The AITO brand jointly released by Huawei and Xiaokang has recently triggered a lot of discussion, as a car brand that Huawei is deeply involved in in the true sense, which has once again triggered the controversy of whether Huawei makes cars or not. Although there is no answer to this question for the time being, it is almost certain that if Huawei wants to build a car, it will take the road of full-stack self-development - in fact, Huawei has released its self-developed motors, electronic controls, domain controllers and other core technologies, and has the right to speak in automatic driving, intelligent cockpits, etc. This is almost equivalent to a full-stack self-developed route.
Not only Huawei, but another technology company building cars also shows the same path. Xiaomi Group, which announced its car manufacturing in April 2021, is carrying out in-depth layout in the automotive industry chain. From the perspective of recruitment notices, its positions cover various fields such as perception, positioning, control, decision planning, algorithms, data, simulation, vehicle engineering, sensor hardware, etc., which is undoubtedly a full-stack layout in the field of automatic driving. In addition, Xiaomi is also laying out in other aspects through investment and other means, including sensors, motors and so on.
The entry of technology companies is in a full-stack self-research manner, which is different from Internet companies. From this point of view, the car manufacturing of technology companies is not only a change in business model, but also more will focus on the control of the industrial chain and technology, which will truly change the discourse power of independent cars in the era of new energy vehicles. But in fact, not only these technology companies that have just entered the game, or will enter the bureau, but also many of the new car manufacturers that have entered the forefront have adopted the full-stack self-research method to enter the tide of car manufacturing.
Among the new car manufacturers, zero-run cars are the first to implement global self-research, and from the final effect, zero-run is also the most representative enterprise on this road so far. Zero run since its birth has insisted on self-research, the scope includes drive assembly, electric BMS (battery management system), while the car machine system, cloud platform, intelligent driving, automatic driving chips, domain controllers, etc., now the battery cell and PACK have been self-developed. From software to hardware, zero-run achieves full access. "Start from the bottom," said Zhu Jiangming, chairman of Zero Run. Zero Run is already a hot new car brand.
Full-stack self-development has become a hot spot in the industry
In the past two years, with the popularity of the two products of zero-run T03 and zero-run C11 on the sales side, its development model has received renewed attention. The global self-research advocated by Zero Run is also talked about by many people, but in fact, at the beginning of the birth of Zero Run a few years ago, "Global Self-Research" was proposed, but a few years ago this did not attract much attention. The reason is that as an outsider, whether you can build a good car and survive is still a question. And to make the outside world believe that a new force without a car area to build a car in a global self-developed way is a bit of a fantasy. Moreover, this questioning is not ridiculed without cause, because it is very difficult.
Full-stack self-development is the key technology required through self-development, and the most representative enterprise of this model is Apple. This also makes Apple products unique and has established a leading position in the market for more than a decade. The so-called "full-stack self-research" in the automotive industry mainly focuses on electric drive systems and areas such as automatic driving and intelligent cockpits, represented by Tesla. Tesla has achieved independent research and development in core technology fields such as electronic and electrical architecture, operating system, autonomous driving chip, and artificial intelligence algorithm.
Among the new forces, Weilai, Xiaopeng, and Ideal all said that they are full-stack self-developed models, and their aspects are slightly different, but the automatic driving related content such as algorithms and control strategies are basically included in them. In addition, the newly established ones, including Feifan Automobile, have announced that they will develop a full-stack self-developed model.
Unlike these enterprises, the characteristics of zero running are further - it not only determined the full-stack self-research model at the beginning of its establishment, but also further proposed the concept of global self-research, that is, from the bottom to build intelligent driving, intelligent cockpit, intelligent power system and other technical domains, to achieve all independent research and development of software and hardware. Zhu Jiangming, chairman of Zero Run Automobile, once said, "Our global self-research, unlike other new car-making forces, only Zero Run is the entire intelligent driving system from hardware to software all developed by itself." "This simply outlines the differences in its route.
"Full-stack self-development" focuses on the software part, not the hardware, but the problem brought about by this is that although the software controls the hardware, the hardware is the foundation. If it's not the bottom layer starting to build, the system is problematic. This is also the reason why global self-research is more favored. On the other hand, there are deeper reasons why full-stack self-research has become a new trend of electric intelligence. The core competitiveness and profitability of automotive products have shifted to intelligent software transfer and become the main source of profit for enterprises, which has even changed the profit model of car companies. In this model, "full-stack self-developed" car companies will have higher autonomy and brand premium power, while car companies that lack self-research capabilities will find it difficult to create differentiated products, and eventually they will be eliminated by the market due to loss of competitiveness.
But no matter which piece is concentrated, full-stack self-development and integrated innovation have formed two contrasting car-building routes.
Full-stack self-development is a tough self-challenge
Integrated innovation is a simple model, cost-saving, fast, and self-research is too difficult in comparison, some companies even describe this as a "road of no return". Even for giant companies, it is very difficult to do all this content for self-research, especially for emerging car manufacturers. Full-stack self-development, the first face is technical difficulties. Now, the car is already a very complex electromechanical carrier, involving different professional fields, for example, semiconductors, software, machinery, chemistry, etc., compared to the past "art industry has a specialty" way, to achieve the level of self-development, the technology that enterprises need to master has very high requirements, such as patents, inventions, drawings and so on.
The second is the difficulty of the time cycle, the traditional automobile research and development cycle, generally three to five years, and now under the impetus of the consumer market, the research and development cycle has been shortened to two to three years, and some even to 18 months. In such a short period of time, it is difficult to develop so many technologies by yourself and to be tested and verified.
Finally, there is the difficulty of controlling the cost. Car companies not only need to invest a large number of R & D personnel to carry out research and development, but also need to invest in various equipment, venues, etc., and many investments are increasing day by day. To put it simply, some car companies have as many as tens of thousands of software engineers alone, and this huge cost is difficult for many companies to bear. In addition, compared with the traditional tier 1 suppliers, car companies to develop these technologies, in addition to BOM cost pressure, secondary supplier resources are also very difficult to form in a short period of time, Toyota Honda spent a long time to cultivate suppliers in its own system, in order to self-research, car companies also need to spend time and money to cultivate these resources.
Finally, even if the above conditions are met, it is very difficult to fully integrate a complex system, compared with the traditional way, how to integrate all the things that they have developed themselves, and can have market competitiveness, which I believe many car companies have no way to do in a short period of time. In the face of the rapidly changing market, how to ensure that the technical route that has spent a huge investment is correct and a great risk, after all, unlike the traditional way, changing suppliers can be solved.
Since full-stack self-research, especially global self-research, is so difficult, car companies should choose this road? For example, when autonomous driving is just beginning to be hot, many car companies use Mobileye's autopilot chip and a full set of sensors, in the late stage of development, I heard a lot of complaints, modifying bugs takes 3 months to start, want to add new features need to pay extra development costs and time, almost no open interface and so on. In fact, this phenomenon of car companies being held back by suppliers is very common in the automotive industry, especially in the field of new technologies, to some extent, it is precisely because many car companies have experienced these "pains" that self-research is more important. The shortage of chips from the second half of 2020 has strengthened the choice of full-stack self-developed roads for car companies.
Zero run C11
It is easier said than done, in the entire new car manufacturing enterprises, can achieve the true sense of the full-stack self-research, the first should be zero running. In the past 2021, zero-run cars have delivered a total of 43,121 units throughout the year, which is very eye-catching and has stabilized in the forefront of new forces. When C11 was listed, Zero Run comprehensively demonstrated its comprehensive strength in research and development, and a variety of domain controllers, chips, etc. were exhibited centrally, which was not only a response to many people who were not optimistic at the beginning, but also a display of strength. On the C11, zero-run uses a large number of self-developed parts, which makes this car extremely competitive in the market.
A chance to truly go beyond
With its back to the security giant Dahua, Zero Run has stood on the shoulders of giants at the beginning of its self-research on intelligent driving and other aspects. Zhu Jiangming also said at the beginning of the establishment of the company that he wanted to become China's Tesla. The company, like Tesla in research and development, has long been developing its own self-driving chips and has been working on developing its own algorithms. In this way, whether it is the iteration and update of the algorithm, or the software correction of the existing model, the efficiency of zero running is far more than that of car companies that use the supplier's algorithm and chip.
Unlike many enterprises that only focus on software development, zero-run global self-research can play a greater advantage, and the combination of software and hardware makes its experience in intelligent driving and other aspects in a leading position. For example, the newly released LEAP POWER "upgraded dimensional" intelligent power technology, all hardware structures are self-developed, and all electronic-related products are built from the resistance.
At present, zero-run has made breakthroughs in many fields, among which at the level of electric drive hardware, all products of zero-running cars are 100% equipped with self-developed powertrains, and high-voltage oil-cooled flat-line motors, SiC silicon carbide controllers, and two-speed transmissions in electric drive technology are also being developed in an orderly manner, and then the next generation of full-scenario AI intelligent electric drives with electric drive function AI self-diagnosis and electric drive life self-prediction will be launched.
Nowadays, although the pattern of the automotive industry is changing, it has to be admitted that if you want to survive in a strong market, you must have your own core technology. And how to accumulate their own core technology, each has a different choice. The self-research road chosen by zero running is very arduous, and the huge investment of "self-research" may make the cash flow of zero running tight on the one hand, and some marketing or channel expansion expenditures have to make way for technology; on the other hand, technical self-research is a longer process than joint development.
After adhering to self-research and self-manufacturing for 6 years, Zero Run ushered in the outbreak of sales and harvested the fruits of technical self-research. In the past few years, there has been a controversy about whether it is necessary to carry out full-stack self-research, and some views believe that this is a waste of resources, and enterprises can achieve breakthroughs in products by doing integrated innovation. However, the weakness of China's automobile is not only in the vehicle manufacturing end, but weak in the industrial chain, weak in the foundation of parts, and the global full-stack self-research is an opportunity to reshape China's automotive industry chain from the bottom. As mentioned earlier, if more companies adopt this path, it means that Chinese companies can grasp the right to speak in the era of smart electric vehicles in the future and redefine the car.
Recently, in the 2022 prediction made by Nikkei Chinese Network, one of them is that China grasps the core of the automotive industry chain, and with the continuous rise of technology companies like Zero Run, this day will come sooner or later.