In 2013, Apple launched the "iOS in the Car" in-vehicle system, later renamed CarPlay, announcing that it would enter the automotive field; the following year, Apple launched the "Titan" project and began substantive research on hardware and software for cars. Since then, Apple's car construction seems to have been shelved, and it was not until 2020 that news related to this project was intensively exposed.
Specifically, in addition to investing a lot of money and forming a team of 1,000 people in car-making projects, Apple has obtained more patents in covering automatic driving, charging, on-board systems, and body structure optimization. Recently, it has been reported that Apple has formulated a policy of directly developing and managing Apple's car battery materials, and will complete the selection of Apple's car suppliers and begin full development within the year. In summary, Apple's advantages in car-making projects are not only financial and technical strength, but also more based on the system capabilities created by the ecological closed loop of OS and iOS systems.
At present, Huawei has established cooperative relations with many domestic car companies, including cooperation based on the "HUAWEI HiCar" human, car, and machine interconnection solutions; cooperation in intelligent driving, intelligent networking, intelligent cockpit, intelligent electric, cloud services, and big data, and travel services; and cooperation around the three major Hongmeng in-vehicle OS system applications, covering the cockpit, driving, and control systems of smart cars. In addition, there is a cooperation between Huawei and Cyrus on the shared sales system.
On the whole, Huawei aims to "help car companies build good cars", and its role positioning is different from Apple's. However, considering Huawei's own plans to build a smart interconnection ecosystem, its participation in the automotive field is also based on its advantages in the field of ICT (information and communication) infrastructure and intelligent terminals, and the cars integrated into Huawei's technology may compete head-on with Apple Cars in the future.
At the beginning of 2021, Lei Jun, chairman of Xiaomi Group, announced the launch of car-making projects. Since then, Xiaomi has been intensively recruiting automotive talents, and its investment layout has basically revolved around the automotive field, covering many fields such as intelligent driving, in-vehicle chips, and power batteries. Recently, Yu Liguo, former president of baiqi jihu business unit, took office as vice president of Xiaomi Automobile, indicating that Xiaomi is accelerating towards the goal of mass production of automobiles in 2024.
On the whole, the advantages of Xiaomi's car manufacturing are similar to those of "Wei Xiaoli" on the one hand, and have mature experience in user operation, on the other hand, the Xiaomi ecology based on Xiaomi mobile phones and smart homes will create more opportunities for its development of cars.
Last year, Baidu registered the establishment of "Jidu Automobile Co., Ltd." announced the construction of cars, and in September of the same year, Xia Yiping, CEO of Jidu Automobile, announced on the social platform: "Today is the 207th day of the establishment of Jidu, and the software team has collaborated with the Baidu Apollo team to develop intelligent cockpits and intelligent driving functions based on SIMU Car (simulated prototype car). "In addition, there are pictures showing that a specially camouflaged vehicle is doing a site dynamic test.
Among them, the difference between the SIMU Car (simulated prototype car) mentioned by Jidu and the Mule Car (hybrid car) developed by traditional car companies in the early stage of the car-making project in order to support the initial verification and calibration of the powertrain is that the automobile manufacturing sequence is transformed into "software development front-end, hardware development rear-end", this manufacturing logic constitutes one aspect of Baidu's car-making advantages, and the other advantage is that Jidu pairs like Baidu maps, appllo driverless technology, and full-stack intelligent transportation solutions "ACE" are transformed Traffic Engine" and other Baidu advantage software resources and partner Geely Automobile platform technology integration.
In 2003, Midea built and put into operation two major manufacturing bases for Midea buses through the acquisition of yunnan bus factory, Yunnan Aerospace Shenzhou Automobile Co., Ltd. and Hunan Sanxiang Bus Group Co., Ltd. Until 2008, Midea announced the suspension of car-making projects, and its factory was also changed owners. Last year, the news about Midea's car manufacturing was exposed, and a few days ago, Fang Hongbo, chairman and president of Midea Group, officially stated that "the industrial layout of new energy vehicles is a very important strategic direction for the future of Midea."
Different from the previous complete vehicles, Midea's restart of the car project is to first enter the market from suppliers of automotive parts such as motor drive systems, thermal management systems, and auxiliary/automatic driving systems. This way of grabbing share from a more segmented market can be seen as the advantage of Midea's car manufacturing, but there are also many companies like Bosch and Continental that have monopolized the auto parts field for many years.
At the RECENT CES 2022 Consumer Electronics Show, Kenichiro Yoshida, Chairman and President of Sony Group, confirmed sony's car manufacturing information and unveiled the VISION-S new SUV prototype (VISION-S 02). Based on the content of related reports, public data shows that as of now, Sony occupies nearly half of the global CMOS image sensor (CIS) market. In the future, Sony cars may use their advantages in image-related fields to enter the field of autonomous driving. At the same time, it is reported that Canon of Japan will use optical lens technology to manufacture automotive cameras for automotive autonomous driving systems, and participate in the construction of cars as a parts supplier.