but more prominently highlight the strength and influence of independent research and development. Indeed, the former is someone else's thing, it is a take-ism, it is a compromise of cost and strength under the circumstances of compulsion, and self-improvement is the fundamental and future.
Will a truly powerful automaker, such as Tesla, hand over the most critical parts such as the car engine system and intelligent driving to the supplier? The answer is no. Like Tesla, including Weilai, Xiaopeng, and SAIC, which are deeply constrained by "big factories" and giants, they are also seeking to get rid of the "big factory" spell all the time.
Looking back, why did the originally very harmonious and peaceful automobile supply chain relationship come to this situation today - the situation of separation and going it alone has become more and more intense, even if the cost of doing it alone is much greater than that of procurement. It is not that the strength of the "big factories" is not good, including that like Intel, they do have too many obstacles and obstacles on the track of subverting the industry.
The traditional supply chain sits on the past achievements, with so many market resources, customers, they also face a dilemma, on the one hand, massive investment and the need for continuous recovery of costs, and it is difficult to easily jump out of the comfort zone in the inherent share and hotbed; on the other hand, it is rapid iteration of technology, and rapid update of consumer demand, which makes the elephants of traditional large factory suppliers turn around relatively difficult.
To take a simple case, in the past in the ADAS system, Bosch was an important supplier, the vast majority of independent brands, most of the joint venture brands, must rely on the hardware and software systems provided by Bosch, and even the complete solutions of ADAS. In the era of fuel vehicles, this is beyond reproach, Bosch has a strong accumulation and precipitation of technology, whether it is safety, performance, stability, there is no problem.
However, on the road from L1 and L2 to L3 and L4, Bosch, which has absolute dominance, has shown a slow process, gradually abandoned by car manufacturers, but in the field of intelligent driving, new players like Nvidia, Mobileye, and Baidu have emerged.
In fact, on the topic of autonomous driving, Bosch engineering and technical personnel also said that it is not that they do not want to break through the limitations of L2, nor that they do not have such capabilities. As a large factory, in terms of safety, regulations, and stability, it has to dance with shackles, and if you choose between stability and change, Bosch will not hesitate to choose the former.
But Tesla, Weilai, Xiaopeng are not the same, the newborn calves are not afraid of the tiger, in the intelligent driving stride forward, some are independent research and development, some borrow power, regardless of whether the actual experience is really foolproof, in the process of technology and intelligence to promote the progress, the new forces will push intelligent driving forward for half an era.
Innovation and conservatism can never be on opposite sides. Perhaps Bosch's stage of "falling out of favor" is the inevitable development of the industry to a certain stage, just like Intel was abandoned by Apple. It is believed that from mobile phones to PCs to cars, core technologies in key areas in the future, such as chips, such as operating systems, such as batteries, self-development must be the key to competitiveness and the ultimate destination.
Isn't the impact of barbarians on the industry also a new opportunity for Bosch to re-recognize itself more clearly? This is what the beauty of commercial competition should look like.
Make a basket with eggs
Card neck, once a hot word in the past two years, the core of the key is the chip.
From huawei in the consumer electronics category being sanctioned by the United States to the continuous lack of cores in the automotive field, China's manufacturing power and consumer power have been contained in the throat because of a small chip. This is a repeated provocation by the strong against the right and initiative of China and Chinese enterprises.
"Either Qualcomm or Yijiatong." This is our goal in the field of smart cockpit, Yijiatong Technology CEO Shen Ziyu in a media communication meeting, holding China's first 7-nanometer vehicle specification SOC chip "Dragon Eagle One" confidently said, "This domestic chip, than Qualcomm's current most advanced 8155 performance is more powerful." ”
In fact, this chip was first disclosed at Geely's "Longwan Strategy" conference, and the major shareholder behind Yijiatong is Li Shufu, so it is also regarded as a milestone for Geely to enter the market for self-developed chips.
In fact, not only Geely, Tesla, which has eaten the chip dividend, calls its FSD "the best chip in the world" and is proud of the powerful intelligent driving ability brought by these two chips. According to the data, Tesla's FSD chip has increased its computing power by 21 times compared with the NVIDIA XDrive chip of the same period.
Including another Chinese new force zero run, its millimeter wave radar chip, ultrasonic radar chip and camera chip, as well as the entire ADAS controller chip Lingxin 01, have also embarked on the road of global domestic production, boosting the car company to quickly move towards the new force head sequence. There are also car companies including Volkswagen, Hyundai, Weilai and other car companies, have revealed to the outside world the news of self-developed chips, and the war between car companies for self-developed chips has begun.
Presumably, the meaning behind the chip war, but all car companies with strength and dreams are enough to deeply understand the importance of independently mastering a chip, especially under the invasion of "chip famine", this urgency is no longer a problem of finding a few suppliers to share the risk in the past. All car companies know that eggs cannot be put in one basket, but the reality or future situation is that they may not find a suitable basket for car companies to put eggs.
Then, make your own basket with eggs!
The fact that the chip shortage tells the entire industry why tesla and other self-developed chips have limited influence on car companies. One of the most critical reasons is that when domain controllers become the future direction of chip development, the above-mentioned car companies have integrated the functions of ECU and MCU in various parts, reducing the demand for the number of chips in the car from the root, replacing the quantity with quality, and alleviating the lack of chip production capacity.
At the same time, the era of "software-defined cars" is coming, and the semiconductors on smart cars account for about 35% of the total vehicle cost, and the self-developed chip can undoubtedly reduce the cost of communication with suppliers, improve development efficiency, and optimize the control of vehicle costs. "For autonomous driving development, it is necessary to integrate existing ECUs and count the underlying code and application layer software. In this way, a large amount of low-level code can be interoperable, and a large number of communication processes are reduced, which is conducive to autonomous driving development. Volkswagen CEO Diess once told the outside world.
Of course, there is also the most critical point, car companies through self-developed domain controllers, can better combine software and hardware, improve product performance. Looking at the mobile Internet and mobile phone industry, well-sold and expensive mobile phones such as Apple, Samsung, and Huawei all use their Own SoC system-level chips, because soC capabilities basically occupy 70% or 80% of the core function of the system capabilities.
"Apple is very clear about the functions and experience of mobile phones and computers, so Apple's chips are the best in their own systems, and after all the hardware and software, including the ecology are concentrated together, the user experience must be the best, and the future car is definitely this general direction." Shen Ziyu said.
With the same idea, not only Yi Jiatong and Shen Ziyu, as the future mobile intelligent terminal, the automotive intelligent cockpit has become the next round of beach market for all car companies. From the new forces Ofil and Xiaopeng to Huawei, Xiaomi, and Apple, they also have higher goals than Shen Ziyu and Yijiatong, and even move from full-stack self-research to global self-research, and the implication behind it is nothing more than to master the core technology in their own hands.
In fact, not only chips, the competition for the right to speak, every car company has an inner small nine-nine, from the perspective of commercial risk, enterprises must disperse the risk of development, just like after the Ningde era became a giant, it also faces countless anxieties.
The point of anxiety comes from the high place after reaching the top, more and more car companies in the Ningde era, seeking new battery possibilities, Tesla plans to purchase BYD batteries, Geely holds nearly 10 battery company resources, Daimler, Volkswagen also began to control China's battery companies. At this moment, the "big factory" may usher in its own inflection point downward moment in the change.
Whose twilight? Whose chances?
"The track is wide and there are a lot of opportunities." This is the attitude and thought of almost every player who is about to enter this new era of competition. After all, in the world's largest new energy vehicle market, and the Chinese government's determination to promote the process of the new energy vehicle industry, China deserves to become the world's most suitable hotbed for the development of smart electric vehicles.
Yes, china's new car manufacturing is surging and the demand for new automotive and intelligent cockpit solution providers with high cost performance and fast development speed has greatly increased. But the vast majority of ambitious car companies, not willing to use the supplier's solution, if you can do, if you have the strength and funds, it is naturally self-research is the way out.
"Li Bin's idea is also to walk on two legs, first adopt the supplier solution to achieve mass production of models, but at the same time build up their own capabilities." In September this year, Weilai released a self-developed power battery, which was hailed as a signal to abandon the era of battery giant Ningde. After that, Weilai also proposed the concept of self-developed autonomous driving chips, and the field of self-research was further expanded. Including Xiaopeng Automobile CEO He Xiaopeng also said: "At present, there are more than 300 new car manufacturers in China, and I think there are only 3 to 5 new car manufacturers that Bosch cooperates with in China. ”
The reason is simple, the new brand has a weak starting strength, and it is difficult to amortize high research and development costs in terms of production capacity and scale. Ideal Auto also sought to cooperate with Bosch in the early days of autonomous driving solutions, but Bosch said that it would not provide a complete solution, and could only develop three function points, each with 30 million yuan, and also asked engineers at the European R&D headquarters to communicate the cost and time costs that made a new company very hurt.
A senior industry insider said: "If you are a small car company and the sales volume is not high, Bosch may not pay attention to you." At this time, you have to do it, you can only do it yourself. "This undoubtedly provides objective conditions for car companies to embark on the road of self-research."
It is worth mentioning that the services of the international Tier1 giant are often not localized enough, most tier1 are not willing to share technology in depth, which is a problem of core competitiveness, the customized needs of car companies can not be fully met, and can only fall into the dilemma of price war, at this time, the advantages of local emerging solution providers in openness and business flexibility are reflected. This is also a big reason why homegrown autonomous driving solution providers like Horizon are welcome.
With the rise of a number of new local supply chains promoted by smart cars, such as Geely's open SEA vast architecture, such as Yijiatong's open smart cockpit chips, such as Hive Energy, Fordi batteries to open to more vehicle companies, those enterprises that once relied on others are also assuming the identity of new suppliers on the road of openness and sharing, and on the road to getting rid of "big factories", step by step become the "big factories" belonging to China's auto industry.
The new track has become more crowded, and the traditional supply chain "big factory" has ushered in the dusk? Of course not, their position in the industry has pushed them to still be a competitive bounty. At the same time, in recent years, the traditional supply chain "big factory" has invested large-scale capital and technology in the field of intelligent driving, which can stabilize the support of a number of old customers, and it is also very popular among medium-sized car companies.
However, in the past, the phenomenon of Bosch's stars holding the moon, with the advent of the era of intelligent cars, has ceased to exist, and Bosch's past advantages in the fields of engines, sensors, and chips are being broken through by various "self-reliant portal" car companies. Just like the monopoly of the Ningde era in the field of batteries, just like Qualcomm's leadership in the field of intelligent cockpits, and as many car companies begin to withdraw their voice in the driving assistance, intelligent cockpit and three-electric system of the core of intelligent electric vehicles, adding variables to the future of these past industry supply chain giants.
Doing the hard and right thing is the direction that every successful person must stick to. It is gratifying that in the process of getting rid of the curse of the supply chain "big factories", it is the entire industry to make great strides forward, whether it is chips, batteries, intelligent driving, intelligent cockpit is no longer a monopoly of the supply chain "big factories", countless able people will expand this road, driving up the Oriental automobile industry curve overtaking into reality.
This article is excerpted from the cover story of the November and December issues of Automobile Commune magazine
| Du Yuxin |
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