Author丨Maxifeng
Responsible editor丨Cui Liwen
Editor丨Chic
Cars and mobile phones cross over each other, who is their worst enemy?
Huawei, Apple, and Xiaomi began to march into the automotive field, both because the electric vehicle field is the main track of the future, and because the smartphone field in which it is located is gradually saturated.
The global automotive industry is large-scale, with an output value of trillions and a huge market size. According to the March 2022 data forecast, the global electric vehicle market is expected to exceed $354 billion by 2028, and anyone on the foreseeable road wants to drive in early.
It seems that car manufacturers are not willing to be passive, and organize a counterattack to start building mobile phones and smart watches. Geely invested in Meizu to benchmark Apple, NIO established a mobile phone team, and NIO announced the unveiling of new machines in 2023. Geely NIO and even BYD have joined the industry to create "smart watches".
In fact, the situation between mobile phones and cars is not a situation of mutual business grabbing, but towards a big goal.
In terms of intelligence and software ecology, mobile phone manufacturers are showing their strength, such as Apple's CarPlay, Huawei's Hongmeng car system, is monopolizing the brain of the car, software-defined vehicles are gradually becoming the mainstream trend.
Smart cars, which rely on mobile phones to provide them with software advantages, are expanding their own use scenarios, beginning to get rid of the original "steel machinery" label, and giving the car a richer and full-scene new value as a travel tool.
Xiaomi, Apple and Huawei cannot actually be defined as mobile phone manufacturers, mobile phones are only a powerful branch of it, in fact, they are all innovative technology companies.
And it seems that the technology giants are really building cars, whether it is the first phase of Xiaomi cars that invested 10 billion, Apple cars that have entered a nine-year journey, or the strongest "auxiliary" Huawei of car companies has not been smooth sailing in the automotive field.
01
Moving forward in singing and expectation
Although they are newcomers to the automotive industry, they are not nobodies, whether they are singing or expecting, behind it means great pressure.
Huawei chooses not to build "complete vehicles", but to help car companies build good cars. Therefore, Huawei leverages the positioning of its own technology companies to focus on ICT technology to position incremental parts suppliers of intelligent automobiles, providing incremental components that traditional automobiles do not have: high-precision maps, chips, perception hardware (lidar, etc.), intelligent cockpits, intelligent driving, ecosystem services, and cloud services.
Huawei's car manufacturing layout is divided into three segments: parts supply mode, solution integration HI mode, and smart car mode.
The three closest to car manufacturing are the smart car model, because this is the only way Huawei not only participates in product styling design, interior design, and intelligent solutions, but also is responsible for model marketing and terminal sales. In this mode, Huawei has deeply supported channels and brands, and has the deepest participation and dominance.
Huawei's AITO Cialis is the smart car model, and its performance this year is also relatively eye-catching, with a cumulative sales of 75,000 units throughout the year, becoming the fastest growing brand among the new forces of car manufacturing, and more car companies have noticed the vigorous vitality of this model.
Previously, when CATL signed a strategic cooperation framework agreement with Chery Holding Group Co., Ltd., Yu Chengdong appeared and was in the C position, which also confirmed the continuous expansion of its partners. Also present were Yin Tongyue, chairman of Chery, Zeng Yuqun of CATL and Wang Laichun, chairman of Luxshare Precision.
At the beginning of the year, Jianghuai Automobile also chose the cooperation route of Huawei's smart car, it is reported that the first model of Chery and Huawei cooperation will be released this year, in addition to BAIC will also launch smart car business, plus Cialis and JAC , Huawei's smart car team is growing rapidly.
Huawei has made relatively smooth progress in the field of car manufacturing, and quickly found its own positioning, compared with Xiaomi and Apple, Huawei seems to be a down-to-earth representative.
Obviously, Apple is not satisfied with being the "behind-the-scenes boss" who provides technology to rely on, Apple's ambitions are huge, and Xiaomi has its own ambitions.
In 2014, Project Titan made Apple's car an open secret, and at an undisclosed location near Cupertino's headquarters, more than 1,000 automotive experts and engineers began building a dream of fully autonomous driving for the Apple Car.
In March 2021, Xiaomi founder Lei Jun led the team for Xiaomi Auto with tears and all reputation, and started Lei Jun's last venture with the ambition of full-stack self-research.
For the automotive industry, excessive ambitions can be a burden on the road ahead.
Entering 2023, it is the ninth year of Apple Car development, the person in charge has changed four, and the development goal is constantly changing and abandoning. The initial fully autonomous driving was also abandoned after unsuccessful attempts, and the release plan was postponed to 2026, and the price range was also lowered to less than $100,000. This will be squeezed into the same track as the Tesla Model S and Mercedes EQS.
It seems that Apple has stopped being "crazy" for "love" and has begun to focus on reality. For the current year of rapid change, the price drop of 20,000 is a compromise of the current market environment and a significant change in product positioning. The one-year postponement means that many unknowns and competitors will emerge in large numbers.
Xiaomi's situation is also similar, at this year's Xiaomi press conference, Lei Jun first pushed Xiaomi cars to the stage, and immediately announced that before the official appearance of Xiaomi cars, this is also the last release and clarification of everything about Xiaomi cars.
It's just that at the beginning of the month when rumors were flying, the general manager of Xiaomi's public relations department still had no choice but to reply that "Xiaomi car brand approval encountered difficulties" was fake news.
Carrying the brand effect of Apple Xiaomi, it is no longer possible to do big things in silence, so they can only continue to move forward in singing and expectation.
02
Build the frame first and then install the wheels
And what is the way forward for them? How to press different ruts on the same electric car road?
Although the car has not seen half a wheel, but the ruts of the two have begun to be clear, Apple began to "layout" early, Xiaomi galloped to "organize the game", both have their own framework and ideas.
Although Apple has given up full self-driving, it is still persistent in its pursuit of automatic driving and intelligence.
Apple intends to install various sensors in its cars, including cameras, radar and lidar, which can be said to be the integration of the self-driving "eyes". When combined with lidar, radar, and camera systems, higher levels of autonomous driving can theoretically be achieved in the future.
With massive amounts of data flowing in from various sensors, as well as cloud-based intelligence and multiple other management functions, the cars of the future will require a lot of processing power.
Apple's strength lies in its experience and accumulation of computer systems, with news that Apple has developed an on-board computer system that connects to a custom sensor array code-named "Denali" and whose high-end processor has the computing power equivalent to the sum of the four best chips used for AI functions in Apple's Mac.
Since the announcement of the car, Xiaomi is quickly forming its own car-making team.
First of all, Xiaomi has invested in a number of automotive chip-related companies. In September 2021, Xiaomi invested in Black Sesame Intelligence, the head enterprise of autonomous driving computing chip companies, which is its first investment in the core chip link of the upstream of the car.
In July this year, Xiaomi also participated in the A+ round of financing of hundreds of millions of yuan of Yuntu Semiconductor, while Yuntu focused on the research and development of automotive-grade chips. At the end of the year, Xiaomi exclusively invested in Aoxin Technology, which was established last year, and this round of financing will be used for the research and development of in-vehicle network (CAN/Ethernet PHY) series chips.
For the automotive industry, chips can be said to be a "hard currency" in short supply. On the basis of hard chips, more complex autonomous driving and intelligence can be built at will.
Xiaomi also attaches great importance to autonomous driving, on June 8, the domestic lidar unicorn company Hesai Technology announced the completion of more than 300 million US dollars in financing, one of the leading investors is Xiaomi Group. More than a month later, Xiaomi Group led another investment in Shanghai Geometry Partners, a company based on millimeter-wave radar, with a financing amount of nearly 400 million yuan.
Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun believes that autonomous driving is the key point of smart car victory, and Xiaomi autonomous driving will also use full-stack self-developed algorithms.
In addition, the advantages of mobile phone manufacturers' ecological interaction are incomparable with traditional car companies, and Apple's CarPlay can be used by many car companies precisely because of the extensive and closed ecological chain of its mobile phone users.
Both Xiaomi and Apple have the well-known artificial intelligence voice interaction engine, Siri and Xiaoai, the AI virtual assistant that connects everything. Similar to Apple, Xiaomi has set a high priority for AI when implementing car projects. If these can be well integrated into the car, the interaction aspect will become their advantage.
It can be seen that unlike Huawei's decisive shot, Xiaomi and Apple are one in the layout and one in the organization, and they are still constantly building the frame bigger and bigger, although these frameworks have very clear subdivisions and brand characteristics, but after all, it is not a case that the mobile phone plus four wheels can be on the road, and time will become their biggest enemy.
The crossover between mobile phones and cars is actually compatible with technology and is looking for new hosts. In today's increasingly demanding software and hardware, automobiles seem to be expected to become a new carrier of technology.
Because of this, mobile phone manufacturers can reasonably integrate the AI, software, chips and ecological chain accumulated from mobile phones in the last era into cars, and the cross-border of mobile phone companies may open up new fields for smart electric vehicles. But time does not wait, and the later the market is saturated, the less space is left.
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