Since the beginning of this year, the sales of Huawei's smart cars represented by Wenjie have been booming, topping the sales list of new forces for three consecutive months.
A few days ago, according to an online blogger, one of the three major Japanese car brands (Honda, Toyota and Nissan) will be connected to Huawei's intelligent driving system. The exact brand has not been disclosed.
In order to verify the authenticity of the news, we consulted an insider close to Toyota, who said that they have not heard of it yet, and if the cooperation is confirmed, there should be an official announcement in the future.
Insiders close to Dongfeng Nissan have shown their desire for Huawei's empowerment, and from the perspective of the market, they hope to cooperate with Huawei, so that they can quickly make up for the shortcomings of intelligence in users' minds and strengthen brand competitiveness.
Huawei's Intelligent Driving is "Far Ahead"
Turning over the list of new car-making forces in March this year, Wenjie Automobile continued to sit at the top of the list with a sales volume of 31,727 units. Since 2024, it has surpassed Li Auto and has been crowning the new force for three consecutive months.
The new M7 has dragged the car out of the predicament.
Yu Chengdong was also relieved not long ago that thanks to the hot sales of models developed in cooperation with car companies, Huawei's smart car business has achieved a turnaround in the first three months of this year, and the car BU is close to breakeven, and it is expected to turn losses into profits after April. Previously, it expected to be profitable in 2025.
At present, Huawei cooperates with automakers to provide three main models: parts supply mode, solution model (HI mode), and smart car model (HarmonyOS Zhixing). At present, Huawei's smart car and Huawei's car BU have been further linked, and the sales are good, which has also driven the car BU business.
Wenjie is the best spokesperson for the smart car model, and it is also the greatest degree of Huawei's "far ahead" product power to the market, many car companies want to quickly improve their product strength, and cooperation with Huawei has become a shortcut.
In the past, some domestic car companies had reservations about cooperation with Huawei, and some people even put forward the "soul theory", believing that cooperation with Huawei would lose the core competitiveness of enterprises. But now, with the rapid development of intelligent driving technology and the continuous improvement of consumers' demand for intelligence, such a view is obviously untenable.
In fact, the advantage of Huawei's intelligent driving technology lies not only in its leading technical level, but also in its strong ecosystem and open platform. By cooperating with Huawei, car companies will not only be able to access advanced intelligent driving technology, but also share Huawei's ecosystem resources to provide consumers with a richer intelligent experience.
Industry insiders said that since the beginning of this year, many brands have joined Huawei's HI model, expanding the camp and profitability of Huawei's empowered brands, and at the same time, to a certain extent, the pressure has been put on the fuel conservatives led by Japanese car companies.
Toyota is the most likely company to reach a partnership
Toyota's previous cooperation with Huawei was mainly in the field of intelligent cockpit, and the ninth-generation Camry released last month adopted a new in-vehicle system jointly created with Huawei in the Chinese market, and the smoothness has been significantly improved compared with the eighth-generation model.
Although Toyota insiders said that at present, Camry is mainly cooperating with Huawei for intelligent voice recognition, and other aspects have not been involved. However, from the current stage, Toyota is currently the only Japanese car company with Huawei to cooperate with Huawei, and other cooperation in the future is not ruled out.
According to domestic media reports, Toyota's global model intelligent driving solution will adopt the "Toyota + Huawei + Momenta" tripartite joint solution model.
Unlike Huawei's existing ADS advanced driver assistance system, Toyota's solution is a three-party in-depth cooperation and integration, with Momenta and Huawei providing software and hardware solutions respectively. Among them, Momenta is a strategic partner of Toyota, and has provided Toyota with high-precision maps and real-time update services based on camera vision technology.
Therefore, in the future, the cooperation between Toyota and Huawei is likely not to be HI mode, but more like a hardware solution provider. In terms of intelligent driving, Toyota still wants to take the initiative, and the future autonomous driving will be Huawei's MDC platform hardware, and the software will come from Momenta.
Although this triangular partnership is somewhat complicated, both Toyota and Huawei have achieved the desired results, which are in the ultimate interests of both parties, and the future results of autonomous driving still depend on the specific performance of the model.
For players like Toyota, who are lagging behind in intelligent driving, with the support of top suppliers like Huawei, they can quickly improve their intelligent driving capabilities and ensure the competitiveness of models and brands. For Huawei, it can be regarded as the first step of intelligent driving to the world, and more international car companies should choose to cooperate with Huawei in the future.