From the AITO Q&I M5 to see the ambition of Huawei's "Hongmeng Automobile"

Produced by | He Xi Typeset | Ye Yuan

Yu Chengdong, managing director of Huawei, CEO of consumer BG, and CEO of smart car solution BU, said in April this year: "After being repeatedly sanctioned by the United States, Huawei's mobile phone business has been affected. "A remark vaguely reveals bitterness." Under the iron law of natural selection and survival of the fittest, Huawei must evolve a business model that is more adapted to the current complex situation, and smart cars are one of the important moves.

01

Hongmeng Automobile turned out to be a world

On December 23, Huawei held a winter flagship new product launch, at which Yu Chengdong spent nearly two-thirds of the time explaining the new product of AITO Q&A M5, which shows the importance that Huawei consumers attach to the automotive business.

AITO Q&I M5 is Huawei's first deep participation, from design to research and development to marketing of the whole chain of support, every place inside and outside the car can be seen as Huawei's design language, although Huawei said not to build cars, but this deep empowerment model is more like Huawei in the soul of building cars, and the partner Xilis is more like a foundry that manufactures car shells.

In fact, Huawei has been laying out the field of smart cars for a long time, and the speed and process are accelerating. As early as 2019, Huawei disclosed for the first time at the Shanghai Auto Show that it wanted to enter the intelligent automotive industry and empower car companies to "build a good car"; in May 2020, Huawei established the Intelligent Vehicle Solution Division, which means that Huawei will invest more manpower and funds to develop and deepen this field; at the 2020 Beijing Auto Show, Xu Zhijun, then Huawei's rotating chairman, said: "In one year, Huawei invested 500 million US dollars in the intelligent car solution BU, and will not consider profitability in the short term. ”

Since then, Huawei has subdivided the relevant product lines in the field of intelligent vehicles, and developed five major product layouts: intelligent vehicle cloud, intelligent network connection, intelligent cockpit, intelligent driving, and intelligent electric, covering the core components of intelligent vehicles in all directions. In December 2020, Huawei purchased a piece of land in Guangzhou Baiyun District for 340 million yuan to build its Guangzhou R&D center, which is mainly used to develop technologies such as smart cars, cloud computing, and the Internet of Things. Since then, Huawei has begun to expand its "circle of friends" and continuously recruit partners, not only establishing a "5G car ecosystem" with 18 car companies, but also announcing in-depth cooperation with CAR companies such as BAIC.

In 2021, Huawei pressed the accelerator button for smart car manufacturing. On April 17, Huawei cooperated with BAIC to launch the Alpha S Huawei HI version, which for the first time applied HUAWEI inside to a mass production car, and released an autonomous driving test video, in which the intelligent autonomous driving experience brought by the application of lidar and high-precision maps caused heated discussion.

On April 18, Huawei held an HI conference and officially released a new generation of intelligent components and solutions including Hongmeng OS vehicle-machine operating system, 4D imaging radar, MDC810, etc.

On April 20, Yu Chengdong announced that Huawei has officially begun to sell cars and will sell Huawei Smart Cars in Huawei stores nationwide, the first of which is the Xilis SF5. This means that Huawei not only does the business of TO B, but also does the business of TO C.

In November, Huawei, a new high-end brand jointly built by Changan Automobile and CATL, announced its first model, which is equipped with Huawei's HI full-stack intelligent vehicle solution, and is expected to achieve mass production in the third quarter of 2022.

On December 21, Huawei put into use an intelligent vehicle solution innovation center in Suzhou, setting up nine laboratories for MDC, converged sensing, voice, vision, acoustics, cockpit ecological innovation, in-vehicle networking, and vehicle control innovation.

On December 23, Huawei released the high-end brand AITO, Huawei personally designed and developed quality control, this high penetration rate of development, coupled with the deep customization of the Hongmeng system, reflects that Huawei's layout in the field of intelligent vehicles has matured, and began to attack.

02

Hongmeng + car, 1 +1>2

Huawei's technology and ecological empowerment of vehicles are of great significance, the most important of which is the blessing of the Hongmeng system, which is mainly the intelligent cockpit in the five major product lines. Based on the hongmeng system ecology of mobile phones and car machines, the Hongmeng OS version of the operating system has been created, which will build a smart cockpit ecology of people + cars + life, in this sense, the Hongmeng system is truly integrating the car into life.

The seamless connection between travel and home is not only an improvement in efficiency, but more importantly, it will bring about a change in lifestyle, in the future, the scene of the car will be broadened more, and the speed of car networking, intelligence and materialization will accelerate.

First of all, in the era of intelligent cars, the core technology is no longer the chassis, engine, transmission three major pieces, but software, computing power, bandwidth, software-defined functions, bandwidth management watts, computing power to drive horsepower, of which software has the greatest significance, it is almost deeply involved in all the process of car definition, development, verification, sales, service, but also the most intense part of user perception. Wang Jun once said: "In the era of intelligent cars, digital technology is the core competitiveness. Therefore, Huawei has created three platforms of iDVP, MDC and HarmonyOS intelligent cockpit, covering the three major areas of intelligent car control, intelligent driving, and intelligent cockpit, that is, the intelligence that surrounds the car. Among them, the intelligent cockpit of Hongmeng System is of the greatest significance, which is of epoch-making significance for the driving experience and riding experience.

Secondly, Hongmeng system is the first self-developed operating system in China, and is used in mobile phones, tablets, car machines, home devices and other different terminals, compared to ios it has the characteristics of openness, compared to Android it is more unified and not fragmented. The significance of this is that the Hongmeng system can act as an intermediary, connect all terminal devices, can realize the seamless flow and transmission of content and functions anytime and anywhere, and can operate different terminals through different devices. For example, before going out, the owner can wake up the car in advance through the smart speaker or mobile phone, turn on the car air conditioner, and transfer the travel route to the car smart screen in advance, and the office software or video games on the mobile phone can be seamlessly synchronized to the car smart screen; before going home, through the car machine voice system, you can operate the lights, air conditioners, washing machines, rice cookers, etc. at home. This means that in the future, scenarios such as work, home, and travel can be seamlessly switched, without repeatedly transmitting content and files, but only need to run in the same account.

More importantly, Huawei is very mature in the field of operating system and software development, and has a large amount of data, and the Hongmeng system equipped with the car can solve the pain points such as few traditional car applications, slow upgrades, and poor experience. In terms of intelligence, Hongmeng intelligent cockpit can intelligently identify the driver, automatically log in to the corresponding account through face recognition, and protect privacy and security at the same time more convenient.

03

Huawei's ambitions and strategies for car manufacturing

Subject to the reasons of Sino-US international relations, Huawei's mobile phone business is seriously damaged, Huawei must seek a new way out, how to break through in a complex situation has always been Huawei's strength, smart cars are a breakthrough. Yu Chengdong once said frankly: "Due to US sanctions, the mobile phone business has been blocked, and although the sales of smart electric vehicles are not as large as mobile phones, the unit price is high, which can make up for the lack of sales of mobile phones." "On the surface, Huawei is only making up for the losses caused by the weakening of the mobile phone business, but there is a deeper strategy behind it, not only to find new hematopoietic capabilities, but also to create a new ecology with the car as the center."

Traditional fuel vehicles have been developed for hundreds of years, and the core technology has been almost monopolized by foreign countries, and there is no possibility of breakthrough. However, smart cars have broader prospects, and with Huawei's technical reserves, smart cars are completely designed for Huawei.

Since its inception, Huawei has accumulated world-leading technologies in the FIELD of ICT, which can be applied to the field of smart cars to lead other competitors for 30 years, coupled with Huawei's years of deep cultivation in the field of software and hardware, it has excellent insights into operating systems, user preferences, design aesthetics and even marketing strategies. Smart cars are the products of software, big data, AI, ICT and other multi-industry integration, how to achieve interconnection between different scenarios, the connection of different content functions, is the core capability of smart cars, simply put, to create a smart interconnection ecology around people - cars - life, it must rely on the basis of data and software.

Huawei has accumulated decades of technical precipitation and brand value in the field of consumer electronics, which will pave the way for the progress of Huawei's smart cars, Huawei's release of Hongmeng Automobile is only a primer, and the establishment of a smart car ecology in the future is the most important ambition and strategy.