On January 25, Tencent Auto learned from informed sources that Su Zhen, former director of the intelligent driving product department of Huawei's intelligent vehicle solution BU (hereinafter referred to as Huawei's intelligent vehicle BU), will leave his post before the Spring Festival, and the new destination is temporarily unknown. In response to the above news, the head of public relations of Huawei's car BU said that he was "unaware", and Tencent Auto asked Su Zhen himself for verification, but as of press time, he had not received a reply.
In October last year, 36Kr reported that Huawei planned to form a joint venture with Volkswagen to develop autonomous driving technology, and Su Zhen would join the joint venture. After the news flowed out, Huawei immediately debunked the rumors that it was "not true", and Volkswagen China CEO Feng Sihan said on January 11 this year that Volkswagen and Huawei were indeed discussing relevant matters, but there was no news that could be confirmed at this stage, "including the establishment of a joint venture between the two sides".
Su Zhen, who led the development of Huawei's Da Vinci AI chip architecture, is recognized as a technology god, but his sharp remarks have also made him controversial.
In April last year, Su Zhen became famous overnight for the release of the ARCFOX αS HI version cooperated by Huawei and Jihu, and its remarks on automatic driving also triggered a hot discussion in the industry. For Robotaxi, Su Zhen has a very clear personal position: "You kill me, and at this stage you will not take Robotaxi as a business target." It is a result and should not be a business goal."
Three months later, Su Zhen was suddenly dismissed by Ren Zhengfei for publicly commenting on Tesla's self-driving "killing". On July 27 last year, Huawei issued a personnel appointment notice, because of the inappropriate remarks against Tesla, it dismissed Su Zhen from the position of director of the intelligent driving product department of the intelligent vehicle solution BU, and Su Zhen will go to the strategic reserve team to receive training and assignment.
Whether it is an individual or an organizational structure, every adjustment of Huawei's car BU has attracted much attention from the industry. Since its establishment in May 2019, Huawei's car BU has undergone two major structural adjustments, according to insiders, Yu Chengdong as CEO after the car BU business organization and technical organization were clearly divided, so that huawei car BU architecture is more and more like the consumer business architecture model.
Tencent Auto learned from insiders that Huawei consumer BG will continue to optimize its organizational structure and merge similar automotive businesses.
According to public reports and insider information, there are three major businesses involving automobiles in the consumer business BG, including Hongmeng (non-actual business structure, middle office concept), Huawei Smart Car and Global Ecology Business Department (HiCar business has been merged into this business department); and the automotive business base camp, Huawei Car BU mainly sets up three core departments of R&D management department, Marketing and sales department, and solutions.
Huawei's continuous adjustment of its internal structure is closely related to its three cooperation models. Among them, the "supplier model" and "Inside mode" will eventually fall on the car BU to achieve, the former mainly in the traditional Tier1 (first-tier supplier), Tier2 (second-tier supplier) identity to sell a single component to car companies, while the latter mainly sells "Huawei Inside" (HI) packaged solutions, and to use the HI logo on the car, the main cases are BAIC Polar Fox and Changan Avita.
"Huawei car sales model" is a special existence, the outside world believes that this is a form of Huawei disguised car manufacturing, and internally believes that car sales is the direction of consumer BG to explore new businesses, but a consensus is that Yu Chengdong supports this model.
The final landing of the "car sales model" will be implemented by consumer BG. Taking aito, the second model cooperated by Huawei and Jinkang Cyris, as an example, Yu Chengdong mobilized almost all internal resources to participate in all the processes of planning, design, marketing and selling the model from the early stage.
It is understood that the "car sales model" is still a joint operation mode, the smart car business department is mainly responsible for negotiating and introducing with car companies' customers, the global ecological business department is mainly responsible for the actual sales of vehicles, and some people of Xu Qinsong, vice president of Huawei's consumer business, are responsible for marketing and sales solutions.
Tencent Auto learned from sources close to Huawei's top management that in order to sell AITO's first car, the M5, Huawei has poached sales and marketing talents from car companies, "at least a dozen backbone personnel, most of the new force car companies."
According to the above-mentioned sources, the head of gtM (Go to Market, how to go to market) of the AITO M5 model is Wen Wen, the former head of Huawei terminal -mobile phone GTM Western Europe, who will be responsible for the pricing, publicity, marketing and other work of the product's entire life cycle.
Recently, Yu Chengdong said in an interview with the media that Huawei's goal is to build in-depth cooperation partners into the most profitable car companies in China, "We have tens of thousands of stores around the world, thousands of stores in China, and now our stores are in the best position in the mall." We plan to sell cars from 1,000 stores by the end of this year, assuming that each store can sell 30 units per month, so I set a challenge goal of reaching 30,000 units per month, so that the annual sales of our cooperative car companies will be 100 billion yuan. (Text/Tencent Auto Xie Wan)