"Huawei entered the automotive industry, and its goal is to be the first!"
Yu Chengdong, CEO of Huawei's consumer business, who is known for his big mouth, said in an interview recently that Huawei should first be China's first in the automotive field, and then be the first in the world.
Because "no one remembers who the second is." ”
Even if the onlookers are used to Huawei's most ostentatious CEO, from time to time a few earth-shattering wild words appear. But the ambition to be the first in the automotive industry has caused an uproar Chinese the Internet.
Goal first
In addition to achieving the big goal of being the world's first in the automotive industry, Yu Chengdong may have set a lot of small goals this year.
At the beginning of this year, Yu Chengdong made it clear that "in 2022, I hope that the monthly sales of AITO will exceed 30,000 units, and this year we will be able to challenge the sales target of 300,000 units." ”
He also set his next plan early: "Next year, he hopes to challenge the sales of one million units with partners." ”
Not only to overturn Tesla, but also to achieve annual sales of 2 million vehicles in 2 years.
Unfortunately, reality soon gave Yu Chengdong a small blow.
The new car "AITO Q&A M5", which he had high hopes for, sold only 3,045 units in March this year.
The sales target of 300,000 units will be split into monthly sales of at least 25,000 cars. Ask the sales performance of the M5, it is still far from this goal.
In the interview, Yu Chengdong also had to face the reality and lowered the annual sales target to 200,000 and 100,000. But he still refused to fully admit that he had blown the cowhide this time.
"Every month I go up, 1 year and 12 months, when my sales can climb to 30,000 vehicles per month, I can run to 300,000 sales in a year."
"Last month, more than 3,000 vehicles could be delivered, and then in April, for example, more than 5,000, in May, more than 6,000, and then all the way up, and then climbed to 23,000, the first year can sell 100,000, 200,000 is already a miracle."
If you put aside the rhetoric released by Yu Chengdong and put the vision on the general sales status of the electric vehicle industry, you must know that the target of 100,000 is indeed not a small number.
Among the new car-making forces, the monthly sales of Xiaopeng Automobile and Ideal Automobile, the three giants of domestic new energy vehicles, have stabilized at 10,000 or more, and Weilai, which is positioned as a more high-end, has sold 9985 cars.
Throughout the first quarter, the cumulative delivery of Ideal Cars was 31,716 units, an increase of 152.1% year-on-year, which was able to break through the small target of 30,000 monthly sales.
This still calculates the sales volume of all the models under a brand.
Accustomed to tens of millions of sales of mobile phones, the numbers of the automobile market are much more restrained.
In fact, the only brands that can achieve monthly sales of new energy vehicles in the mainland market can exceed 30,000 are BYD, Tesla and SAIC-GM-Wuling.
Yu Chengdong's ambition is to win the first place in China and the first place in the world in the entire automobile market.
Faw-Volkswagen sold the top car sales in the mainland market last year, with 1.778 million units sold in the whole year. Toyota sells 10.5 million units worldwide.
The chip famine
What hinders the M5 from reaching its target of 100,000 vehicles this year is not just the issue of market acceptance.
A more serious problem than the fact that the car can't be sold is that it can't be built.
Yu Chengdong admitted that when Huawei stepped into the car industry, it did not realize the serious impact of chip shortage on the industry.
A chip of 10 yuan and 20 yuan has been fried to 2500 yuan.
On the M5 car, 9 chips are needed.
Behind the abnormally high price, it reflects the extreme shortage of chips.
On Wednesday, dutch lithography giant ASML held a company earnings conference, where CEO Peter Wennink revealed a rather absurd news - a week ago, a large industrial group revealed to him the industry's predicament, they began to buy washing machines in large quantities, dismantled the semiconductors in them, and assembled them into their own chip modules.
Lithography machine is known as the mother of chips, ASML company in the field of lithography machine is a dominant company.
Limited by its own production capacity, this big fish has eaten enough. Even some small fish in the industry have encountered unprecedented capacity bottlenecks, according to Peter Wennink, a major Chinese chip manufacturer has sold out all its production capacity by the end of 2023.
With the rise of the "Internet of Things" of the Internet of Everything, new energy vehicles are popular, and chips have a wider demand in more and more industries, and this demand will not be met in the short term.
Because the price of opening a new production line is too expensive, chip manufacturers such as TSMC dare not expand their production capacity.
Due to the extended delivery time due to labor and chip constraints, TSMC's production capacity remains tight throughout 2022.
Even in the past two years, semiconductor factories have been operating at extremely high capacity utilization rates, but they still can't keep up with the downstream demand of various industries.
According to Susquehanna's research data, the semiconductor delivery waiting cycle climbed in March, reaching a new high of 26.6 weeks.
And the price increase and shortage of raw materials are not just chips.
Due to inflation, rising raw material prices and other factors, parts manufacturers in the automotive industry chain have chosen to increase prices. There is even a situation where Tesla's official used car prices are higher than new cars.
Because Tesla's new car orders have been scheduled for the second year, and used cars can be delivered immediately.
Due to the lack of semiconductor supply, Toyota has lowered its production target for this year by 100,000 units.
The situation encountered by the ideal car is more complicated. Due to the impact of epidemic prevention and control, supply chain enterprises located in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai areas are unable to supply. As a result, the ideal new car could not be delivered on time.
Yu Chengdong and Huawei, who are in the game, are also difficult to be alone. Yu Chengdong posted in the circle of friends, saying that the automobile industry in May is likely to stop production completely.
All kinds of unfavorable factors are superimposed, Yu Chengdong this time, the cowhide is probably really blown.
Yu Chengdong and his people
Yu Chengdong, known as "Yu Dazui", is a veteran who joined Huawei in 1993 and is a key figure in the rebirth of Huawei's mobile phone business.
Time back to 2010, Apple unified high-end mobile phones, Samsung began to occupy the market, Lei Jun shouted out the slogan of "born for fever", trying to get a piece of the smart phone industry that is rising together.
At this time, Huawei is still doing the function machine of the low-end market, relying on the contract machine bound to the telecom operator, earning a profit of 30 yuan per machine.
At one point, Ren Zhengfei planned to sell the unpromising mobile phone division.
At this time, it was Yu Chengdong who took the initiative to ask for help and picked up the burden of Huawei's mobile phone division.
Along the way, he shouted out the slogan of destroying Samsung and Apple, and also predicted that Xiaomi and other friends would soon die. This style of speaking is controversial.
And Yu Chengdong's verbal efforts have a solid record to lay the foundation.
Over the years, it is he who has led the transformation from a white card to a private brand, from a single operator channel to its own stores and e-commerce. Let a low-end functional machine brand successfully transform into one of the top high-end smartphone brands in the domestic market.
In February 2016, he spoke for the first time about his nickname of "Yu Dazui", laughing, "I really did not brag, at best I was not modest." ”
Inside Huawei, there are few voices questioning his rhetoric every time. Because over the years, Huawei terminals under the leadership of Yu Chengdong have been able to exceed the task every year.
Before the impact of the 2019 US entity list, Huawei firmly occupied the top spot in the domestic mobile phone market. Even overseas markets such as Europe have achieved the second largest market share.
Even in the case of sanctions, Huawei still surpassed Samsung with a market share of 21.4%, surpassing Samsung with a market share of 19.1%, and strongly topped the throne of the world's first mobile phone sales in 2020.
There are more people bragging, and it takes real skill to realize the bragging skin one by one.
Yu Chengdong is such a person.
Behind this is countless hard work. Yu Chengdong said: "We would rather give up profits than ensure customer experience. When I started to take over Huawei's consumer business, it was also a loss-making business, and I borrowed money from the company to issue year-end bonuses to employees, but I made the product well, and the profit level went up. ”
In this interview, Yu Chengdong said his secret to victory: "The fighting spirit is very important, the face is covered with blood, get up and continue to fight, hit them until they are frightened." ”
It's hard to build a car
But he encountered the hard nail of building a car.
Yu Chengdong, who is deeply involved in the mobile phone business, was appointed CEO of the smart car solution BU in May last year.
Insiders in the automotive industry, few people are optimistic about Yu Chengdong and Huawei.
Huawei has stated its position of "not building cars" several times, trying to present itself as the best partner of new energy vehicle manufacturers. Yu Chengdong let out a big word, "Cooperate well with us, I have the confidence to turn him into the most profitable car company in China!" ”
Chen Hong, chairman of SAIC Motor, disagrees with this, saying bluntly that he cannot accept cooperation with third-party autonomous driving solution providers such as Huawei.
"We, the souls, must be in our own hands."
First-line manufacturers, indeed no one accepts Huawei's cooperation plan. No one wants to be subject to people in the field of core technology.
Most of the car companies that choose Huawei are currently a few steps slower.
On August 25 last year, Nezha Automobile signed a cooperation agreement with Huawei. The two sides will cooperate in various aspects such as HMS (Huawei Mobility Service), autonomous driving core sensors, and smart cockpits. The first model of the cooperation, Nezha S, will apply Huawei's MDC intelligent driving computing platform and lidar technology, and will be launched this year.
BAIC, GAC and Changan also adopt Huawei Inside mode, with Huawei providing a full-stack intelligent driving system and intelligent cockpit system.
On the sales side, Huawei is also frequently moving. According to Caixin, in the past year, a large number of employees of Huawei's consumer business group have turned to the car sales business, accelerated the transformation of stores across the country, and prepared for assisting partners to sell cars.
Many car companies just want to borrow Huawei's fame and sell cars in Huawei mobile phone stores.
The first car released by Huawei and Ciris in April last year was poorly evaluated. Not only did it sell less than 7,000 vehicles in half a year, but it also quickly fell into the storm of suspension of production.
Some car owners said, "SF5 was bought when it was sold, and was proud of it, but the delivery process was a bit long, and the use process was also a little disappointed, but I was looking forward to the upgrade of SF5, but the listing of the M5 gave him a blow, and instantly felt that the SF5 he bought became an abandoned baby, and the disguised suspension of Cyrus gave a big blow." ”
Later, it was reported that the car purchase channel of SF5 was closed, and the Hongmeng system was no longer updated.
This also casts a shadow over the M5, which Huawei's in-depth cooperation with.
The lessons of Celis are pending, who can be sure that the M5 will become the next "abandoned baby" because of sales and strategy?
But no matter how bumpy and long the road ahead is, Yu Chengdong believes that Huawei's successful experience in the mobile phone industry can be copied to the automotive industry.
The automotive industry, with its long history, has a highly closed ecology and an extremely strong supply chain. In the words of car critic Wu Pei, the players in it "did not say that they played for 10 years, let alone played for 40 or 50 years."
Yu Chengdong's way to break the game is to choose to look to the future: "In the past, it was the era of machine industry, and now it is moving towards the transformation of automation. ”
He believes that the times have changed, the previous automotive three-element chassis, engine, wave box, chassis, the chassis is becoming more and more standardized, the rest is replaced by batteries, motors, electronic control, power management.
Intelligence is the core of differentiation. Times have changed, and he believes that Huawei's accumulated advantages can just adapt to the big changes in the automotive industry.
At the beginning of the great change in the mobile phone industry, Ren Zhengfei chose to believe Yu Chengdong: "Not supporting Yu Chengdong is not supporting me." ”
In the era of new energy vehicles, 53-year-old Yu Chengdong put a familiar big word, perhaps really can lead Huawei to overtake in the corner, and then catch up.
But in front of him, there is still a long convoy, crowded with the wild hopes of new and old car companies.
Author: Wu Xin