Written by / Long Shihui
Edited / Kilig
Design / Zoi.
The M5, which was originally expected to be listed at the end of 2021, will land on Huawei's store in Guangzhou during the New Year's Day holiday.
Many people at the scene and Che Lizi also rushed to see the goal of "Huawei MACAN", came to the city center of this large Huawei store to see the new car, but the staff informed: at present, there is only one M5 outreach, the store will not have a car until the end of January, and the delivery will be until March.
The area where the Huawei store was originally put on the car was "empty", but the Xilis SF5 Huawei Smart Edition was also missing, and it seems that the store is ready to sell the Q&A M5. "Now M5 sells very hot, the system opened 96 hours to sell more than 6500 vehicles, New Year's Day these days should also have a wave of small peaks, really want to see the car to the event location to see it." Obviously, the clerk did not worry about the lack of a cash car to affect the enthusiasm of the buyer.
Aito stores also did not ask about the M5 car
And in different areas of the same mall, ARCFOX Extreme Fox Experience Store is another situation, there are not many people who come to see the car, and even many people do not know that his alpha S has such a deep relationship with Huawei, if it were not for the "Huawei automatic driving 7 minutes without taking over video" and the salesman's explanation, the whole store basically could not find the "Huawei halo".
Of course, now it is only the internal small batch delivery of the Polar Fox Alpha S Huawei HI version, not enough to support the basic disk of the sales of the Pole Fox, this point of the clerk "sober in the world" is very: "The most people buy or 281,900 yuan of long-lasting 708S+ version, Huawei HI version more than 3 lidar, Harmony OS intelligent cockpit, Huawei "intelligent driving advanced driving assistance system ... In fact, it is enough for us to drive the ordinary version of daily driving. ”
Flowing brand, iron Huawei
Admittedly, ARCFOX extreme fox manufacturers are not so sober. Just a few days after the listing of the M5 on December 23, Che Lizi brushed a circle of friends advertisement: "Huawei intelligent driving to solve the travel solution", click into it to link to the homepage of the official website of Jihu Alpha S, Jihu is tantamount to spending its own money, rubbing Huawei's traffic, and advertising huawei.
Of course, Jihu was deeply tied to Huawei at the beginning, and the 2021 Shanghai Auto Show ARCFOX Polar Fox Night successfully went out of the circle by relying on "Huawei automatic driving for 7 minutes". But in the whole year of 2021, the two cars of Jihu delivered a total of 4993 vehicles, which is not a good performance in the "new forces at the waist", Wang Qiufeng, deputy general manager of BAIC New Energy and vice president of Jihu Automobile, said: In 2021, the first priority of Jihu is not sales. The core is to enhance brand awareness, product awareness and reputation.
However, with the passage of time, the "Huawei dividend" of The Pole Fox has become less and less, and the mass production version of the Pole Fox Alpha S Huawei HI version that has been unveiled at the Guangzhou Auto Show for more than half a year since its debut has been significantly inferior to that of other new forces and friends; more importantly, there is news that the repeated delays in the delivery of new cars are due to the inability to supply Huawei's Hongmeng intelligent cockpit system, and the large-scale tasting event originally held in Shenzhen at the end of December was also replaced by the small internal delivery of the Beiqi Blue Valley Zhenjiang factory.
Statistics show that since the release of the M5, the three "firsts" with Huawei highlighted by Jihu, including "the world's first mass production car equipped with Huawei's HI full-stack intelligent driving solution, the world's first pure electric car equipped with Hongmeng OS, and the world's first mass production car that supports high-end intelligent driving on urban roads", only the last one remains. In 2021, Jihu finally did not fire up because of Huawei's HI full-stack intelligent driving solution, and the core competitiveness of its own products was not played out in the market, and the sales volume was even more sparse, and I did not know what the high-level of Jihu was.
There is no doubt that the reason why Jihu was snubbed by Huawei is that the M5 is more like a "pro-son", and the Sales Volume Huawei Smart SF5, which has entered the Huawei store sales before, is far less popular than expected, and the annual sales volume in 2021 is around 7,000 vehicles. The AITO inquiry is more like Huawei and Xiaokang recreating a high-end new energy vehicle brand to compensate for the loss of profit growth point of the mobile phone business. Therefore, Huawei's support for AITO also exceeds the previous Xilis, including product definition, quality control and sales channels, take a closer look, and today," "Huawei does not build cars" Then who believes?
At present, the cooperation between the main engine factory and Huawei mainly has two relationships, one is the traditional supplier and the main engine factory relationship, the first or second level supplier (Tier 1/Tier 2) model, Huawei only has the battery does not do, the motor, electronic control, radar and system can be provided to the main engine factory; and the second Huawei provides an integration program similar to the "family barrel", the Huawei HI full-stack intelligent car solution nested brand models, there are currently polar foxes, qingjie, and the upcoming Chang'an, Ningde era of Avita, A sub-brand created by GAC and Huawei.
This kind of deep binding also has its advantages, everyone knows that Huawei has strong graphics processing capabilities and application capabilities, a huge audience base and a hundred responses to the jianghu status, which is why there are pole foxes and Cilis that rub Huawei traffic to become famous overnight, and in turn, Huawei also needs to cooperate with car companies to successfully develop its business in the automotive field.
But according to Che Lizi's current observation, the relationship between the two sides is more unequal, which has a lot to do with Huawei's "car-making view", former Huawei Intelligent Driving President Su Zhen once said: "Traditional car companies think that the basis of the car is first of all the car, and then the computer is embedded, Huawei believes that the basis of the car is the computer, the car is a computer-controlled peripheral, and the difference in essential views leads to different views on all things." In Huawei's subconscious, Huawei is the "soul" of a car.
Soul and money, how to hold?
At present, few car companies dare to give the "soul" to Huawei, especially large car companies only regard Huawei as a core component provider, the core of software and hardware decoupling, software and automatic driving algorithms must be controlled in their own hands, and only Huawei can be used if they are uncertain, SAIC Chairman Chen Hong's famous "soul theory" is leisurely in the ear: can not accept cooperation with Huawei and other third-party automatic driving solution providers, Huawei and other become the soul, SAIC becomes the body, such a result can not be accepted, SAIC must take the soul in its own hands.
But in fact, in the era of software-defined car intelligence, a powerful Tier 1 (first-tier supplier) role, for the traditional car companies are both love and hate, neither like the fuel car era, the important gearbox even if purchased, car companies will do the engine and chassis, is still each of their own characteristics, the initiative firmly grasped in their own hands; not like Tesla, a new car force with Internet genes, fully equipped with core algorithms, automatic driving solutions and other capabilities, It is not realistic if a car company with fuel vehicles as the main industry can completely and quickly transform.
At present, the Internet companies that have done excellent work in the field of autonomous driving solutions are Huawei and Baidu, both of which have frequently involved in the automotive industry last year. In March last year, Baidu and Geely established a joint venture brand Jidu to enter the automotive industry as a vehicle manufacturer, when many people speculated that Baidu occupied a major position in the joint venture, and behind it stood Huawei's Avita, GAC and Huawei jointly developed new cars, which were also mass-produced in the past two years.
It is not impossible to use at all, and it is indeed a problem to use more and use less. Of course, even channels like Cyris have been given to Huawei so far and only one. In the process of exploring the store, when asked who is more powerful with AITO, the clerk talked about the fact that the fox was jointly built by Beiqi Blue Valley and Magna, and the latter only has a well-off manufacturing background. Undoubtedly, the Polar Fox differentiates the relationship between other models and Huawei in the terminal to enhance its dominance, but unfortunately, Magna manufacturing is at best a differentiator but not a core selling point. It can be seen that when the main engine factory uses Tier 1, it not only hopes that it will drain and endorse itself, but also not lose technical barriers and hold the sharp "double-edged sword" to death.
Of course, we also need to see the persistence of this so-called "drainage effect", baidu index "Polar Fox" reached its peak on April 17, 2021, after which no matter the off-line and small-scale delivery of the mass-produced version of the Polar Fox Alpha S Huawei HI version, there was no big splash. After entering Huawei's stores that year, the Cyrus SF5 had orders exceeding 6,000 units in a week, and finally returned to the level of triple-digit monthly sales. It can be said that Huawei's short-term exposure has risen sharply, but in the long run, it also depends on the brand image and core competitiveness of car companies.
The Baidu index of the Polar Fox brand in the past year
And it is foreseeable that even if the car company does not give the soul to Tier 1, the contradiction between the two will become deeper and deeper. In the era of automobile intelligence, the reduction of the parts of the whole vehicle means that the profit of selling a car in the future is getting lower and lower, and the long-term profit comes from the software iteration, automatic driving upgrade, intelligent cockpit, network cost, charging service and other full-life cycle closed loops. This is just the Internet background of Tier 1 strength, both the technical foundation and the user ecology, and the profits generated after that are eventually divided with car companies, their only weakness is the accumulation of the car market, it seems that "invasion" is imperative.
Therefore, at this moment when the ecology is completely reconstructed, car companies must completely carry their souls in their own hands, it is really not easy, either like Tesla and Xiaopeng to adhere to the full-stack self-developed solution, or like Volkswagen, every year to spend a lot of money to let the software business department and Bosch deeply customized development, otherwise it is better to be like Geely, Changan, GAC, in the case of not affecting the basic disk, let the cake give a little to Tier 1. Of course, it depends on whether the automaker is strong enough at the moment, and whether the Tier 1 supplier wants to play with you.
Write at the end
After the listing of the M5, the market often turned over Yu Chengdong's "no car theory" to talk about Huawei's ambitions. Yes, on the surface, Huawei is almost the LOGO to the car, but the deeper is that the strong Huawei has broken the deep-rooted rules of the game between suppliers and car companies in the era of fuel vehicles. Have you ever thought that in the future era of smart cars, Tier 1's profit from not building a car may be higher than that of car building, and such a game is more careful and terrifying than "soul theory".
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