Written by | Li Yimeng
Edit | Routing Agency
In the Chinese automotive industry, Yu Chengdong, who has just arrived, seems to be another man with his own highlights.
In a recent interview, he only used a few words to tell the public how hard he fought in order to dream, and he took a hot search in passing.
And this is only 60 days since the last time he made a wish to "overturn Tesla in one year" and was on the hot search.
No surprises. Yu Chengdong, who has once again appeared on the hot search, has once again been put on the "dock" of the century-old automobile industry in the Internet world.
A comedic scene is that the defenders of the traditional values of the industry sitting in the "prosecution seat" are looking forward to a "trial" aimed at silence, while the promoters of industry change who believe that the new era has arrived spare no effort to "defend" him.
As the world's largest automotive market, China's total retail sales of automotive consumer goods reached 4,378.7 billion yuan last year.
However, the current public opinion gives the impression that an industry with such a huge scale of production and marketing does not seem to have truly accepted Yu Chengdong and Huawei standing behind him.
Does Yu Chengdong understand cars?
Yu Chengdong, 53, has been serving Huawei for the past 30 years.
To a large extent, his encounter is also closely related to this private enterprise that made its fortune in the communications industry.
Does Yu Chengdong understand cars?
In the eyes of many people, this issue has become particularly important for Huawei, which has entered the automotive industry with a high profile.
Because of this, since becoming the CEO of Huawei's intelligent vehicle solution BU, Yu Chengdong has actively created a "car-aware" personality in the past nearly a year.
From the Jetta King's 2.3-liter five-gas valve, to the Honda Accord's 2.3-liter highest-end, to chris Bangle's BMW 530i and Porsche, Yu Chengdong spent a considerable amount of time in the 20-minute interview video to count the cars he once owned.
Jetta King, Yu Chengdong's Kaimon model
From time to time, he also gives his own judgment on the factors that may affect the performance of the car.
For example, the long wheelbase will affect the driving experience, the use of an all-aluminum chassis will reduce the under-spring mass, and the soft chassis tuning is not conducive to the elimination of residual vibration on long-wave roads...
Yu Chengdong's statements and efforts may be seen as seeking some kind of legitimacy for Huawei to enter the automotive industry. In other words, he hopes to bring "legitimacy" to the "car-making" identity of the technology company.
Of course, from the above clues alone, it is difficult to judge whether Yu Chengdong understands cars or how much he understands cars - although he himself graduated from the automatic control department with strong ties to automobile manufacturing and is a standard science and engineering man.
But what is certain is that Yu Chengdong's understanding of the automobile manufacturing industry is not complete.
"300,000 is difficult, the global automotive industry lacks chips, 300,000 can't do it at all, because the supply is not available." At the beginning, I put forward a relatively high goal for everyone, just entering this field and not knowing that the entire industry lacks core to this extent. When talking about the goal of selling 300,000 new cars a year in 2022, Yu Chengdong said, "If you can build 100,000 or 200,000 units in the first year, it is already a miracle." ”
It seems that this is a showdown that he has no choice but to make up for it after determining that the sales target is difficult to achieve, and it is also like a search for compensation aimed at urgently saving the dignity.
In any case, the reality that the original chip with a unit price of 10 yuan and 20 yuan was speculated to 2500 yuan, and the upper limit of the design capacity of 100,000 units per year of the Chongqing Liangjiang Smart Factory of Xilix, yu Chengdong had to accept the fact that the automobile manufacturing industry has its objective laws that must be followed.
Xilis Chongqing Liangjiang Smart Factory
Global car executives collectively misjudged?
This reality also seems to conflict with the judgment of a considerable number of executives of car companies around the world.
"Technology and the automotive industry are converging, forming new alliances and new players. Startups are raising billions of dollars. Executives believe tech companies such as Google, Apple, Amazon and Huawei will enter the market. KPMG wrote in the chapter "New Technologies and New Entrants" in its 2021 Global Automotive Executive Survey.
According to the KPMG Global Automotive Executive Survey, 10.7% of automotive executives believe that Huawei will occupy a leading position in the future of autonomous driving, according to the KPMG Global Automotive Executive Survey. This figure is second only to Tesla (29.6%). Among them, even 56% of executives still believe that Huawei will eventually launch auto products based on its own brand.
Of the 1,118 respondents, 120 car executives believe Huawei will take a leading position in autonomous driving
The proportion of executives of car companies that believe that Huawei will launch products with its own brand is as high as 56%
Not all of these auto industry executives who are optimistic about Huawei are from China. In the eyes of European car executives, Huawei is the third most likely to succeed in autonomous driving, after Tesla and Waymo.
So, have these senior executives of car companies who hold the right to speak in the industry collectively misjudged?
The answer is clearly no.
While anticipating Huawei's prospects in the automotive industry, these car executives have not hesitated to use various stereotypes and adjectives to frame the scope of their success.
"This industry is in an era of change, the past was the era of the machinery industry, the chassis engine gearbox, these three are the core elements. In today's era, the three major pieces are not the core elements. Because the chassis is becoming more and more standardized, the traditional mechanical parts in the past have been replaced by batteries, motors, electronic controls, and power management, and the intelligence on the car is the core of differentiation. Yu Chengdong is undoubtedly aware of this.
In the interview, he always stressed that Huawei will use its own strengths to provide consumers with a different car consumption experience based on vehicle electrification and intelligence.
"Mobile phones and cars have a lot in common. First, they are all consumer goods, with the three elements of experience, quality and brand. In the beta user group who are looking for problems with the product, I am one of the people who are very enthusiastic about asking questions. I don't let the driver drive, I drive myself, because I want to use it, I have to look for problems. Yu Chengdong tried to translate Huawei's success in mobile phones into the automotive business.
In his eyes, the car will eventually become a technology product. Therefore, he does not mind acknowledging Huawei's shortcomings in the automotive machinery part, nor does he mind admitting that it is the changes that have taken place in the automotive industry that just "bumped" into the place where Huawei has an advantage.
From the perspective of its insistence on "not building cars", Huawei is well aware of its weaknesses and tries to change the public's perception of the industry threshold: In the past 100 years, the knowledge accumulated by traditional auto companies in the automotive machinery part has set up a barrier for the industry to distinguish between inside and outside the door. In the future, the so-called "layman" of the automotive industry may be used to refer to industry participants who cannot bring users a good intelligent and connected experience.
From the underlying logic, this effort to promote cognitive transformation is consistent with Yu Chengdong's current efforts to actively build car-aware people and eliminate external doubts about Huawei. In other words, there is no fundamental contradiction between Huawei's development plan in the automotive business and its step-by-step operational practice.
From Yu Chengdong to Meng Wanzhou
The problem lies with Yu Chengdong, or rather, Huawei's still vague identity within the auto industry.
Previously, Huawei, which has repeatedly clarified the principle of "no car", aims to help car company partners build good cars as an "incremental component supplier".
If it moves forward step by step according to the established plan, Huawei's exploration journey in the automotive field may remain as low-key as any Tier 1 supplier, and it is likely that it will not be controversial.
However, the identity of a pure supplier cannot contain Huawei's ambitions and vision in the automotive field.
According to the cooperation model previously established with Jinkang Cyris, in addition to jointly defining and developing products with automakers, Huawei also undertakes the task of selling new cars based on its full-stack solutions – this is evidenced by Yu Chengdong's vigorous promotion and marketing promotion of the M5 in the interview video.
At present, Huawei does not build cars, but they sell cars. And Musk has repeatedly proved through his experience that a top stream who can't create a topic can't be a good salesman.
Under this identity setting and actual needs, it is better to threaten "to be the world's first" or to propose "to turn Tesla over in one year", all of which are Yu Chengdong's duty to do a sales.
In the future, with the deepening of the involvement in the entire industrial chain of the automotive industry, Huawei's identity will undoubtedly undergo greater changes in the process of cooperation with car companies.
In early April, Shortly after returning home, Huawei Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou was promoted to vice chairman and rotating chairman, effectively becoming one of Huawei's decision-makers with the highest power.
Huawei Vice Chairman, Rotating Chairman, CFO Meng Wanzhou
Although she and Yu Chengdong are only 3 years apart in age, the post-70s female business leader, with differences in gender, professional experience, and professional background, or after Meng Wanzhou officially fulfills the responsibility of rotating chairman, will drive her to bring more far-reaching influence and greater imagination to Huawei's highly valued automotive business in the next stage.
At the huawei 2021 annual report conference held at the end of March, Meng Wanzhou, as Huawei's CFO, released a series of operating data of the company, of which, in 2021, Huawei continued to increase investment in research and development, reaching 142.7 billion yuan, accounting for 22.4% of the annual revenue, a record high.
One foreseeable possibility is that Huawei will fully rely on its increasing R&D investment and R&D capabilities, and leverage its advantages in high-voltage silicon carbide semiconductors, artificial intelligence processors, algorithms, computing power and other fields to fully tap the potential of smart cars and further become a standard setter in the field of future mobility.
In this process, Huawei's voice in the automotive industry will also have more room for improvement.
Of course, there is another key problem in front of Huawei: how to quickly adapt to this transformation of industry identity, so as to accurately grasp the timing of industry change.
When Yu Chengdong expounded the fighting spirit of striving for the first place in the interview, he used the experience of fighting as a case to illustrate.
"I have summed up a rule from fighting, and the fighting spirit is very important. The big kids bullied us, as long as our team dared to fight, hit their faces full of blood, got up and continued to fight, and finally hit them until they smelled the wind and fear. He said.
However, unlike personally participating in the "fight", Huawei now chooses to enter the automotive industry in a "no car" way, which is equivalent to handing over its own safety and reputation to partners to a certain extent.
In this way, the choice of partners is very important.
Among the 4 partners currently announced by Huawei, in addition to the cooperation with Xiaokang Shares, which has derived two products whose influence has not yet reached expectations, the other three companies have not yet given results that can prove Huawei's strength.
Q&A M5
This will also largely limit the scope of Huawei's cooperation – at this stage, strong automakers such as Volkswagen, Toyota Motor, and SAIC Motor will need to observe and wait longer, even if they are interested in cooperating with them.
In this process, all car companies have established self-research capabilities in the field of intelligent technology, or formed a supply chain layout.
Time, or timing, is crucial to Huawei's next step.
Write at the end
When explaining why he chose Xiaokang as a partner, Yu Chengdong said bluntly: "This company is a private enterprise, the spirit of hard work is very strong, working overtime to work hard, and it is very similar to the early Huawei." ”
According to him, the same fighting spirit drove him to put forward the higher goals of "striving to be the world's first" and "selling 300,000 units per year" for the team.
However, although Huawei still maintains 100% of its status as a private enterprise, in terms of business scale, it can no longer be the same as the small start-up company in Shenzhen at that time.
Time has changed, and the management methods that were originally driven by entrepreneurial passion may also be replaced by a more scientific approach.
Peter Drucker, the father of management, once put forward the "SMART" principle for management by objectives in his important book "Management Practice". Among them, "Achievable" is regarded as an important indicator - phased visible results will undoubtedly motivate project participants to achieve better work performance.
In turn, the public needs to give Huawei enough time. On the one hand, it takes time to prove that talent matches imagination; on the other hand, it also needs time to explore the boundaries of its own ability.
Judging from the company's series of actions in the automotive industry so far, Huawei has never intended to put itself in opposition to traditional automobile manufacturing. They just hope to use the industry changes that have arrived, with the accumulation of technology and operational experience in the technology industry, from providing value "increments" for traditional cars to gradually redefining and building new cars.
This time, the in-depth interaction between Yu Chengdong and the car critic is just one of them.
From Google to Tesla, from Xiaomi to Baidu, new players in the automotive industry rushing from the technology world often make some seemingly alarmist remarks. But what really disturbs the existing players in the automotive industry may not be these "barbarians" who have escaped the shackles of traditional rules, but the multiple challenges that the automotive industry is experiencing for a hundred years, and the consequent possibility of constantly collapsing and losing the right to speak.
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