The deep reason behind Huawei's rejection of BYD is that DJI may become a strong opponent of Huawei's intelligent driving

Text/Wang Xinxi

Huawei's rejection of BYD, and the news that BYD is cooperating with DJI has sparked heated discussions in the industry.

Previously, according to 36 Krypton reports, DJI Automotive has recently received a clear investment intention from BYD and FAW Group, BYD in addition to promoting the investment process of DJI Vehicle, has also intended to contact Huawei Car BU, but the latter believes that there is little room for cooperation between the two sides, and declined, and the two sides have not entered the substantive investment process.

In this news, the industry has paid more attention to the latter, and why Huawei rejected BYD has caused a lot of speculation. According to industry reports, Huawei Car BU took the lead in cooperating with Changan Automobile, and then invited Cialis, Chery, JAC, BAIC, Mercedes-Benz, Audi, FAW and other car companies to participate in the financing of the joint venture, and did not throw cooperation intentions to the giant BYD. So what exactly is the reason behind this?

Huawei rejects BYD behind to protect the competitiveness of its partners?

If we guess from the direction of industry competition, we will find that the in-depth cooperation between BYD and Huawei is not highly compatible, first of all, the two are competitors, and they are both technology players, BYD is the industry leader, and Huawei is a potential head player. Huawei's opponent in the future is likely to be BYD.

Because today, the core battle field of new energy vehicles is intelligence. BYD Sanden is the strongest, but the industry generally believes that BYD is its weakness in the field of intelligent driving, but in terms of intelligent driving ability, Huawei is recognized as the strongest player.

Huawei's car BU provides services such as intelligent driving, intelligent cockpit, digital platform, intelligent vehicle cloud, AR-HUD, and intelligent vehicle lights, and its intelligent driving relies on LiDAR, which was previously equipped with Huawei's ADS 2.0 high-end intelligent driving system on Wenjie and AVATR using Huawei's 192-line LiDAR.

Therefore, if BYD has contact with Huawei's car BU, it may want to use Huawei's mass production of low-cost intelligent driving solutions to strengthen its technology and cost advantages.

But from the current point of view, Huawei rejected BYD, and BYD finalized the cooperation with DJI Vehicle. DJI has launched a new generation of intelligent driving solution, "Chengxing Platform", which does not rely on high-definition maps and lidars to achieve NOA in urban areas, and will soon be mass-produced. DJI said that thanks to the characteristics of the "Chengxing Platform" to squeeze the potential of hardware, it can also realize high-end intelligent driving functions under limited resources and power constraints.

The industry believes that in addition to Huawei's car BU, DJI Automotive is currently the only domestic company that can come up with a low-cost intelligent driving solution for mass production and supply it to a third party. Others, such as Xpeng, are limited to their own brand of cars.

But BYD is also investing heavily in smart driving, BYD has also invested in Horizon and co-founded Dipai Zhixing with Momenta.

Therefore, here it is clear. Sanden is BYD's signboard, and intelligent driving is Huawei's big killer. If BYD has the strength of three electric + the strongest intelligent driving ability, then BYD is an invincible existence, which will suppress Huawei's Cialis and Changan Automobile's partner car companies.

So, from this perspective, Huawei's rejection of BYD may be to protect its existing partners and secure their competitive advantage.

If BYD also uses Huawei's high-end intelligent driving solution, then BYD's suppressive power and sales may reach a new level, further weakening the competitiveness of other car companies.

Therefore, here we are clear, behind Huawei's rejection of BYD, the reason may be that BYD is too strong, Huawei's positioning is to empower car companies, but in fact, Huawei's capabilities are more used for those car companies that are still not competitive enough, like BYD, a super head, the strong empower the strong, the essence is to further suppress other players in its partner camp.

BYD and Huawei have similar genes, and the battle between the two for intelligent driving routes has begun

In fact, we will find that BYD and Huawei are actually genetically similar. Both are technical genre players.

According to Huawei's 2022 annual report, by the end of 2022, the R&D team of the intelligent vehicle solution business reached 7,000 people, with a cumulative investment of 3 billion US dollars, and the revenue of the intelligent vehicle solution business in the same year was 2.077 billion yuan.

However, after this wave of growth in 2023, the number of Huawei car BU may have further expanded.

In the eyes of the industry, BYD intelligence still needs to make up for shortcomings, in fact, BYD is not weak from electrification to intelligence.

According to the data revealed by the industry - BYD has 25,000 engineers in the electrification group, 15,000 engineers in the intelligent group, 11,000 engineers in the electronics research and development group, 10,000 engineers in the automotive integration group, 10,000 engineers in the battery group, 7,000 engineers in the powertrain group, 5,000 engineers in the semiconductor group, 3,000 engineers in the new materials and basic science group, 3,000 engineers in the commercial vehicle group, 2,000 engineers in the rail transit group。

BYD has 11 research institutes and more than 90,000 engineers, such a huge reserve of technical talents, the potential is very large, and it will also help BYD to make further breakthroughs in intelligence.

Wang Chenglu, former president of Huawei's software department, once publicly said, "Everything in Huawei's eyes is a mobile phone, and a car is a mobile phone with four wheels." Huawei's intelligence focuses on software, algorithms, screens, and AR, and its competitiveness focuses on screen size, chip manufacturers, lidar, occupied networks, and large models.

But BYD's electricity is very powerful, and the intelligence on this basis has its own characteristics, in BYD's view, intelligence should not only be software, algorithms, screens, AR, but also chassis, tires, and steering of the depth of intelligence, which is what BYD calls vehicle intelligence.

Therefore, the battle between Huawei and BYD for the intelligent route has begun. From today's point of view, BYD has the blessing of DJI's partner. DJI's in-vehicle "Chengxing" platform uses binocular vision sensors to directly obtain depth information about road objects, similar to the human eye, without relying on high-precision depth data provided by LiDAR, thereby reducing system hardware costs.

From the perspective of BYD's strategy, it is both lidar and binocular vision sensor routes. DJI's in-vehicle intelligent driving solution has the characteristics of binocular vision, cost performance, etc., as well as its own lidar and production line, and is one of the few intelligent driving technology companies in the industry that has both software and hardware capabilities.

BYD's strategic thinking has always been technology-based, cost is king, focusing on cost-effective and dislocation competition, which is quite compatible with DJI's intelligent driving route.

Will DJI be another rival to Huawei?

Now BYD has the blessing of DJI in intelligence, or will further reduce the cost of high-end intelligent hardware, the cost of DJI's full set of vision sensors is as low as 5000 yuan, which is equivalent to the price of a lidar.

BYD has always focused on the strategy of "standard configuration of more than 300,000 models and optional configuration of 200,000 models", that is to say, BYD may decentralize the intelligent driving technology that was originally available in mid-to-high-end models of more than 300,000 ~ 400,000 to the range of 200,000 to 300,000.

With BYD's market size, it will also indirectly promote the growth and advancement of DJI's intelligent driving capabilities, and DJI is also a technology player, especially when we see that YangwangU8 has been equipped with on-board drones, including intelligent battery swapping, automatic lifting of the apron and automatic storage of drones, etc., which are also very eye-catching.

In December 2023, DJI Automotive and Chery cooperated to launch the production model iCAR 03, which is different from any existing domestic intelligent driving models such as Huawei, iCAR 03 uses a 7V pure vision sensor solution, and the whole car does not have a millimeter-wave radar or ultrasonic radar, which also means that it is the first car in China to rely on pure visual perception hardware to achieve high-end assisted driving functions.

At this point, the battle for the intelligent driving route has three branches, Huawei is LiDAR, Tesla adheres to the pure visual route, and DJI uses the binocular vision sensor route but also reserves support for LiDAR.

Therefore, after Huawei rejected BYD, it cooperated with DJI, and with BYD's market size, it is likely to drive the rapid growth of DJI Intelligent Driving, after all, Wang Chuanfu previously said that BYD will launch more than 10 high-end intelligent driving models equipped with LiDAR in 2024, and DJI has now launched the first set of mass production in China "true" pure vision L2+ Intelligent driving, and Huawei, DJI is also the world's leading LiDAR manufacturer. BYD's efforts in high-end intelligent driving models will further benefit DJI.

According to 36 Krypton reports, on the day that Yu Chengdong shouted that FAW would invest in Huawei's car BU, the FAW team discussed cooperation with DJI, "The company's downstairs is full of red flag teams."

Judging from the current development momentum and potential, DJI is likely to become a strong opponent of Huawei in the battlefield of intelligent driving, and the domestic technology school will also show a multi-point flowering situation, which is also indirectly improving the overall comprehensive competitiveness of the domestic new energy vehicle market.

Author: Wang Xinxi, Senior Reviewer of TMT This article is not reproduced without permission