The M5, which announced the delivery results in early April, will become the biggest variable in Huawei's car manufacturing.
Author | Home scale from the planet Magnesia
There are many "unsolved mysteries" in the domestic car circle. Among them, the topic of "whether Huawei built a car or not" seems to have an official conclusion, but it is still difficult to guess.
At the recent Huawei annual report press conference, Guo Ping, Huawei's rotating chairman, reiterated when talking about the link of smart cars: "Huawei does not build cars, but to help car companies build good cars and sell good cars." Although this has long been the official caliber of Huawei's response, it is still intriguing to read in light of the actual situation.
Back at the "Q&A M5" conference a few months ago, Yu Chengdong passionately promoted this new Huawei smart car model, and almost all the parts on the new car behind him were printed with Huawei's logo.
Yu Chengdong also personally admitted that the M5 from the early planning, design and even the later stage of marketing and sales are handled by Huawei, and even after-sales and charging piles are under huawei's jurisdiction. Instead, the xiaokang group, the parent company of the cooperative celeste, has become the role of "foundry".
What is the level of Huawei cars?
As early as 2009, Huawei began the development of in-vehicle modules. In the following decades, Huawei established the Internet of Vehicles business department and began to launch related products in all aspects of the Internet of Vehicles. According to Ren Zhengfei's original intention: ICT technology will become the dominant technology in the future of the automotive industry, and the Internet of Vehicles will also become one of Huawei's future breakthrough points.
In 2019, Ren Zhengfei issued an organizational change document, and Huawei officially established the smart car solution BU. Coinciding with the sharp reduction of the mobile phone business and the transformation of the global automotive industry, Huawei will naturally not give up the field of smart cars.
Therefore, huawei, which started with communication, cross-line car building, seems unexpected, but it is actually reasonable.
After the official announcement, Huawei's layout in the automotive field began to move forward in a big way, not only a large investment in funds, but also a multi-point blossom in technical returns. Wang Jun, president of Huawei's intelligent car solution BU, has said that in 2021, Huawei's investment in intelligent car solutions will reach 1 billion US dollars, and the R&D team will reach the scale of 5,000 people, of which more than 2,000 people will be autonomous driving. In terms of business results, Huawei's smart auto parts business has listed more than 30 smart auto parts.
On the eve of the 2021 Shanghai Auto Show, huawei's HI brand launched five solutions in one go, including harmony OS intelligent cockpit, 4D imaging radar, intelligent computing platform MDC 810, "Huawei Octopus" automatic driving open platform, and intelligent thermal management system, covering cockpit, vehicle control, and auxiliary systems. In the two models released at the same time, the Xilix SF5 and the Polar Fox Alpha S Hi version, Huawei has completed the most critical three-electric system and automatic driving system.
Now Huawei, in addition to not having its own car factory, has basically covered all aspects of car manufacturing. In other words, in addition to not having the shell of the "Huawei car", Huawei basically built a car from the inside to the outside, and the rest is to replace the car logo with Huawei's own logo, and the Q&I M5 is the best example.
Car-making concerns
In our view, what is in front of Huawei is a "must-do problem": either insist on not building cars and be a good supplier; or like Xiaomi, launch a real Huawei car.
But from Huawei's point of view, whether to build a car is actually just an "optional question": the two roads have been moving in parallel and can be switched at any time.
At present, the new energy vehicle market seems to have ushered in a new round of "scuffle":
Second-tier new power brands began to attack first-tier brands;
The electrification process of traditional car companies continues to accelerate;
The "third forces" such as Zhiji and Avita began to rise and became new variables;
Power battery factories and chip factories have increasing restrictions on the main engine factory.
In the face of many variables, Huawei HI and Huawei's smartly selected models are themselves at a disadvantage.
One of the challenges Huawei encountered was quality issues. Previously, the Cyrus SF5 was oem by The Well-off Factory. As far as Xilis is concerned, the brand's quality control and marketing capabilities are inferior to other brands, and the help that Huawei can give can only be blessed in the core technology - Huawei cannot help the shortcomings of mechanical technology.
"Rolls-Royce engines put on tractors, it must still be tractors, not Rolls-Royce." This passage, from a departing Huawei management source, basically shows the reason for the failure of sales of the SF5 of Cyrus.
It is reported that in the black cat complaints, the number of complaints about Cyris is as high as 135, and the problems of crashes and catons are not uncommon. As the successor to the SF5 of Cyrus, the M5 will continue to be foundry by The Well-off Group, which undoubtedly puts a question mark on the prospects of this new model.
Until the problems of quality control and production efficiency cannot be solved, the Xiaokang factory cannot support Huawei to make a big move in the field of complete vehicles.
No core, no car
In addition to considering the impact of foundries, another hidden danger is in the field of automotive chips.
At present, Huawei has built a chip system led by Shengteng, Kunpeng and Balong in the automotive chip market to provide car companies with two types of chips, "automatic driving" and "smart cockpit", but in terms of autonomous controllability, Huawei still uses the inventory reserved before the US ban took effect the previous year. If Huawei chooses to build a car, there may be the same "embarrassment" as the mobile phone business in chip supply.
In addition, in terms of competitiveness, Huawei chips are difficult to compete with foreign suppliers.
In the chip market in the field of autonomous driving in which Huawei competes, in addition to Tesla's self-developed chips, Mobileye and NVIDIA have almost divided the autopilot AI chip market: the former mainly monopolizes the L2-level autopilot market, and the latter is biased to control the L4 and above autopilot chip market. In the absence of product support, it is difficult for Huawei to gain the trust of car companies.
At this year's China Electric Vehicle 100 People's Conference, the former minister of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology proposed in his keynote speech: the domestic automotive chip self-sufficiency rate is less than 10%, the localization rate is less than 5%, of which the most shortage is MCU chips, in addition to BYD, the market share of Chinese manufacturers is almost 0. When talking about the lack of cores, he pointed out that in the past, automobile factories were basically handed over to first-class suppliers, but at present, foreign automobile factories have taken the initiative to invest in TSMC and want production capacity, while domestic car companies have made slow progress in this regard. This has also led to domestic car companies making it worse on the chip issue.
According to other media reports, some Tier 1, which has a strong voice, began to appear in the "chain of contempt" in chip supply, and these suppliers are more willing to give priority to joint venture brands than independent brands. Although for this rumor, Bosch official response is "a bowl of water flat", but the phenomenon of chip card neck is already the consensus of the industry.
Then in the context of lack of cores, Huawei's blind shift from the identity of "supplier" to "car companies" is not a wise choice.
Huawei's next step
In fact, being a good supplier is not an easy task.
Entering the era of automatic driving, car companies have chosen to "change the way to live". In order to improve the ability to control the core technology, car companies began to directly reach extensive cooperation with upstream chip and algorithm suppliers, and they did the work that originally belonged to Tier 1, and even began to develop their own operating systems and even chips, with the purpose of changing the situation that the traditional Tier 1 occupies the absolute right to speak.
In this context, more and more technology companies have begun to cross the automotive field. In addition to facing competition from traditional Tier 1 companies such as Bosch and Continental, Huawei also faces a new generation of Tier 1 companies such as Baidu, DJI, Foxconn, and even Luxshare Precision.
Perhaps, as mentioned earlier, Huawei can switch back and forth between the identities of "suppliers" and "car companies" at any time, and now it only needs to wait for the final result of this round of scuffles.
If the final sales of the M5 continue to go high and low, how long can Huawei persist in building cars?