"Go and stay" Yu Chengdong

This article is included in #Faces #

As expected, Yu Chengdong changed.

At the China Electric Vehicle 100 Forum of Employees, Yu Chengdong appeared as the CEO of Huawei's intelligent vehicle solution BU. Dressed in a straight suit, he spoke with half squinted, as if he was no different from usual. But in the eyes of many media people, he has indeed changed: he has lost the arrogance of the past "stunning", and even looks "a little lost".

Just the day before, Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei announced that he would extend the time limit for "Huawei does not build cars" for another five years. This is equivalent to directly giving Yu Chengdong, who advocates "building cars" within Huawei, a "good drink".

The smart car track is changing with each passing day, traditional car companies are actively transforming, new forces are fiercely fighting, cross-border players are also preparing to enter the market, Huawei's five-year inaction is equivalent to directly sealing the road to "car building".

"It only makes us harder! In a few years, everyone will understand! Leave it time to check! On the night of the announcement, Yu Chengdong left this sentence in the Huawei Voice community, full of dissatisfaction and sadness.

For a time, "Yu Chengdong resigned in anger" and "Yu Chengdong jumped to Xiaomi" and other news spread all over the place. Although Huawei and Xiaomi have solemnly refuted rumors, saying that this is all speculation.

But one thing is certain: Yu Chengdong is really wronged.

"High profile".

People who have dealt with Yu Chengdong basically use these two words to describe his style. In 2016, when Huawei's mobile phone had just improved, he dared to say that "kill Apple in three years and surpass Samsung in five years", and won the title of "Yu Dazui". For the matter of "building cars", within Huawei, he has never hidden his ambitions.

However, "Yu Chengdong has always wanted to build a car, but only he agreed, so he couldn't help it." Earlier, Huawei's rotating chairman Xu Zhijun quipped in an interview, which caused a burst of laughter.

Behind the amusement of everyone, Yu Chengdong "felt bitter in his heart" -

Since taking over Huawei's smart car solution business in 2020, he has been hoping to promote the profitability of this business line as soon as possible and become the "first" in China in the future. However, in three years, tens of thousands of people have accumulated and more than 20 billion yuan of investment has only yielded unequal results such as "Huawei's automotive business revenue of 2.1 billion yuan in 2022, accounting for 0.3% of Huawei's total revenue".

Of course, Yu Chengdong was anxious.

As early as 2011, when he was in charge of Huawei's mobile phone business, he also started from scratch, and three years later, in 2014, he made Huawei mobile phones famous with two "explosive models" such as Mate7 and P7, and sales revenue soared.

If a mobile phone can, why can't a car?

In order to make the car more "selling", Yu Chengdong first transferred the experience of mobile phone sales to the car. At the same time, he was also brought over as his habit of being a "Yu Dazui" - speaking out of tune, bragging, and putting words like "crushing" and "hanging" on his lips at every turn. This does not match the image of corporate executives as "elegant" and "calm" in the public's impression.

For example, he once said that "I still buy fuel vehicles, just like buying a functional machine in the era of smartphones", "The M7 will completely surpass the models of million-class luxury cars such as Toyota Alpha and Lexus LM", "The taste of the ugly people in the M7 is relatively low", and so on.

The original intention was to highlight the advantages of the "AITO Question" model created by Huawei and Cialis, but it was always exchanged for various ridicule.

"There are always golden sentences", "there is no shortage of topics", "every word is stepping on the hot search", which is why most media, including this author, like to interview Yu Chengdong. Former Huawei staff once complained to this writer that the team gave him questions collected from the media, and he hardly looked at them, always preferring to "improvise and play".

The result was, "Lao Yu opened his mouth and broke his leg to refute rumors." But it was also these controversial words that helped AITO Question to gain popularity in the early days.

For Yu Chengdong, it is not enough to help "build a car" verbally.

In March this year, Yu Chengdong chose to take a "dangerous move" - in the marketing channel, he tacitly allowed suppliers to change the words "AITO Question" to "HUAWEI Question".

The real purpose of Yu Chengdong's move is divided among the industry.

Some people say that he simply wants to let the "AITO Qianjie" further "rub" the popularity of the Huawei brand, so as to boost sales - since the beginning of this year, the sales of Qianjie models have declined month by month, with sales of only more than 3,000 vehicles in February, a decrease of about 1,000 vehicles month-on-month;

But some people pointedly pointed out that Yu Chengdong just wanted to take advantage of Ren Zhengfei's deadline for declaring in 2020 that he would "not build cars within three years" to test his bottom line of "building cars" again.

Within Huawei, Yu Chengdong has always been a staunch "car-maker". In his view, in order to make the automobile business profitable as soon as possible, it is better to directly "build a car" than to sell parts or supply modular solutions.

But in any case, this change shocked the entire car circle. As public opinion continues to ferment, some media interpret this as a direct signal for Huawei to prepare for "building cars in the field". Traditional car companies that have had the idea of jointly building cars with Huawei are also deeply worried about this and are unwilling to develop in-depth cooperative relations with Huawei.

This is the last thing Huawei wants. In the past year, senior executives of the company, including Xu Zhijun, have repeatedly stressed that Huawei, which is currently under the "normalization of sanctions", has the most important task to stabilize cash flow and better "survive". "Car manufacturing" is a typical asset-heavy model, with high industry thresholds and long return on investment cycles, which is not conducive to Huawei's steady development in the short term.

"Yu Chengdong's step was too big, and he was sprayed miserably." A Huawei insider revealed.

At Huawei's earnings conference last week, Xu Zhijun, the company's rotating chairman, made a rare point that "someone" repeatedly made a fuss about "building cars", which not only challenged the company's strategic bottom line, but also deepened the misunderstanding of Huawei by the outside world.

"Some people, departments or partners are messing with Huawei's reputation. After these things are clarified, the brand that Huawei has worked hard to build will not be used casually. Huawei does not build cars, nor does it have any brand of cars. ”

Between the lines, it directly pointed out that Yu Chengdong was derelict in his work.

Ren Zhengfei also issued another statement. On March 31, he signed the latest version of the Resolution on Huawei's Not Building Cars, reiterating that Huawei "does not build cars" and the decision is valid for five years. He also put forward strict regulations on the application of the Huawei brand in the automotive business:

The words "Huawei/HUAWEI" must not appear in vehicle promotion;

Words such as "Huawei Question" and "HUAWEI AITO" cannot be used for publicity.

At this point, Yu Chengdong's temptation to "build a car" was completely stifled in its infancy.

"Huawei made cars" this road does not work, leaving Yu Chengdong speechless for a while. After writing that slightly lonely message in the voice community, many people speculated that Yu Chengdong may become the second Li Yinan to leave Huawei and start his own business.

Li Yinan was once a genius boy that Ren Zhengfei highly valued: he joined Huawei at the age of 23 and was promoted to executive vice president of Huawei in less than four years, and was once regarded as Ren Zhengfei's successor. However, in 2001, Li Yinan, who was unwilling to transfer from the R&D department to the marketing department, chose to resign and independently founded Harbor Network Co., Ltd. I thought that this was a good gathering and dispersal, but soon the news that "Li Yinan tried to dig the wall from his old club and shake Huawei's foundation" reached Ren Zhengfei's ears. The final result was that Huawei took him to court with a complaint, and the "successor" became a "traitor" overnight.

Will Yu Chengdong, who has been wronged in the matter of "building a car", make the same choice?

The author boldly speculates that it will not. Just because the "bond" between Yu Chengdong and Huawei and Ren Zhengfei is far deeper than the outside world imagines.

In 1993, Yu Chengdong, then 24 years old, joined Huawei. After serving as 3G product line director, wireless product line president, and European president, at the end of 2011, he was called back to China by Ren Zhengfei to officially take over Huawei's mobile phone business.

Yu Chengdong, who "took office as a new official", carried out drastic personnel reforms, and directly cut the low-end smartphone and feature phone business lines, targeting the high-end market. This has also caused dissatisfaction from the management of multiple departments and business lines.

The performance of the D1 and P1 mobile phones created by Yu Chengdong at the beginning was also unsatisfactory - fever, stuttering, frequent crashes, resulting in sluggish sales and bad reviews. It is said that at that time, Ren Zhengfei was furious after the trial and almost dropped his mobile phone in Yu Chengdong's face in public.

It was also during this period that Huawei's internal "surplus" voices abounded. More and more people began to question Yu Chengdong's ability to work, and operators and terminal business lines were sent "complaint letters" almost daily. There are also rumors that from time to time, Huawei executives have blocked Yu Chengdong in the office and asked him to voluntarily leave. In the end, the matter came to Ren Zhengfei, Huawei's most prestigious manager, who hammered the final words - "Whoever does not support Yu Chengdong's work does not support me!" ”

In this way, Yu Chengdong, who was in the vortex of public opinion, was able to continue to set off. In 2014, after three years of preparation, Huawei Mate7 fully "broke out" - 2 million units were shipped in three months after its launch, and the cumulative shipment volume exceeded 4 million units in half a year. In the following years, Huawei's mobile phone sales revenue grew from 7.5 billion yuan, 9.3 billion yuan to 348.9 billion yuan, and grew to become the largest pillar of Huawei's revenue.

But even with the achievements, the company's internal and external doubts about Yu Chengdong have never stopped. Some are dissatisfied with his ability, and some are not used to his "big mouth" style. Sometimes, the blind Ren Zhengfei will also "knock" him. Even so, Ren Zhengfei always valued Yu Chengdong's ability, commenting that he "can grasp the big and let go of the small, and has a strategic vision."

Yu Chengdong himself once expressed his gratitude to Ren Zhengfei in a post on his "circle of friends" on his 50th birthday - "I am grateful for meeting a great boss at work." It can be seen that between the two, there is a kind of sympathy like Maxima and Bole.

"If it weren't for Elder Ren, Yu Chengdong might have left class eight hundred times a long time ago." Huawei insiders told me.

Now, Yu Chengdong has been "beaten" by Ren Zhengfei again because of "building cars". As Ren Zhengfei said - "I scolded Yu Chengdong because I loved him." Yu Chengdong is too crazy, and scolding him more can ensure that he does not take detours. ”

Yu Chengdong, who is so loving to his boss and devoted himself to the car manufacturing business, does not know how he will feel.