Huawei-made cars? Yu Chengdong may be able to "include" Li Yinan

This article is the 614th original work of Deep Diving Atom

Fate is sometimes so wonderful. On December 15, 2021, as the founder of Niu Innovation Energy, Li Yinan released the NIUTRON brand and the first model, Ziyoujia NV, announcing his official entry into the new energy vehicle market.

In April of the same year, at the 19th Shanghai International Automobile Exhibition, the Cialis Huawei Smart SF5 jointly created by Huawei and Xiaokang Cialis was officially launched, and the bond between Li Yinan and Huawei converged on a speeding track.

01

Do you still build cars?

In January 2022, Ziyujia's first SUV, Ziyujia NV, debuted. On October 8, 2022, Ziyoujia Auto's first mass-produced car, Ziyoujia NV, was officially launched.

On December 7, 2022, Ziyoujia Guanwei released a "Letter to NV Users", mentioning that since the launch of Youjia's first new energy vehicle NV in October, it has received 24,376 orders; NV will not be delivered in the short term due to the company's own reasons; In order to apologize, Ziyujia will prepare an NV model car and a 200 yuan Starbucks consumption card for intended users to express their hearts.

Li Yinan, who bears the halo of a "genius boy" and Huawei's former prince, likes to mention "a round tour" in the field of car manufacturing. Most of the views on the crux of the inability to deliver point directly to the word "qualification".

Perhaps, Li Yinan foresaw such an outcome very early.

△Self-traveler NV

In an interview in May 2022, he responded positively to a question related to "car failure": "If you can't go on, you can't go on." It will definitely be sad, you can only go home and cry, what else can you do? Suicide? It's also not the first time I've experienced a company collapse. But at least we have to leave the last money, pay severance pay, N+1, and meet the requirements of national laws and regulations. It's a big deal that I won't do it when I see the money, and I will return the supplier's money first. ”

But it is clear that Li Yinan is not willing to fail like this. At the end of a letter to users, Li Yinan secretly "looks forward to the opportunity to get together again in the future."

Signs of reunion soon appeared. In February this year, a photo of an unlicensed self-traveler NV appeared at Chery's commercial vehicle headquarters on the Internet, leading the outside world's speculation to the direction of self-traveler or cooperation with Chery to build a car. At the same time, in the Wuhu Public Resources Trading Center, the relevant information related to the bidding for the site project of "Li's New Energy Vehicle Base" was published, and the appearance of the word "Li's" made this statement more true.

On February 14, the notice of winning the bid was announced that although the information related to the tender did not mark the clear location of the "Lee's New Energy Vehicle Base", the vicinity of the tender project were Chery New Energy Plant and Chery Commercial Vehicle Plant.

It's just that I don't know whether Li Yinan, who has obtained the qualification, can wait until the day of mass production, after all, in the current extremely money-burning new energy red sea, Li Yinan, who has only one round of 500 million US dollars of financing, is far from enough chips to stage "my life depends on me".

In that case, is it possible for Li Yinan to be soft with the former leader? On the topic of "building cars", Huawei is now also facing the choice of "building or not building".

02

Infinitely close to building a car

As early as 2017, the topic of Huawei's car manufacturing has become a hot topic in the automotive industry, and it will be discussed every three to five.

Until October 2020, with Huawei's internal code 007 document, Huawei finally had a final decision on whether to build a car or not - not to build a car within three years.

However, this document is only valid for three years. If no supplementary documents are released after that, the statement that Huawei announced in October this year that it "does not build cars" will expire.

After the Spring Festival, many details also seem to verify the signal that Huawei is "about to" build a car.

First of all, Huawei Car BU has made a number of important personnel adjustments, and Wang Jun, the second-in-command of the car BU who led the construction and planning of Huawei's intelligent driving solution product line, unfortunately became one of the targets of the "adjustment", and Yu Chengdong, who once advised Ren Zhengfei to build a car, took sole power.

Immediately afterwards, in the poster released by the official Weiwei of Qianjie Automobile, the logo above the picture was changed from the original "AITO" to "HUAWEI", although in the eyes of a considerable proportion of consumers, Qianjie is equivalent to Huawei's car, but at the official level, this is the first time that Huawei's logo is generously pasted.

△Huawei logo

Around this poster, a series of true and false have been produced, such as, Huawei and Cialis broke up, sales uniformly received a notice to change the speech "is Huawei's car", and finally the poster was deleted and re-released an old traditional "AITO" logo. Whether the poster is intentional or negligent, it is likely to be a bold test of public opinion and the market by Huawei.

Last Wednesday, Huawei's project to build high-end smart electric vehicles with JAC appeared on the official website of China State Construction Group. There are countless car brands related to Huawei, including Qianjie, Extreme Fox, Avita, GAC, Chery, and JAC and the list is constantly expanding.

From the inside, Huawei's internal thinking is unifying, and from the process point of view, Huawei is "infinitely close" to building cars.

As one of the few representatives of Huawei's internal determination to build cars, perhaps in Yu Chengdong's view, Huawei's technology accumulation in the automotive field for so many years and extensive layout in the industrial chain, if it cannot personally build cars, it is a pity.

When to enter? For this time node, Zhang Yongwei, vice chairman and secretary general of the China Electric Vehicle 100 Association, has made a judgment that the new energy vehicle market is expected to enter the era of tens of millions of vehicles in 2023. This is also the last window period for Huawei to build a car, if it is missed again, it may not have a chance in the future.

03

Does Yu Chengdong dare to accept Li Yinan?

Before Yu Chengdong, Li Yinan was known to the outside world as Huawei's so-called "number two person". In 2007, when Li Yinan became vice president of Huawei, Yu Chengdong was still selling the expansion of Huawei's fourth-generation base stations.

But as mentioned at the beginning of the article, fate is so wonderful. In 16 years, Li Yinan is trying to bring his self-travel family back to life, and Yu Chengdong, who singles out Huawei's automotive business, is also thinking about "how to let the automotive business support Huawei's development and become Huawei's breakthrough".

Yu Chengdong, who is fresh in the world, once commented that this is a "money-burning business, difficult business", Huawei directly invested 7,000 people and indirectly invested more than 10,000 people, which is also Huawei's only loss-making business.

In August 2022, Ren Zhengfei mentioned in "The entire company's business policy should shift from the pursuit of scale to the pursuit of profit and cash flow": "Huawei... Surviving should be the main guideline,...... Cut off everything that doesn't make money. Yu Chengdong also promised to make a profit in 2025 in Huawei's internal speech.

Whether it can be profitable can be spied from the sales volume, throughout 2022, the combined sales of the smart selection mode and the Hi model are less than 80,000 vehicles, which is far from the 300,000 vehicle target set by Yu Chengdong. If 300,000 vehicles is a profitable node, it can only be said that there is not much time left for Huawei.

Compared with Cialis, who needs to calm emotions at any time, and the consideration of whether to build a car. Why can't Huawei and Yu Chengdong consider Li Yinan?

Li Yinan's entanglement with Huawei may have "seen goodbye in the rivers and lakes, smiled and resented" in the crushing of time. However, Li Yinan and Yu Chengdong's Huawei taste is getting stronger, which is the persistent pursuit of victory.

△ Li Yinan and Yu Chengdong

Both of them graduated from top science and engineering colleges in China, and both joined Huawei around 1993 as the first batch of R&D personnel, and even the layout strategies of the two entering the new energy vehicle market more than 20 years later are different, both of which are differentiated by the main range extension.

Yu Chengdong can bring Li Yinan the capital, technology, sales channels and brand power he needs. For Li Yinan, the aura of Huawei's first generation of geniuses has faded, and saving Ziyujia is the pursuit of career. For Huawei, Ziyujia will be a more suitable Huawei-built car body for Celis.

First, a blank self-traveler can carry any laboratory results of Huawei in the car manufacturing business, and compared to the picks and choices of other partners, the self-traveler cannot refuse any request from Huawei in any case;

Second, through the shared Huawei experience, Li Yinan can better understand what Yu Chengdong wants to do and what he wants to achieve. When the old people reunite, something different will always come out.

As for the online rumor to stop all new car qualification application processes, since Xiaomi can be specially approved, Huawei's volume I believe there will be a suitable solution, taking a step back, Yu Chengdong once said that Huawei invests a lot in automobiles, spending more than a billion US dollars a year. Even if you don't have the qualification, find a suitable foundry, this cost is affordable.

At present, Li Yinan's car building plan is forced to press the pause button, Yu Chengdong is falling into a strange circle, business growth needs to build cars, but Huawei wants to make profits, it seems that there is no need to build cars. The battle of new energy vehicles is related to Huawei's future, and it is expected that Yu Chengdong and Li Yinan, two key figures in Huawei's past 30 years, can collide with different sparks in automobiles.