Ideal launched a fierce attack on Huawei

Author | Chai Xuchen

As the two new energy vehicle upstarts that emerged this year, Li Auto and Huawei (Wenjie and Zhijie) have been fighting in the dark several times, and at the end of the year, they have been at the top of the rankings together, becoming the seed players who will challenge Tesla and BYD in the future.

The latest battle situation is that the ideal is aimed at Huawei's best intelligent driving and intelligent cabin, and launched a fierce attack.

"This upgrade of 5.0 (system version) is even bigger than the upgrade from Windows 95 to XP."

On the evening of December 10, Song Ziwei, the "beautiful product manager in the mobile phone circle" who jumped to the ideal, became the keynote speaker and released the "strongest OTA in history" for the ideal.

In the past 14 months, the Ideal Car Machine System has undergone 20 OTA version upgrades and launched a number of applications, but it cannot be compared with Huawei HarmonyOS 4.0 intelligent cabin and ADS2.0 intelligent driving. This upgrade is a big move that has been brewing for half a year with ideal intelligence.

The highlight of the new version is intelligent driving, and the ideal AD Max 3.0 "beta version" originally planned to be launched in 100 cities has become an "official version" that can be opened nationwide. It not only supports full-scene NOA and full-scene assisted driving LCC, autonomously recognizes all kinds of traffic lights, and can drive on urban and rural roads, but also has the upgraded intelligent parking function, which can be used to park across multiple layers of valet parking and can also be controlled by a mobile phone to park in extremely narrow parking spaces.

Two months ago, in the closed-door meeting of the ideal strategy, the strategy of accelerating the "make-up class intelligent driving" was set heavily, and it seems that it has achieved initial results.

Not only that, the updated ideal intelligent cockpit has also received the blessing of its own AI large model Mind GPT, which has improved its application, speed and experience. At the same time, under the optimization of the 5.0 system, the ideal L series models have also increased the winter cruising range by 15%-20%.

The big move is sacrificed, and the effect seems to be immediate. According to a person close to the ideal, the new orders of the ideal hit a record single-day high on the same day, reaching nearly 4,000 votes.

China Merchants Securities pointed out that the ideal price range of 300,000-350,000 yuan has become the main force of intelligent driving, and high-end assisted driving has almost become the standard configuration of high-end electric vehicles, and has also become the fourth largest car purchase factor after brand, price and design.

Therefore, after making up for this big shortcoming, Chairman Li Xiang shouted the slogan of "breaking five" in December, and at the same time helping its new product matrix of "four increases and four purities" next year, running wild on the road to annual sales of 7 or 800,000 units and trillions of revenue.

It seems that everything is going well, but the anomaly is that the day after the release of the new system, the stock price of Ideal Hong Kong stocks opened lower and fell by nearly 1%. According to the analysis of investors in the field of smart cars, this is mainly because Huawei's aces such as the M9 are about to debut, and the market is still worried about this.

In fact, when the ideal crazy make-up class and just stepped on the passing line to the first echelon of intelligence, the question world had already taken the first step.

3 months ago, the new question worldM7 by implanting Hongmeng and Zhijia's facelift, crazy 100,000+ orders, almost the ideal again"disabled", M7 delivery volume in November for the first time exceeded the ideal most volumeL7;And when Li Xiang is brewing next year"4x4"Product layout,Yu Chengdong"Four worlds"Hongmeng Zhixing"Car manufacturing army"is also secretly accumulating,Enter the stage of rapid replication of explosive models。

According to the China Merchants Securities research report, in addition to the M5/7/9 of Cialis, Zhijie will also launch an SUV "Zhijie S9" in the second quarter of next year; BAIC and JAC are preparing sedans codenamed X4 and X6 respectively, the former mainly targets the 30-400,000 range, and the latter enters the million-level luxury market segment. According to a person close to JAC, its cooperation with Huawei will be followed by SUV\MPV products, as well as some mid-range models.

It can be said that the Huawei Alliance is intervening in multiple market segments, indirectly sniping at the L6 in the ideal range of 20-300,000 yuan, L7/8 in the range of 30-400,000 yuan, and L9 and MEGA layout of 50-600,000 yuan next year. Among them, the most intense is the sword shadow of the two sides in the high-end circle of 30-500,000 yuan.

According to the data of the Passenger Association, this year, the sales growth rate of the new energy vehicle market of 30-400,000 yuan increased to 197% year-on-year, accounting for 9%, and the growth rate of the 40-500,000 yuan range increased to 157%, accounting for 2%.

There is a lot of room for imagination in the market, and after Yu Chengdong rearranged his troops, the industry has high expectations for Huawei. China Merchants Securities predicts that the total sales of Huawei will increase by 285% year-on-year to 550,000 units next year.

Next year, under the encirclement and interception of Huawei, will the ideal be able to surpass BBA as desired and successfully reshuffle the domestic luxury car pattern? These questions are still difficult to answer for the time being.

However, it is certain that the ideal 5.0 system is only an online debut, and the investment and polishing will continue to be carried out.

After all, only the L series MAX version can be used for the first time on December 19, and most of the remaining AIR and PRO models will have to wait for half a year to June 2024. Previously, at the third quarter performance meeting, Chief Engineer Ma Donghui said that the ideal intelligent driving team will gradually expand from the current 900 people to 2,000 and 2,500 people next year.

The improvement of intelligent driving ability is linear, and it can only be kept catching up day by day. Another big challenge for Li and Huawei is whether they have the ability to transcend classes and become luxury car sales giants.

Under the current environment of rolling into a pot of porridge, it is not easy to avoid internal friction and correctly receive the cards. Li Xiang once said frankly, "After building a car, I found that the chain of this industry is so long and so difficult." He said the biggest challenge here comes from the organizational skills.

As a latecomer to the automotive industry, this is a test that Ideal and Huawei have to face together. Can the former lay out the pure electric market, make up for intelligent classes, and polish the supply chain to continue to break the sales ceiling, while the latter can learn the lessons of the first half of the year and coordinate the products, services and production capacity of the four car companies to output at full capacity?

From being unknown and questioned, to this year's sales momentum, the ideal slapped countless people who are not optimistic about it, and Huawei's automotive business, which has invested tens of billions of yuan and has been working hard for 5 or 6 years of trial and error, has finally survived to the eve of the outbreak.

In the market of success and defeat, Li Xiang and Yu Chengdong, who are struggling to win back a city, are the people who are the most unwilling to fall behind and admit defeat.

In the next year, as the two most optimistic new car forces in the market, they will definitely stage a more exciting showdown and challenge the few final seats.