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Huawei and Volkswagen set up a joint venture: helpless or otherwise?

One is a giant in the global automotive industry, and the other is a giant in the global electronic communications industry. Such two companies, no matter what kind of connection they have, are highly anticipated.

According to the German media "Manager Magazine", Volkswagen has been in negotiations with China Huawei for several months on the acquisition of Huawei's autonomous driving division. If the negotiations are finally negotiated, the transaction price will easily exceed 10 billion yuan.

Huawei and Volkswagen set up a joint venture: helpless or otherwise?

Subsequently, the domestic media "Interface News" also reported that the two sides are indeed in negotiations. Roughly speaking, the two sides form a joint venture, which is funded and controlled by Volkswagen, while Huawei provides technology and becomes Volkswagen's tier1 (Tier 1 supplier).

Su Jing, the former president of Huawei's automotive BU intelligent driving product line, who was transferred last year for improper speech and left earlier this year, was rumored to be the head of the new joint venture.

Huawei and Volkswagen set up a joint venture: helpless or otherwise?

In other words, it is equivalent to Huawei stripping out the autonomous driving department that Su Jing originally brought. Judging from the timing of Su Jing's departure, the joint venture between Volkswagen and Huawei should already be a matter of eight or nine inseparable. This is almost the same as the operation method of Huawei's divestiture of Glory and Zhao Ming, the head of the Glory brand, who became the head of the new company after his departure.

This may also make Huawei's original ambiguous "car-building" thinking slightly clearer.

Huawei's internal attitude towards "car building" has always been divided into two factions. The "no car faction" represented by the original car BU department advocates controlling the core technologies such as automatic driving and doing a good job as a solution supplier. The "car-making faction" is Yu Chengdong's consumer BG department. After Yu Chengdong took over the car BU, they hoped that after losing the mobile phone business, they could use the remaining resources of the mobile phone business to regain glory in the car business and rebuild a Huawei car brand.

Huawei and Volkswagen set up a joint venture: helpless or otherwise?

The two factions have different ideas and different signals to the outside world. Huawei's official caliber has repeatedly emphasized "no car", but careful people will find that Yu Chengdong has emphasized cooperation with Xilis on various occasions and how many cars to sell, but has never mentioned "not building cars".

Therefore, after cooperating with Jinkang Cyrus SF5, Yu Chengdong has forced a new brand - AITO. Clear-eyed people can see that the AITO M5, which does not have any Xilis gene, is completely an attempt led by Huawei's "car-making faction". However, due to the haste of time and testing the waters, the part of Huawei's transformation is basically limited to the car machine and the motor, and does not touch the deeper power system, auxiliary driving software and hardware. In fact, it is only close to breaking the last layer of window paper from "real car making".

Huawei and Volkswagen set up a joint venture: helpless or otherwise?

The topic is a bit far-fetched, "car-making party" is not the protagonist of this article, we still have to say back to "no car-making party".

Regardless of how the car sells, the "car-making faction" has taken the first step of "real car-making". But the "no car pie" may face more problems.

The first is the problem of the card neck. The automatic driving technology mastered by Huawei's car BU is indeed extremely powerful, but the MDC core chip required for automatic driving is still Huawei's heart disease. Before the end of the sanctions of lao mei, Huawei always had the risk of being stuck in the neck in the supply capacity of chips. Although the car BU business can now supply goods in small quantities, once mass production is made, the supply capacity is a big problem.

The Pole Fox S Huawei Hi Version, which is truly equipped with Huawei's "full blood version" program, has not yet been delivered since it was unveiled at the Shanghai Auto Show last year. Chip problems may be one of the important reasons.

Huawei and Volkswagen set up a joint venture: helpless or otherwise?

The second is the attitude of domestic cooperative manufacturers. The "soul and skin bag" dispute set off last year has reflected the attitude of some major automobile manufacturers. On the other hand, Huawei's supply capacity and its own public opinion traffic are also the reasons for the concerns of big manufacturers, choosing to cooperate with Huawei, once the late supply is insufficient and the supplier needs to be replaced, it will face fierce doubts from Huawei fans.

Therefore, it is not easy for CheBU to promote cooperation with major manufacturers. Cooperation with small factories can not hit the brand, but also can not go up the scale.

Since this is the case, it is better to emulate the glory of independence and repay the country with a curve.

In fact, Huawei has already reached cooperation with Volkswagen in the field of automobiles before this, and it should be said that the two sides have a basis for cooperation.

Huawei and Volkswagen set up a joint venture: helpless or otherwise?

If the joint venture with Volkswagen this time and the automatic driving department are separated, it can not only allow the automatic driving team to continue to have work, but also avoid the sanctions of Laomei, solve the problem of chip supply, and at the same time allow the HI solution to quickly and large-scale landing on the Volkswagen model. Huawei's self-driving solution finally has a chance to break the wrist with solutions such as Tesla.

This is probably the best development option at this stage. In this way, both the "car-making faction" and the "non-car-making faction" can walk up, and then it is up to see which leg can run faster. (Text/UVIS Auto Old Cannon)

Note: The picture comes from the network, the rights belong to the original author, thank you! This article only represents the personal views of the author and does not represent the position of Univision Automobile.

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