Recently, foreign media broke a blockbuster message that Volkswagen is ready to spend billions of euros to buy Huawei's self-driving division. Combined with the previous Volkswagen executives' claims in interviews that they are talking about a very heavyweight acquisition, it seems that this rumor has been "confirmed", which can be described as a stone stirring up thousands of waves.
In response to the above news, the domestic media have launched inquiries to the official. As a result, Volkswagen China's reply was "no comment", and Huawei's reply was "no comment", tacit understanding like a small couple engaged in underground love.
The "gossip" about Huawei and Volkswagen has actually been around for a long time. As early as 2018, the two signed a memorandum of understanding on strategic cooperation, claiming that the two sides would cooperate in the field of L4 level autonomous driving. But four years have passed, and everyone can see that there is no output.
What will be the form of this contact between the two sides? Rong Kung Fu Car for everyone to analyze.
Not bad money + ambitious, Huawei can not give up automatic driving
Huawei is one of the most profitable companies in China, with huawei's total revenue of about 634 billion yuan in 2021, and the combined profit and dividend is more than 100 billion. You should know that this achievement was achieved under the condition that the mobile phone chip was carded and the glory business was stripped. In the previous 2020, Huawei's revenue was close to 900 billion, which can be said to be "rich and oily".
Therefore, it is almost impossible for Huawei to abandon its core business for billions of euros. To put it bluntly, what can this money do to Huawei, what Huawei lacks now is not money, but growth, which is a business worth investing in for a long time.
From the current point of view, although it does not build cars, providing a kernel for smart cars is an important direction for Huawei's future business development. In October 2020, Huawei released the smart car solution brand HI for the first time, the brand's main business is to build the basic computing and communication architecture of intelligent cars, including intelligent cockpit, intelligent electric drive, intelligent driving, intelligent networking, and even intelligent vehicle cloud system, which are the core of intelligent cars.
In addition, Huawei has also personally developed the components needed to achieve intelligent driving. For example, the lidar carried by the polar fox alpha S before, and then the recently launched inception M5 equipped with the augmented reality head-up display (AR-HUD) system.
For Huawei, in fact, all the hardware and software are required, and which part has technical difficulties, Huawei will focus on which part.
But Huawei also has its own worries, that is, car companies are very wary of it. For example, Chen Hong, chairman of SAIC Motor Group, has said that he is unwilling to cooperate with Huawei in automatic driving solutions, because it will make Huawei the soul of smart cars, and SAIC is just a body, which they cannot accept.
To this end, Huawei has been pushing its own Huawei Inside model in the past two years, that is, Huawei and car companies jointly define and develop smart cars, with Huawei's full-stack smart car solutions. It has a good cooperation with Xilis and BEIQI Polar Fox, and has also reached cooperation with SAIC in 5G and Interconnection ecology. Car companies other than Xilix, almost and Avita are adhering to the principle of providing what they need, and also cooperate with GAC, Chery and so on.
But in general, the current volume of cooperation between Huawei and car companies is still far from the target of 300,000 vehicles per year set by huawei. If a heavyweight car company like Volkswagen joins Huawei's intelligent car system, it will undoubtedly be a great help.
Benchmarking Tesla, Volkswagen urgently needs to improve software capabilities
Volkswagen is the first in the traditional mainstream car companies to start the electrification transformation, and now its ID. family has been able to stabilize the monthly sales of more than 10,000, the results are not bad. But for the Volkswagen Group, this is obviously far from enough, because Volkswagen's goal has always been to beat Tesla in the field of electrification.
Volkswagen is not short of technology, and it has created a dedicated MEB platform for its own electrification sequence. Take the recently launched ID.3 as an example, its body length is 4261mm, but the wheelbase has reached a staggering 2765mm, equivalent to a golf-sized car, with a mid-size car class rear space.
In addition, its endurance "fidelity" is quite good, and kinetic energy recovery is quite good, some people call its ID. series models the best electric vehicles. In terms of workmanship, the ID. family can also be remarkable, after all, this is the old business of the public.
But Volkswagen has a fatal weakness, that is, it started late in the field of autonomous driving. The mechanical quality of the vehicle is indeed good, but the degree of intelligence is not high. Even if the ID.4 X, which is now very hot, intelligence still stays at the level of fuel vehicles, that is, with an ACC plus parallel line assistance, the expandability of the car system is not good enough.
From the current situation, the degree of intelligence is one of the biggest selling points of electric vehicles, which greatly affects the premium ability of Volkswagen electric vehicles.
Volkswagen hasn't failed to make efforts, such as its previous investment in Argo AI, an American self-driving software startup. The company's level of intelligence is not high, but it seems that the prospects for commercialization are not clear, at least not in Volkswagen's new cars.
Therefore, it is also very reasonable for Volkswagen to find Huawei with more commercial experience. After all, Huawei's intelligent system has been equipped with many models such as Polar Fox Alpha S, Xilis SF5, Qention M5, Jetto X-1, Avita 11 and so on, and has good adaptability.
But if Volkswagen wants to buy Huawei's self-driving technology, it is unlikely. In fact, the automatic driving technology is far from mature, it is not like the engine, the gearbox, just get a few core patents. Now that it has been bought at a high cost, it may be backward after five years, and it is definitely not worth the loss.
Deep cooperation is most likely?
But without mentioning acquisitions, the possibility of cooperation between the two is indeed very large. Now in the first line of new energy vehicle companies, Tesla and BYD needless to say, are the kind that insist on self-walking, Wei Xiaoli and Ean, which have already had a good accumulation in intelligent driving.
Comparatively speaking, it is true that Volkswagen is the most likely to cooperate with Huawei in depth, and Huawei does have what Volkswagen wants.
When the M5 came out before, Kung Fu Auto also ridiculed its "content" as a bit too high. A new brand of new cars, the smart cockpit is made by Huawei, the intelligent electric drive system is developed by Huawei, and the automatic driving technology and sensors are also brought by Huawei. But from the current situation, a giant of the size of Volkswagen is unlikely to accept such a deep cooperation.
At the "2021 Huawei Intelligent Vehicle Solution Ecological Forum" held at the end of last year, Huawei rarely emphasized pragmatism and cooperation, emphasized the need to build an ecosystem, and did not emphasize the need to provide HI full-stack solutions, but said that it should focus on the underlying architecture and legal computing power to become an "enabler" to help car companies build good cars. Huawei's transformation has obviously made giants like Volkswagen more acceptable.
And Volkswagen has another unique advantage in finding Huawei to cooperate, that is, volkswagen group CARIAD department is about to set up a branch in China, will also set up its own automatic driving research and development team, and Huawei's automatic driving department talent is also concentrated in Shanghai, "door-to-door" is too convenient. In this way, even Huawei does not need to set up a special department, but the two sides can deepen cooperation in technical architecture.
Therefore, the way the two sides cooperate is likely to be a completely new way. It is unknown what kind of fruit the combination of traditional giants and first-line technology companies will bear.
Kung Fu shoots
Since Huawei has begun to get involved in the automotive business, it is almost impossible for it to abandon the autonomous driving business, which is an important direction for the future development of automobiles. And it is not limited to the field of small cars, large commercial vehicles, small takeaway cars, express delivery cars, etc., can use automatic driving technology. As a car company that is "not bad for money", Huawei cannot do this kind of "killing chickens and taking eggs".
For Volkswagen, the acquisition of a business that is far from fully mature is of little significance. More likely, it is still in-depth cooperation with Huawei to improve its own level of autonomous driving.
But there is no wind and no waves, the two have contact is certain, the possibility of cooperation is also very large, we are still looking forward to Volkswagen's new car.