Volkswagen acquires Huawei's autonomous driving business? Huawei employees have received "internal transfer interviews"

According to foreign media reports on February 17, Volkswagen plans to acquire Huawei's autonomous driving division for billions of euros. The deal, which has been in the works for months, also involves a technical system that Volkswagen is not yet proficient in.

For this news, Volkswagen China told the first financial reporter: "No comment. As of press time, Huawei has not given a relevant response.

In fact, for the news of the joint venture, in January this year, Volkswagen China CEO Feng Sihan said in an interview with first finance and other media that Volkswagen and Huawei are indeed discussing, but there is no confirmable news at this stage, including the establishment of a joint venture between the two sides. The first financial reporter learned that at that time, many employees from Huawei's automatic driving product line received "internal transfer interviews".

Autonomous driving is gradually becoming the core competitiveness of car companies in the future. Herbert Diess, global CEO of Volkswagen, recently said that the automotive industry is expected to see the spread of autonomous driving technology within 25 years. He also said Volkswagen is looking for further collaboration to improve its self-sufficiency in software and add features such as specific brands of voice assistants to its cars.

At present, the software business has become the core business of Volkswagen, which Volkswagen has made independent, and in 2020 set up the software division Cariad. In December 2021, Volkswagen announced that it will increase its investment in electric vehicles and digitalization over the next five years, amounting to 89 billion euros. In addition, Diess directly took over the software division Cariad earlier this year. According to Volkswagen's goal, Cariad will provide 60% of Volkswagen's software by 2025, a six-fold increase from 10% when the division was founded.

Volkswagen has always regarded Tesla as a competitor, and its goal is to catch up with Tesla. At present, Tesla is in a leading position in the global electric vehicle market, and although the sales of the ID series launched by Volkswagen are rising, there is still a big gap with Tesla. On the other hand, Tesla is relatively leading in the field of autonomous driving technology and has mastered the core technology. The price of Tesla's fully automated driving kit FSD has been rising in the past two years, and the profits brought by the software business have become higher and higher.

For traditional car companies, compared with technology companies, car companies lack software, especially core technologies such as automatic driving. It is for this reason that traditional car companies such as Volkswagen have invested in autonomous driving companies in recent years. Volkswagen previously issued a joint statement with auto parts supplier Bosch saying that it would cooperate in the development of autonomous driving software.

Huawei has maintained a partnership with Volkswagen over the past few years. Huawei and Volkswagen's Audi brand signed a memorandum of understanding on strategic cooperation in Berlin in July 2018 to jointly develop intelligent and connected vehicles. In the field of cooperation in the field of autonomous driving, the comprehensive strategic cooperation between Audi and Huawei has also gone further. At the end of October last year, it was reported that Huawei planned to form a joint venture with Volkswagen to develop autonomous driving technology. One of the ways to discuss cooperation is that volkswagen group invests and becomes the controlling party of the joint venture, and Huawei mainly provides technical IP (that is, intellectual property). Among them, the technical IP provided by Huawei includes not only software technologies such as automatic driving, but also Huawei's chip IP.

At present, Huawei has cooperated with a number of car companies, including Changan, GAC and BAIC. Huawei has carried out in-depth cooperation with these three car companies to provide Huawei Inside full-stack solutions. Another cooperation model is that as a parts supplier, Huawei supplies autopilot soft and hard parts to car companies. Huawei is also constantly extending in the automotive business, especially in terms of cooperation with Xiaokang Shares, Huawei is regarded as the leading force, and directly announced that there is only one layer of window paper for car manufacturing. Huawei and Xiaokang co., Ltd. carried out in-depth cooperation, and released a new high-end brand AITO at the end of last year, which is a high-end intelligent car brand deeply empowered by Huawei.

The industry believes that on the one hand, in the face of tightened sanctions imposed by the United States, it may be difficult for Huawei to fully realize its potential, and the transaction with Volkswagen is in line with Huawei's technical interests; on the other hand, autonomous driving technology is regarded as the soul of car companies, and Huawei may have difficulties in developing new customers in the future.

Will Huawei abandon the autonomous driving business? Judging from the recent actions, Huawei does not seem to have a plan to "abandon" the autonomous driving business. Just seven days ago, Huawei also updated its patent application in the field of autonomous driving. On February 11, Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. was granted a patent for "a braking system and autonomous vehicle for vehicle braking." The patent abstract shows that the present application relates to the field of automatic driving technology, the system comprises: at least one brake wheel cylinder, the main brake module, the auxiliary brake module, the electric linear pump. The system provides long-term, high-precision redundant braking. According to Wisdom Bud data, in 126 countries/regions around the world, Huawei and its affiliates currently have more than 7,300 patent applications for the field of autonomous driving, of which more than 95% are invention patents, and more than 2,300 invention patents have been authorized.

From the perspective of technical layout, Huawei's current patent layout in the field of automatic driving mainly focuses on image processing, Internet of Vehicles, human-computer interaction, communication technology and other related fields; from the perspective of global layout, Huawei has now laid out patents related to China, the United States, Europe and other markets, of which China accounts for the highest proportion, about 42%, the United States accounts for about 10%, and Europe accounts for about 8%.

From the rumors of the "joint venture company", Huawei's car business has also undergone many personnel changes, and some key positions in the original Huawei car BU have also been lost, including Chen Qi, former director of Huawei's automatic driving research and development department, and She Xiaoli, chief functional safety expert of Huawei's car BU, etc. Last year, many managers have left to join krypton, Weilai and other car companies. There was news that Su Zhen would join Weilai after leaving his post, but it was refuted by Su Zhen himself. In the latest rumors, Su Zhen will join the Volkswagen joint venture with part of huawei's original car BU team, but this news has not been confirmed at present.