Huawei's new move in the HarmonyOS ecosystem Zhijie S7 has started mass delivery, and AI PCs are connected to the Pangu model

On April 11, Huawei updated its automotive and PC products at the HarmonyOS Ecosystem Spring Communication Conference.

At the meeting, the upgraded version of Zhijie S7 was the first to debut, and Zhijie is also one of the flagships of Huawei Hongmeng Zhixing. Yu Chengdong, Executive Director of Huawei, CEO of Device BG, and Chairman of Intelligent Vehicle Solution BU, said that the Zhijie S7 has officially started mass delivery, and the new M5 will be released on April 23.

In November 2023, Huawei upgraded the smart car model, released a smart mobility solution to empower partners, and renamed the smart car model to "HarmonyOS Smart Mobility". At the press conference on the same day, Huawei further stated that HarmonyOS Zhixing is the HarmonyOS Intelligent Vehicle Technology Ecological Alliance.

In addition to the car, Huawei also released the first flexible OLED notebook Huawei MateBook X Pro, focusing on thinness and AI performance, its thickness is only 13.5 mm, and the weight is only 980 grams, Huawei's high-performance notebook has entered the "100-gram era". At the same time, this is also the first time that Huawei's PC has been connected to the Pangu model, and the new product will also be equipped with third-party large models such as Wenxin Yiyan, which will be integrated into the AI space to provide generative AI capabilities.

In addition, the HarmonyOS ecosystem has recently ushered in a milestone on the mobile phone side, with Huawei officially announcing that more than 4,000 applications have joined the HarmonyOS ecosystem, an increase of 20 times in just two months. Yu Chengdong also revealed that Huawei will hold a developer conference in June, and HarmonyOS NEXT HarmonyOS Galaxy Edition will open beta (test) in June, which also means that "pure Hongmeng" is coming. On the whole, in the words of Yu Chengdong, Hongmeng ecology "has crossed the mountains of ten thousand mountains, and it has sailed straight to the sea".

图片来源：IC photo

Zhijie S7 was listed for the second time

At the press conference, the first smart electric vehicle Zhijie S7 cooperated by Huawei and Chery Automobile was launched for the second time, with a guide price of 249,800 ~ 349,800 yuan, which is the same as the price range when it was first listed last year, and has been upgraded in terms of battery capacity, such as the battery pack of Zhijie S7 Pro will be upgraded to 82kWh. In addition, the new Zhijie S7 Ultra version has been added, and the original three models Max, Max+, and Max RS have been reduced by 20,000 yuan, and the entry-level model has been equipped with the basic version of Huawei Visual Intelligent Driving.

Yu Chengdong announced that the Zhijie S7 car will start mass delivery on the same day. However, at the press conference, Yu Chengdong's signature mantra "far ahead" was not mentioned once in the whole process.

In fact, when the Zhijie S7 was first launched, it was once popular, with more than 20,000 orders since the start of pre-sale, but then fell into the cloud of "difficult birth", and the delay in delivery caused complaints from pre-order owners, and the order delivery order was also chaotic. At a forum in March this year, Yu Chengdong said that "Zhijie S7 has delayed the listing and mass production due to the shortage of chips and the relocation of the factory, and it is expected to return to normal from April."

At the same time, the friction between Chery and Huawei has also been put on the bright side, and it is reported that Chery is dissatisfied with Huawei's dominance of R&D and production in the Zhijie project.

At the press conference, Yin Tongyue, Secretary of the Party Committee and Chairman of Chery Holding Group Co., Ltd., clarified the cooperation between Chery and Huawei, saying that Zhijie is the most important project of Chery, and Chery has established an independent business division of Zhijie brand, led by the top R&D leader and the top manufacturing leader, with exclusive manufacturing industrial parks and special resources to ensure investment.

"If China wants to build a good car, it can't do without Huawei, and if China wants to go from a big automobile country to an automobile power, it needs the empowerment and blessing of Huawei's Hongmeng system. Yin Tongyue revealed, "Yu (Chengdong) and I always communicate offline once a month, online once a week, and communicate on WeChat every day." He also said that the new factory can now achieve the level of "one S7 off the assembly line in one minute".

As the first sedan under Huawei's Hongmeng Zhixing, the Zhijie S7 is equipped with Huawei's Giant Whale 800V high-voltage battery platform, HUAWEI DriveONE 800V high-voltage silicon carbide high-efficiency power platform as standard, and Tuling intelligent chassis.

At the same time, as the "integration" of Huawei's many new technologies, the product advantages of Zhijie S7 are still reflected in the advancement of intelligent capabilities. In terms of intelligent cockpit, Zhijie S7 is equipped with intelligent cockpit Hongmeng cockpit 4.0, and Xiaoyi, the voice assistant who joins the Pangu large model, will be pushed in May.

In terms of intelligent driving, Yu Chengdong said that Huawei's intelligent driving is a spot rather than a future, and the Zhijie S7 can enjoy intelligent driving when you pick up the car, and the urban NCA covers 40,000+ cities and towns across the country, realizing full-scene intelligent parking such as parking on behalf of driving, valet parking, and remote parking. According to official data, in actual use, the success rate of incoming/outgoing elevated highways in Zhijia City is as high as 99.2%.

According to the data of Gasgoo Automobile Research Institute, more than 70% of the models equipped with the NOA pilot function are mainly concentrated in the price range of more than 300,000 yuan. "At present, the cost of Huawei's intelligent driving system is still a bit high, and models with more than 300,000 yuan are used, otherwise they are all losses. Yu Chengdong admitted frankly.

It is worth mentioning that,Huawei and Xiaomi's fate of falling in love and killing each other in the mobile phone circle continues to the automobile circle,The two who meet on the narrow road on the automobile track will eventually have a battle,As a direct competitor of XiaomiSU7,The second listing of the ZhijieS7 must show enough sincerity,In order to restore the consumer confidence lost due to production capacity problems。 In addition, Zhiji L6 and Zeekrypton 007 are all strong opponents of Zhijie S7.

In addition to cooperating with Chery Zhijie and Cialis to ask the world, Huawei Hongmeng Zhixing has also cooperated with BAIC to create the Xiangjie brand, and the cooperation with JAC has not officially disclosed the brand name. In the above-mentioned cooperation, the current growth momentum of Wenjie is rapid, and the monthly sales champion of the new power brand in the Chinese market has surpassed Li Auto for three consecutive months, and the competition between Wenjie and Ideal has become more and more anxious.

How Huawei's AI PC makes a move

Looking at the PC category again, the MateBook X Pro notebook released by Huawei this time is equipped with an Ultra 9 processor, and the three key words are thin, flexible, OLED screen, and AI.

Talking about the technology behind thinness, Yu Chengdong said that Huawei's self-developed Cloud Falcon architecture realizes the lightweight of notebooks while ensuring performance through multi-dimensional innovations in structure and materials, while the flexible OLED screen also reduces the weight of the fuselage.

On the other hand, the integration of AI technology has become one of the key factors to promote the development of the PC industry.

First of all, in terms of large models, the MateBook X Pro is the first to apply Huawei's Pangu large model, and its AI summary function can quickly and accurately extract key information from text, audio, and video content.

In addition to its own large model, the MateBook X Pro also integrates multiple third-party large models into the AI space entrance. It is reported that the AI space has introduced the first batch of AI large models such as Baidu Wenxin Yiyan, iFLYTEK Xinghuo, and Zhipu Qingyan, providing more than 100 AI large model agents, covering various scenarios such as office, learning, creation, and software development.

Secondly, at the application layer, Huawei also conducts R&D with upstream and downstream enterprises. For example, Huawei has cooperated with WPS to launch a series of AI functions, including intelligent text typesetting, dialogue operation tables, and brain map to PPT.

In addition, in terms of interconnection, the AI capabilities of the Huawei MateBook X Pro can be extended to mobile phones, tablets, and other devices by connecting other devices through super terminals.

Whether it is chip giants such as NVIDIA, Intel, and AMD, or software and hardware manufacturers such as Huawei, Lenovo, Honor, and Microsoft, the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain have increased investment and reached a consensus that AI PC will become a new inflection point in the development of the PC industry.

Recently, Intel and Microsoft jointly announced the definition standard for AI PC, that is, it needs to have NPU, CPU and GPU, and supports Microsoft Copilot, and the keyboard directly has Copilot physical buttons. Each component of the CPU, GPU, and NPU has AI-specific acceleration capabilities, and each of the above parts can distribute AI work according to the type of computation.

In the eyes of the industry, 2024 will become the first year of AI PC, and AI PC products of various brands are being launched one after another.

At present, in addition to traditional PC manufacturers, brands such as Huawei, Samsung, and Honor have also entered the PC market and are actively iterating generative AI functions under the wave of AI. On the one hand, it is to upgrade AI performance in chips such as NPU, and on the other hand, it is to work with applications to provide stronger AI productivity.

AI has also become a new engine for the PC market, and judging from the forecasts of various institutions and companies, the market for AI PCs is relatively optimistic this year. For example, Intel's latest forecast is that AI PC shipments will be about 40 million units this year.

Chen Shuxin, senior research manager of IDC China, analyzed to the 21st Century Business Herald reporter: "AI PC may indeed have a positive effect on the overall PC, PC is the most suitable end-side product for AI inclusiveness, from the application scenario, PC in life, work, study, games, have certain application prospects, rich development direction, in the commercial and consumer fields will have a certain stimulating effect." In addition, AI PCs also have enough capacity to provide enough computing power to complete device-side computing to ensure data security, and it can take into account the hybrid of the cloud. ”

Therefore, in Chen Shuxin's view, AI PC will indeed play a role in promoting the overall market. "However, it will be more difficult in the first half of 2024, the overall market model and related software are still in their infancy, and they have not yet matured, and the user side is not enough to stimulate the demand for a large number of ordinary users, but in the long run, AI PC will definitely bring the demand for replacement and drive the growth of China's PC market. The related upstream and downstream requirements will be further increased, including for higher memory, stronger heat dissipation, and so on. ”

For more information, please download the 21 Finance APP