On February 18, according to the German media "Manager Magazine", Volkswagen is negotiating with Huawei to acquire Huawei's autonomous driving division. In the face of rumors, Volkswagen said it would not comment. In the automotive industry, when car companies do not comment on rumors, then nine times out of ten the rumors are true.
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In fact, last month, Volkswagen China CEO Feng Sihan confirmed that in negotiations with Huawei, he intends to seek Huawei's help, and if necessary, it is not impossible for the two sides to jointly establish a company. The reason why Huawei and Volkswagen did not negotiate is that the price difference is large, and the psychological price difference between the two sides is hundreds of millions of euros, which is not a small amount.
Autonomous driving technology has entered the historical stage, and almost all car companies are working in this direction. Although the concept of autonomous driving was jointly proposed by well-known car companies such as Volkswagen and Ford 40 years ago, Volkswagen's autonomous driving technology is not outstanding compared with many new car-making forces.
Although Huawei is late in the automotive industry, its software technology is definitely first-class in the industry, and AI vision is also at the forefront of China. Huawei has more than 7,300 patent applications in the field of autonomous driving, of which more than 95% are invention patents, and 2,300+ patents have been authorized, which is enough to explain the gold content.
As early as 2018, Huawei officially announced its cooperation with Volkswagen's sub-brand Audi to provide it with autonomous driving technology and local adaptation of vehicle and machine systems. Volkswagen is very familiar with Huawei's autonomous driving level, and now it is logical to want to acquire Huawei's autonomous driving division.
Volkswagen wants to buy, is Huawei willing to sell? Doing business can not only look at the will of one party, Huawei has indeed been in a bad situation in recent years, revenue in 2021 fell by about 200 billion yuan, but directly selling the automatic driving department is tantamount to killing chickens and taking eggs, keeping it to continue to lay golden eggs.
For Huawei, the best solution is definitely to cooperate with Volkswagen, which can jointly build factories, Volkswagen produce vehicles, and Huawei provides vehicle-machine systems. At present, Huawei's main cooperation object is Xilix, and it has launched Cyrus Huawei Smart Selection SF5, Q&I M5 and other vehicles, which have obtained many orders, but the production capacity is very limited.
After all, Xilis is too small to be compared with volkswagen, a global hegemon, if Huawei can cooperate with Volkswagen, then people around the world may use domestic automatic driving systems. After the loss of the mobile phone business, Huawei continued to supplement the automotive business, and the cooperation with Volkswagen was a step for the benefit of others and self-interest. It may not be long before we see Volkswagens equipped with Huawei systems on the market.