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The source of the header image is | Manager Magazine
The author | Ding only Su Peng
Edit the | Wang Yan Li Huanhuan
On February 17, according to the German media "Manager Magazine", Volkswagen of Germany is negotiating with Huawei to "acquire Huawei's autonomous driving business unit for billions of euros", and the acquisition target is a "team of about 700 people".
In the report, insider sources revealed that the group's leaders have been negotiating the deal for months, which also involves a technology system that Volkswagen is not yet proficient in. Another person familiar with the matter said that the delay in negotiating was due to the large difference in price expectations between the two sides.
In this regard, Future Automotive Daily asked Volkswagen China and Huawei officials for verification, and as of press time, neither side has responded.
Coincidentally, the day before the news broke, Volkswagen GROUP CEO Herbert Diess also publicly stated that it expects a wide range of autonomous driving technology to be widely available within 25 years (in the automotive industry), and revealed that Volkswagen is seeking further cooperation to improve self-sufficiency in software.
An employee who has worked at Huawei for nearly two years told Future Automotive Daily that at the end of 2021, there were rumors circulating inside about the ADS division may be sold.
It said that the ADS (Autonomous Driving Solution) product department is a third-level division under Huawei's automotive BU, which was once run by Su Zhen. In July 2021, Su Zhen, who had served as president, chief architect, and director of the intelligent driving product department of Huawei's automotive BU intelligent driving product line, was dismissed from his post. On January 26 this year, Huawei officially confirmed Su Zhen's departure.
For the self-driving technology that represents the future, will this rumored deal come true?
1 Acquisition or partnership?
A Huawei automotive BU employee revealed that since October 2021, there have been news within the company that Huawei will have a joint venture with Volkswagen, and in the rumors at that time, the leader of this joint venture company was Su Zhen, a former executive of the autonomous driving business line and director of the intelligent driving products department.
In December 2021, Caijing reported that the cooperation between Huawei and Volkswagen on the autonomous driving business was about to be finalized. Huawei will transfer some of its autonomous driving business capabilities to Volkswagen, including some teams including Su Zhen.
After that, the joint venture company did not land, and with the departure of Su Zhen, the rumors also evolved into another version - "Su Zhen will join Volkswagen with a team of 400 or 500 people and serve as the CTO of the autonomous driving company set up by Volkswagen in China."
In the eyes of the above-mentioned Huawei autoBU employees, for Huawei, there are not many teams of this scale. In fact, if you look at the overall Huawei car BU, its scale is still expanding. In April 2021, Wang Jun, then president of Huawei's car BU, revealed that in 2021, the R&D team of Huawei's car BU will exceed 5,000 people, of which more than 2,000 people will be in the autonomous driving team.
Wang Jun was interviewed by the media Source: Huawei official
Over the past year, although the personnel adjustment of CheBU has been continuous, the above-mentioned employees revealed that in this year's school recruitment plan, its department has still been allocated 700 places, and even no shortage of top talents from Tsinghua Yao class.
In addition, the employee explained that of the multiple business groups under the autonomous driving department, only some of them are related to autonomous driving. "I've heard that volkswagen doesn't want non-strong associations, or existing ones, such as autonomous driving platforms."
In fact, Huawei and Volkswagen are not strangers, and the cooperation between the two sides has already begun. In April 2021, Michael Hofmann, Audi's executive vice president of R&D in China, revealed: "Huawei may be Audi's autonomous driving partner. ”
An Audi China employee involved in the related project told Future Automotive Daily that the cooperation project between Audi and Huawei has begun, and at the end of 2021, the entire team has moved out of the group building to work independently. "In the next two years, one of Audi's models will be equipped with Huawei's driver assistance system, which is a bit of a deep customization."
The above-mentioned employees said that although Huawei existed as a supplier in the project, its attitude was "very strong". "When it comes to business trips, we fly to Shanghai, and traditional suppliers don't do that."
In the employee's view, because automatic driving involves data collection, and domestic supervision is more stringent, "for foreign companies, it is necessary to hand over partners in China, and similar cooperation will be more and more in the future joint venture model." ”
Huawei, which positions itself as a supplier of incremental parts for smart cars, has been trying to make friends. At present, Huawei has also explored three models in cooperation with car companies.
Among them, the car BU is responsible for two of them, on the one hand, through the Huawei Inside model, supporting car companies to build their own sub-brands, and the second is to provide parts and solutions to car companies. Consumer BG is responsible for the "Huawei Smart Selection" business, helping partner car companies sell vehicles through Huawei's channels.
Huawei Inside's first cooperative model, BAIC Jihu Alpha S, was launched at the launch of the S
Source: Huawei official
However, from the actual performance, the results are not as expected.
In huawei inside mode, the alpha S Huawei HI version, a model partnered with BAIC Polar Fox, is at the top of the schedule. Because of the powerful hardware coupled with Huawei's lidar solutions, in April 2021, it attracted the attention of the industry as soon as it was unveiled, but the official did not give an accurate delivery time.
In the second cooperation model, because of the smell of Huawei's ambitions, it directly attracted the resistance of car companies, and Chen Hong, chairman of SAIC, once called out "rejectIng Huawei to inject soul into SAIC's body".
In the C-end market, the sales volume of Huawei's first model, the Xilis SF5, is not ideal. According to the data of the Association, from April to December 2021, the cumulative sales of the Cyrus SF5 were less than 10,000 units.
More importantly, for autonomous driving, the improvement of capabilities is inseparable from massive data support. The reason why Tesla has been able to achieve strong self-driving capabilities is precisely because of its global million-vehicle fleet, which transmits every moment of driving data through the cloud to provide it with nutrients to improve its self-driving capabilities. This may also be a problem that Huawei needs to solve for automatic driving.
2 If you don't do well, find foreign aid?
As the head of Volkswagen, Herbert Diess made no secret of his admiration for Tesla. Behind it is his judgment on the future of car companies, "What really changes the game is software and automatic driving." ”
He understood the importance of intelligence, and early on, he carried out drastic reforms within the group and set goals. Not only will it surpass Tesla in 2025 to become the world's largest electric vehicle sales company, but also to develop software services into the pillar business of the future. "Software will account for 90% of future automotive innovations."
After the curtain of transformation into a software company was lifted, Volkswagen first set its sights on the self-built car networking operating system. In 2019, Volkswagen established a 500-person Car.Software software development department to develop vw.OS, an operating system that can be adapted to all new models, and expects to expand the number of people to 5,000 by 2025.
Volkswagen ID.3 parked at the Zwickau factory in Germany Image source: Visual China
However, from the results, the public seems to have been slow to enter the intelligent state. This operating system was first installed on Volkswagen's first mass-produced model, the Volkswagen ID.3, the first MEB platform, and as a model to compete with the Model 3, the ID.3 has been postponed many times due to software problems. At that time, more than 20,000 ID.3s that had rolled off the production line were parked in the parking lot of the Zwickau factory, waiting for the first OTA upgrade.
In an interview in June 2020, Peter Mertens, a former head of research and development at Audi, directly unveiled the "fig leaf" of volkswagen software problems. He revealed that in order to solve the software problem of ID.3, the Volkswagen Group has gathered a huge team of 10,000 IT engineers, but these problems "only need 100 or even 50 excellent engineers to deal with." ”
As for the level of volkswagen software, Mo Peter is even more blunt, "Of the more than 10,000 codes in ID.3, none of them are from volkswagen." In its view, the cars volkswagens built in 2020 are only equivalent to the cars Tesla launched in 2012.
Since then, Volkswagen has always regarded Tesla as its own target.
"The public is not short of money, but it is short of time." An employee who has worked at Volkswagen (China) for 3 years told Future Auto Daily that the biggest problem Volkswagen faces if it wants to compete with Tesla and new cars for the Chinese market is "how to turn its own mechanical products into real electronic products." According to the plan, Volkswagen aims to sell 1.5 million new energy vehicles in the Chinese market by 2025.
Nowadays, it seems that the choice given by the public is to find "technical foreign aid" to increase the possibility of winning for themselves. The improvement of the level of intelligence is not overnight, and choosing a strong local technology giant can undoubtedly buy more time for yourself.
After all, judging from the current competition in the market, when the rules of the game change, the former fuel car overlord has lost its dominance. According to the 2021 global new energy brand sales data released by the CleanTechnica website, in 2021, Volkswagen's electric vehicle sales were 319,700 units, compared with Tesla's sales of 936,100 units.
"When we're building our own software and services, the biggest difficulty is attributed to resources. The biggest challenges come from the processes and cultural differences between the industry and the company itself. Johann Jungwirth, chief digital officer of the Volkswagen Group, has said publicly.
3 Car companies open the era of alliances?
In the new energy vehicle market, traditional car companies and newly built stations are on the same running line. In order to grasp the initiative, the giants will not hesitate to spend a lot of money to enter the key technology track.
In recent years, auto giants such as Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz, and Honda have successively been deeply bundled with power battery manufacturers through shareholding and joint ventures. Now, with the "ambiguous relationship" between Volkswagen and Huawei's automatic driving department surface, the main engine factory and the automatic driving company will also usher in a period of "joint time".
Cui Dongshu, secretary general of the Association, analyzed that Volkswagen and Huawei are strong parties in their respective fields, and Volkswagen is naturally not willing to adopt Huawei's complete set of autonomous driving solutions and hand over its "soul" to Huawei; and Huawei is not willing to provide technical solutions for Volkswagen alone.
The establishment of a joint venture between the two sides is the best cooperation model, Huawei provides technical support, Volkswagen provides funds and products, and the two jointly develop a set of Volkswagen Huawei version of the autonomous driving solution." Cui Dongshu said of future auto daily.
Although volkswagen's partnership with Huawei is still inconclusive, the above-mentioned Volkswagen (China) insiders also speculated that "earlier Bosch and Cariad, a subsidiary of volkswagen group, formed a joint venture to cooperate in the development of autonomous driving software." Now Volkswagen may work with Huawei through this company. ”
Zhang Junyi, managing partner of Oliver Valve, believes that in the future, there will be a consortium of "main engine factories + travel companies + autonomous driving companies".
Baidu autonomous driving architecture engineer Zhang Xuan to the future automotive daily analysis, self-research is undoubtedly the best solution for car companies to exert autonomous driving technology. "Software needs to be continuously upgraded by OTA iterations, and only hardware and software with strong adaptability can ensure the advanced and stable automatic driving function."
But for traditional car companies, self-driving technology is a short board, and it is difficult for them to emulate the self-sufficiency of new forces such as Tesla.
Zhang Xuan believes that considering factors such as R&D efficiency, traditional car companies should actively cooperate with autonomous vehicle companies. "Hardware with huge investment costs and long research and development cycles can be appropriately handed over to autonomous driving companies for matching research and development, and the software can be in their own hands." This is the best form of cooperation between car companies and autonomous driving companies. ”
The Germany-based Volkswagen Group, due to its long decision-making chain, does not have a prescient understanding of China's Internet ecology and the needs of Chinese consumers. If Volkswagen wants to further develop in the field of intelligence, it is bound to need a local technology company to help Volkswagen interact with local needs.
Dies was interviewed by the media Source: Visual China
And Dis has said in a media interview that there is currently no company that is very good at both software and hardware, "don't think that it can be achieved in a year, two years or five years, even Tesla, it took 15 years, costing 15 billion US dollars, or even 20 billion US dollars to achieve profitability."
In fact, there is precedent for the linkage between traditional car companies and autonomous driving technology companies.
In order to grasp the core technology of software in their hands, the auto giant has spent huge sums of money to establish joint ventures with technology companies. On December 18, 2020, BMW China and ArcherMind Technology (Nanjing) Co., Ltd. reached an agreement to establish a joint venture specializing in automotive software development.
Xiaomi Auto paved the way for itself in the field of automatic driving at the beginning of its establishment. On August 25, 2021, Xiaomi Group entered into a share purchase agreement with the relevant contractor of the autonomous driving technology company Deepmotion, acquiring Deepmotion for a total transaction amount of about US$77.37 million.
At that time, Wang Xiang, president of Xiaomi Group, responded that automatic driving technology is the most important technology of intelligent electric vehicles, and hopes to accelerate Xiaomi's research and development in the field of automatic driving through acquisitions.
Perhaps in the near future, we will see more and more traditional car companies and autonomous driving companies deeply tied.