Toyota's choice of Huawei Intelligent Driving, what is the truth?

Here's the thing:

Someone broke the news that one of the "three mothers" of the Japanese system will use Huawei intelligent driving.

In other words, people who can grasp the topic are very good at handling traffic passwords.

Huawei, as the light of domestic products, can now penetrate into Japanese brands. And some people don't want to hand over the "soul" yet, and even Japanese brands have to give the "soul" in full.

The sound of the carnival will continue, and as a springboard, I think that Huawei's intelligent driving will go to sea smoothly and affect the world.

What the hell is going on? Today, we're going to talk about this.

Many people may not know that in the Chinese market, Toyota has a total of 3 OEM-level partners.

They are FAW Toyota, GAC Toyota, and BYD Toyota. The first two are often heard, so, what is the deal with BYD Toyota?

In 2020, BYD Toyota Electric Vehicle Technology Co., Ltd. was established, with BYD and Toyota each contributing 50%. At that time, it was very sensational, and BYD was so ambitious that even Toyota, the world's No. 1 seller, could conquer it.

But this matter was later forgotten. In fact, their cooperation has been carried out in an orderly manner.

Toyota bZ3 This car you know? BYD's motor and battery are used, but this car is produced by FAW Toyota's Tianjin factory, not BYD's OEM.

So, what does the "BYD Toyota" joint venture do? From the current point of view, it is equivalent to the role of the research institute, providing technical support for electrification and intelligence.

In fact, the rumor that "Toyota will use Huawei intelligent driving" is the leader behind "BYD Toyota".

In other words, BYD has played a more critical role.

So, here comes the problem again. What kind of model does the intelligent driving solution cooperated by BYD Toyota and Huawei belong to?

First of all, under the popularization of science, Huawei has launched a total of three cooperation models, from light to heavy, namely "supplier mode", "HI mode", and "smart car mode".

HI mode, the more typical is AVATAR, Huawei provides a complete set of solutions for smart cabin and intelligent driving, but will not be responsible for sales;

The supplier model is not mentioned much, but the coverage is quite wide. In terms of intelligent driving, Huawei can provide an MDC computing platform, which is equivalent to a good hardware platform.

From this, the above question can be answered, the intelligent driving solution cooperated by BYD Toyota and Huawei is a supplier model. Huawei provides the MDC computing platform, while Momenta provides the software layer.

Now it should be clear that cooperation with each other is a shallow level of cooperation. Huawei is just a supplier, analogous to Bosch.

Some people will also wonder, what kind of role is Momenta, and why did Toyota choose Momenta?

There are 2 stories in this:

1. Toyota and Momenta were originally "old friends". In March 2021, Momenta closed a $500 million financing round in which Toyota is one of the strategic investors.

2. BYD and Momenta are also close comrades-in-arms. After all, BYD is making up for the shortcomings of intelligent driving, and Momenta must be credited.

Thus, the combination of "BYD Toyota + Huawei MDC + Momenta" was born.

As for the question, some people asked, will Toyota copy this combination to its projects in the global market?

Most likely, not.

On the one hand, Toyota has long announced that it will choose Qualcomm for its global intelligent driving platform, and at the software level, it will indeed be Momenta (there is an investment bundle, priority is given);

On the other hand, Huawei's intelligent driving platform may still face the risk of being sanctioned.

Therefore, Toyota and Huawei's "smart driving handshake" is only limited to China nine times out of ten. The product that can be equipped is also the bZ3 model, which is currently sold very weakly in China.

To be honest, the topic gimmick and marketing heat are far greater than the actual cooperation itself.

On the track of electric vehicles, Toyota seems to be a bit twisted.

From time to time, we can hear Akio Toyoda bombarding electrification, but at the same time, it was also Akio Toyoda who released 15 electric concept cars in one go at the end of 2021.

In addition, Toyota's ambition to launch 10 BEVs by 2026 and to sell 1.5 million electric vehicles worldwide by 2026 has not wavered.

So, what does Toyota think about electric vehicles, and how have the new market rules changed?

In recent years, there have been 2 dark lines of trend that have been quietly flowing:

1. To solve the problems of the Chinese market, we must have localized ideas. In the past, when oil cars were absolutely dominant, the market discourse of the joint venture brand was also very large, how to make products, and move the global models into the country.

But when electric vehicles began to "speak", the joint venture brands were a little dumbfounded, and their "global cars" were directly introduced into China, and this routine was a bit out of order. Because at this time, the "global car" is backward, and China's electric vehicles have been rolled up like that.

It is necessary to actively use China's electric vehicle industry chain and build electric vehicles in line with local competitiveness in the Chinese market. Toyota is not stupid, it is even equipped with 8155 chips and Huawei HiCar on the new generation Camry that has just been launched.

2. The "reverse joint venture tide" is prevalent, just like Volkswagen's investment in Xpeng Motors and Stellantis' acquisition of part of the equity of Leapmotor, simply borrowing the power of capital to deepen the cooperation between them. Before, it was we who craved foreign brands' technology, and now, it is foreign brands who crave our technology.

Toyota is not late in realizing this, and the joint venture with BYD is also an example.

Moreover, in August last year, Toyota also did one thing, it will officially change its name to "Toyota Smart Electric Vehicle R&D Center (China) Co., Ltd.", the largest R&D base in China, "Toyota Motor R&D Center (China) Co., Ltd."

This adjustment is intended to be synergistic. Since then, engineers from FAW Toyota, GAC Toyota, and BYD Toyota will break down organizational barriers and join the new company's R&D projects.

If you look carefully at the name of the new company, the sword refers to "intelligent, electric", and the direction of research and development is very clear.

With localized top-level thinking and an executable organizational framework, Toyota still wants to do things well in the Chinese market.

Local problems are solved locally, not only in the way of cooperation, but also in the object of cooperation.

It is not surprising that Toyota and Huawei's businesses are hand in hand.

Times have changed, and so have the rules of the game. The Chinese market is no longer the Chinese market of ten years ago.

There is a lot of pressure on joint venture brands, and there are even predictions that the share of joint ventures may shrink from 40% to 10% in the next three to five years.

In this process, the joint venture brands must fight hard after all, and no one knows the final answer.