Introduction to the stone: "Curve car building" has become a detour that Huawei has to take, but it is not a long-term solution.
Li Ping | author
At the end of the year and the beginning of the year, with the official release of the first model of the AITO brand, the M5, "Huawei Car" once again aroused strong concern from the outside world.
On December 2, 2021, AITO, a new energy vehicle brand jointly created by Huawei and Xilix, was officially launched. On December 23, at Huawei's winter flagship new product launch conference, the AITO brand officially launched the first SUV model, the Q&A M5. According to media reports, aito asked the M5 to go online only 96 hours, and the order reached 6500 vehicles.
"Huawei does not build cars, focuses on ICT technology, and helps car companies build good cars", in the face of speculation and doubts from the outside world, Huawei responded that its "original intention" for the automobile business remained unchanged. However, unlike the Xilix SF5 that the two sides have previously cooperated with, Huawei is deeply involved in the research and development, design, supply chain management, and sales and service aspects of the AITO brand, and the penetration rate and discourse power have been greatly improved, and the intention of "curve" car manufacturing seems to be obvious.
So, why doesn't Huawei directly build cars, but has to take such a "detour"?
1
From the Xilix SF5 to the Q&I M5, Huawei has enhanced its right to speak
"Huawei does not build cars, help car companies build good cars", Xiaokang shares have become the best spokesperson for Huawei's strategy.
On April 19, 2021, Jinkang Xilis, a subsidiary of Xiaokang Co., Ltd., officially released the Xilis SF5 Huawei Smart Selection during the Shanghai Exhibition. A day later, Huawei officially announced at the Smart Mobility Huawei Smart Selection Tasting Meeting that the Xelis Huawei Smart Selection SF5 will be stationed in the Huawei flagship store.
Suddenly, the news of the cooperation between Xilis and Huawei spread throughout the two fields of automobiles and technology. The Cyrus SF5 follower has also become the focus of media attention, and claims that "orders exceeded 6,000 in one week".
It is worth noting that the Cyrus SF5 itself is not a brand new model. Long before working with Huawei, the Cyrus SF5 (model year 2020) was officially launched in July 2020. According to data from the China Passenger Car Association, in the month of its launch, the Sales of the Cyrus SF5 was 260 units, ranking 128th in SUV sales.
However, sales at this point are also almost the peak sales of the Sf5, which has sold less than 100 units in the following months, and the cumulative sales of the SF5 in the whole of 2020 are only 732 units. In the end, when Huawei intended to accelerate its layout in the field of smart cars, Xiaokang chose to hug Huawei's "thigh".
As the first automobile product launched in cooperation with Huawei, Huawei Smart Edition SF5 is powered by Huawei Drive ONE electric drive system as the rear electric drive system, the cockpit operating system adopts Android + Huawei HiCar intelligent interconnection system, the software is equipped with HUAWEI HiCar intelligent interconnection system, and the audio system is provided by HUAWEI Sound.
With huawei's blessing, the exposure of the Cyrus SF5 has been greatly improved, but unfortunately its sales have not increased substantially. According to public data, from April to August 2021, the sales of the SF5 were 129, 204, 1097, 507 and 715 respectively. According to the January 8 Xiaokang Stock Investor Relations Activity Record Table, in the whole year of 2021, the delivery volume of SF5 was only about 8,000 units, which was less than market expectations.
It is not difficult to see that compared with the top three of the "Wei Xiaoli" new forces that have exceeded 10,000 units in a single month, the sales data of Cyris SF5 is really lackluster, and even there is a big gap with second-tier new forces car companies such as Nezha and Weima. Obviously, the Xilis SF5 is far from supporting Huawei's ambitions in the field of new energy vehicles.
The launch of the AITO brand means that Huawei has a new idea of "helping car companies build good cars". Judging from the first product, the M5, Huawei has started from the early product definition link to improve its control over the product. According to reports, the vehicle electronic and electrical architecture and powertrain of the Q&C M5 are designed by Huawei, and the intelligent cockpit and intelligent driving are also provided by Huawei as a complete solution. According to Yu Chengdong, the industrial design team and software team of Huawei's smartphones are involved in the research and development process of the M5 vehicle.
In terms of vehicle sales, Huawei has spared no effort. According to the plan, starting from January 20, 2022, the M5 will open a test drive reservation and reservation in 500 Huawei stores in 118 cities across the country, and it is expected to start delivery at the end of February this year.
In addition to the M5, AITO will also launch two new cars in 2022, one of which is a pure electric version of the M5 and the other is a medium-sized SUV.
"With these three new cars, I hope that AITO's monthly sales will exceed 30,000 units, this year's sales target of 300,000 units, and next year's commitment to million units with partners." Yu Chengdong said confidently when connecting with the media at the Shenzhen headquarters. He also reiterated that Huawei does not build cars, but helps companies build good cars and help them become the most profitable and commercially successful car companies.
It's really cool under the big trees. With the cooperation with Huawei, the unknown third-tier automobile company Xiaokang Shares, the market value once exceeded the 100 billion mark last year, directly catching up with the head car companies such as Guangzhou Automobile Group and Changan Automobile. In a sense, Huawei has indeed played a "help" to the stock price and market value performance of Xiaokang shares. Of course, whether Huawei can truly realize the flag of "helping enterprises build good cars" depends on the late sales data of the M5.
Huawei, which "does not build cars", has become the "traffic bearer" of the automotive industry, which should be a big temptation for domestic car companies, especially second- and third-tier car companies.
2
One "red heart", three modes
With the acceleration of electrification transformation, the entry threshold of the automotive industry is getting lower and lower, and a large number of non-traditional car companies such as technology giants, Internet companies and mobile phone manufacturing companies have joined the car-making track. Among them, the emergence of Huawei always gives people the feeling of a surprise attack. Compared with Baidu, which was well-known for the "Apollo Program", Huawei's presence in the automotive industry does not seem to be high. Until the beginning of last year, the Polar Fox Alpha S Hi Edition and the Xilis Huawei Smart SF5 were unveiled one after another, and domestic consumers realized that Huawei was menacing.
In fact, Huawei's layout in the automotive field has a long history. As early as 2009, when China released the "Ten Cities and Thousands of Energy-saving and New Energy Vehicle Demonstration and Application Project" (providing financial subsidies for the production and promotion of new energy vehicles) in response to the global financial crisis, Huawei began the research and development of on-board modules.
In 2014, Huawei established the "Internet of Vehicles Lab" and began to dabble in technological innovations in the interconnection, intelligence, electrification, and sharing of vehicles. Since 2017, Huawei has reached cooperation with many domestic OEMs in 5G, cloud, AI and other fields.
With the obstruction of the mobile phone business, Huawei's layout in the field of smart cars has accelerated significantly. In May 2019, Huawei officially established the Smart Car BU, which ranks among Huawei's six first-level departments. Huawei's emphasis on the automotive industry has greatly increased.
Based on its advantages in the ICT (Information and Communication Technology) field, Huawei's automotive business has been rapidly expanding from communication modules to sensors, operating systems, cockpits and autonomous driving chips, electric drives, and autonomous driving solutions, and many technologies have achieved industry-leading levels. Among them, Huawei's ADS High-end Autonomous Driving Solution has become the world's only urban commuter autonomous driving mass production system with its super full-stack algorithm, super data lake, and "triathlon" capabilities of super central computing and sensing hardware.
In October 2020, Huawei officially released its smart car solution brand HI, which aims to create a high-quality intelligent networked electric vehicle through Huawei's full-stack intelligent vehicle solution and in-depth cooperation with car companies in an innovative mode. From the perspective of specific forms, there are currently three main ways for Huawei to cooperate with car companies.
The first is the HI model, which is jointly defined and jointly developed by Huawei and partner car companies, and huawei's full-stack intelligent vehicle solution can be used to leverage Huawei's huawei-channel Huawei Inside partner model. Beiqi Polar Fox belongs to the representative of this model.
On the eve of the 2021 Shanghai Auto Show, the Polar Fox Alpha S Hi (Huawei inside) edition was officially unveiled. As a model jointly developed by Jihu and Huawei, the Jihu Alpha S Hi edition has built-in Huawei ADS high-end automatic driving full-stack solution and is equipped with Huawei Hongmeng OS operating system to realize the intelligent cockpit and smart phone operation.
However, not all car companies are willing to adopt Huawei's intelligent driving system on a large scale, and Chen Hong, chairman of SAIC Motor, has made it clear that he is unwilling to cooperate with third-party companies (Huawei) in automatic driving solutions. This is unacceptable to us, and our soul must be in our own hands. ”
In response to SAIC's "soul theory", Huawei responded that there are many models for Huawei to cooperate with car companies. In addition to the Huawei Inside model, Huawei also has a cooperation model between tier1 and tier2, and at present, Huawei is more using this model to provide parts and solutions to car companies.
The tire1 and tire2 models are the second model of Huawei's cooperation with car companies, also known as the supplier model. As a component supplier, Huawei's smart car solutions include intelligent driving, intelligent electric, intelligent cockpit, intelligent networking, and intelligent vehicle cloud. Up to now, Huawei has cooperated with 5 car companies in the field of intelligent electric vehicles for mass production and 15 car companies on fixed points; in the field of smart cockpits with 7 car companies; the intelligent driving computing power platform (MDC) has been fixed with 6 car companies, and more than 70 partners have cooperated through the application of third-party automatic driving software.
The third mode is Huawei's smart selection mode, and AITO Q&A M5 has become the first attempt at this model. In this model, Huawei is not only a component supplier, but also participates in product definition and vehicle design, and is also responsible for part of the hardware and all software of the smart cockpit and the entire ecosystem.
It is not difficult to see that compared with the previous supplier model and the HI model, Huawei's smart selection model has further improved its participation in automotive products, not only involving the "soul" of the car, but also involving some "body", which is equivalent to a deep test of vehicle manufacturing.
So since Huawei has tried to this point, why does it still insist on "not building cars", but choose this curve form?
3
"Curve" to build a car, Huawei has to take a detour
The controversy over whether Huawei should build a car has a long history, and even within Huawei there are different views on this issue. But until now, Huawei still adheres to the strategy of "Huawei does not build cars, but focuses on ICT technology, helps car companies build good cars, and becomes an incremental component provider of intelligent and connected cars".
Some analysts believe that the reason why Huawei insists that it does not build cars is intended to be an Android in the automotive industry, if it chooses to build cars in the sea, it will trigger direct competition with cooperative car companies.
Of course, this analysis is very much in line with Huawei's current strategic positioning of "helping car companies build good cars". However, as mentioned above, most first-line car manufacturers are unwilling to hand over the "soul" to Huawei, and the new power car companies take the "Apple of the automotive industry" as the target, and the possibility of cooperation with Huawei is not very likely. Until now, Huawei's HI model has only three cooperative enterprises: BAIC, Changan, and GAC.
Obviously, the positioning of "Android in the automotive world" is not easy to achieve. It is also for this reason that Baidu, which also insisted in the early days that it does not build cars, turned around and established a joint venture with Geely to establish Jidu Automobile.
However, even if the problem of competition in the same industry is not considered, Huawei will face at least three major problems if it wants to personally go to the sea to build cars: first, Huawei is still facing the pressure of chip supply; second, Huawei's lack of experience in the field of vehicle manufacturing; third, the number of electric vehicle parts is as high as more than 8,000, far from being comparable to mobile phone products (2,000 parts), which is also a challenge to Huawei's supply chain management capabilities.
Under the model of cooperative car manufacturing, Huawei can not only avoid the risk of chip supply interruption in the field of mobile phones, but also accumulate development experience and top-level technology of automobile projects, and the overall risk is greatly reduced. From the perspective of AITO Q&M5, Huawei's internal team should have a deeper understanding of the product definition, design, research and development, and supply chain management of automobiles.
However, Huawei's "curve" car manufacturing also faces some challenges and pressures. For example, since huawei does not participate in the manufacturing process, Huawei needs to entrust the production process control and quality control of the M5 products to the partners. Only in this case, if there is a problem with product quality, it will inevitably affect Huawei's smart car business and Huawei brand.
In addition, although Huawei has more than 5,000 high-end experience stores nationwide, which can meet the problem of entering the M5, Huawei's sales outlets do not have after-sales functions, and after-sales maintenance and other aspects may still need to be responsible for Xiaokang. Once the well-off service network cannot support the maintenance service demand after the rapid volume of the M5, Huawei's reputation will inevitably be impacted.
It is not difficult to see that the "curve" car, although it is a detour that Huawei has to take, is not a long-term solution. In the long run, the possibility of Huawei directly building cars is still very large, but in this way, Huawei's positioning as "Android in the automotive industry" may become an unattainable dream.