Text/Wang Xinxi
According to a report by 36Kr, Huawei issued relevant personnel adjustment documents, and Yu Chengdong stepped down as CEO of Huawei Device BG and still retained the position of chairman of Terminal BG. He Gang, former COO of Huawei Device BG, took over as CEO of Huawei Device BG.
According to people close to Huawei, Yu Chengdong's resignation may be a signal to focus more on the automotive business. Why? The terminal mobile phone has been on the right track, the chip problem has been solved, and now the most difficult thing is the smart car. All in smart cars are becoming the industry's consensus on Yu Chengdong's resignation as CEO of Terminal BG.
But in fact, behind Yu Chengdong's resignation as terminal CEO is the news that Huawei's intelligent driving ushered in a heavyweight competitor, Tesla's FSD into China.
Tesla's FSD has entered China, and Huawei's smart car is under pressure
Huawei's mobile phone business has recovered first, into a stable track, Huawei's car bu business, originally Yu Chengdong management, now handed over to Jin Yuzhi, car bu in the first quarter began to turn losses into profits, reversing three consecutive years of loss business dilemma, a number of car companies began to use Huawei HI mode and parts model, the future Bosch path has been straightened out, do not need Yu Chengdong to invest too much.
However, there are still many challenges in the mid-to-high-end market of automobiles and the field of intelligent driving, and the competition in the automotive market far exceeds that of the mobile phone market. From BYD to Tesla, Wei Xiaoli, Xiaomi, there are many powerful opponents. However, if you want to pick one of Huawei's smart car competitors in China, Xiaomi may be a fierce rival that cannot be underestimated.
Judging from the data of the recent weekly sales list of Yiche, in the weekly sales in April 2024, the Zhijie S7 is inferior to Xiaomi SU7 and Zeekrypton 001.
Judging from Lei Jun's investment and the perfection of Xiaomi's SU7 first car, Xiaomi has great stamina, and said in an interview that Xiaomi's ideal is to be among the top five in the world in the future, and currently believes that there is a 10% possibility. Lei Jun's prediction and execution of the trend is undoubted, from the scale of the Xiaomi factory, Lei Jun's investment in car manufacturing is unprecedented, and the current popularity and sales of his first car are unrealized in the past. Xiaomi is one of the fierce competitors facing Huawei's smart car business in the future.
But when it comes to impacting the core hinterland of Huawei's intelligent driving technology, there is still a gap between Xiaomi and Huawei, and in this regard, Tesla may be Huawei's heavyweight opponent of intelligent driving. Tesla CEO Elon Musk made a surprise visit to China on April 28. The industry believes that this has accelerated the process of Tesla's FSD entry into China. "The Tesla app has changed the original optional FSD (Full Self-Driving Capability) page prompt 'to be launched later' to 'coming soon'. "Tesla's FSD entry into China is a huge challenge for Huawei's smart car. If Tesla's FSD takes root in China, Tesla's profit pillar will gain a more solid soil for growth, and the domestic automotive intelligent network industry chain needs to face FSD head-on.
FSD has been the focus of Tesla's R&D in recent years, and Tesla has previously implemented localized data storage in Tesla's Shanghai data center in 2021. In addition, Tesla has also introduced a third-party authority to audit the company's information security management system, and passed the security management system certification (ISO27001).
In today's world, the core battle arena 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.
Therefore, in order to compete with Huawei in intelligent driving capabilities, many manufacturers have chosen to cooperate with NVIDIA. As early as the beginning of this year, Great Wall Motor, Li Auto, Zeekr and other car companies reached an on-board autonomous driving platform cooperation with NVIDIA, and at the 2024 NVIDIA GTC conference, Nvidia announced in a high-profile manner that BYD will use NVIDIA's next-generation smart car chip Thor.
In the Huawei intelligent driving camp, Audi and Toyota have chosen to cooperate with Huawei intelligent driving, which can be regarded as a step forward in their localization in China, which may save them more time in transformation and enjoy dividends earlier. Now that Tesla's FSD has entered China, the domestic competition pattern will turn the dark war between Huawei and Nvidia into a triangular battle between Huawei, Nvidia and Tesla. And Tesla may be a stronger opponent.
Therefore, the price war of automobiles is becoming more and more fierce this year, and it is likely to continue in the next two or three years until a large number of industries are cleared, to survive the final round of the most brutal final elimination of the automobile industry?
And it is precisely that Tesla is beyond Huawei's reach in terms of price war and cost control. If only one of the most important indicators of viability is to be selected, it is to choose the indicator of gross margin. Enterprises with high gross profit margins are more confident to continue to fight price wars, and can have more money to invest in research and development and launch new models to cater to market car buyers, and high gross profit margins are to stand firm in the high-end market.
Therefore, what Huawei Smart Car is currently seizing is a high-profit part of China's high-end brand influence cars, and there are enough profits to survive on the automobile track.
A bunch of black technologies in Huawei's car BU must be brought by Zhixuan to create a good model point, create the Mate series and P series in Huawei's cars, and occupy the high-end profit area of the automobile market. Now that M9 has been successful, in addition to M9, there is also a need for S9 as a column, and now BBA occupies the most lucrative profit in the 400,000+ market price range, which is the high-end market that Huawei M series and S series want to win.
But the problem now is that in the market range of 20~400,000, the opponent facing Huawei's smart car model is Tesla. Tesla has its own FSD, and Huawei's HI model is dominated by traditional manufacturers such as Changan, Yiqi, Dongfeng, and Shangqi.
From the perspective of user portraits, Huawei users compete in a very similar direction to Xiaomi and Tesla users. A Xiaomi, Tesla's fan traffic is very huge, which corresponds to Huawei's fan traffic is also huge, followed by intelligent driving, Tesla FSD may be Huawei's biggest competitor. The news of Tesla's FSD entry into China caused Tesla's stock price to soar by 15% to more than $194 per share, increasing its market value by more than $82 billion. It will be Huawei's biggest competitor.
Huawei's smart car will have a battle with it
Focusing on building Huawei's future high-end car brand and becoming China's BBA, it will compete with Tesla's FSD in intelligent driving, and Xiaomi in terms of fan economy model and product experience, which is an inevitable opponent for Huawei's smart car business in the future.
In terms of intelligent driving, in terms of intelligent driving, Tesla and Huawei are different models.
Tesla's FSD is a pure vision solution, which only relies on a few cameras to collect video data, and relies on powerful computing chips and leading algorithms for data processing to achieve autonomous driving.
Huawei's leading Chinese manufacturers use lidar and vision fusion solutions, relying on lidar to collect data and process data through computing chips and algorithms to achieve autonomous driving. This solution has a high cost, and the actual performance of urban autonomous driving in China's complex road conditions may already be ahead of Tesla's solution.
However, the realization of autonomous driving in urban environments and environments with poor line of sight, as well as future evolution, are not currently in strong demand for users. The scary thing about FSD is that it can be achieved at a cost of only a few hundred yuan for 8 cameras, which is simply too economical compared to expensive lidar.
In the end, the market needs to give an answer to which one users prefer. If Huawei can't maintain the first place in the future, it will not be able to support its high-end premium, therefore, now the automobile market is entering a critical stage of full competition bayonet, cost comparison production and R&D efficiency, and top intelligent driving ability.
Therefore, Yu Chengdong's resignation as CEO of the terminal BG is a signal that Huawei's smart car business is facing a more brutal competitive situation, and is facing strong competitive pressure from Xiaomi traffic and Tesla's FDA entry into China. Yu Chengdong, who is fully committed to the smart car business, can he do a good job in this field and lead the smart car to a higher stage, Tesla FSD and Huawei intelligent driving PK, who wins and who loses, and whether FSD is overestimated or underestimated, will be the highlight of the next stage. We'll see.
Author: Wang Xinxi, Senior Reviewer of TMT This article is not reproduced without permission