"Although there are still many unknowns, it is certain that Huawei’s presence in the automotive industry will become stronger and stronger."
Writing | Zhang Ruibai
Editor | Zhai Wenting
Two days before the launch of Zhijie S7, the news that Huawei split its auto business was announced. It was originally the second assignment handed over by Huawei Auto, but the independent news of Che BU shifted the focus of the outside world.
In the past four years, Huawei BU has always been at the forefront because of several core issues:
Whether Huawei builds a car or not; The executive role of Huawei’s automobile solution model dispute; The person in charge of car BU has changed several times; Most importantly, Che BU is Huawei’s only loss-making business unit, and its revenue contribution is neglected in the group.
As a result of these factors, the split car BU has been brewing for more than a year.
On November 28th, at the S7 conference of Zhijie, Yu Chengdong mentioned, "Huawei’s car business is moving towards independent operation, and investment is also introduced. Changan took the lead in cooperation, and several partners of Smart Car have also been invited. At the same time, more powerful car factories in China, such as FAW, are also welcome to participate and jointly create leading and ultimate smart car solutions. 」
Li Xiang, the ideal founder, described the move as, "A similar success story is United Electronics. Huawei is equivalent to Bosch, while SAIC is equivalent to Changan. 」
LatePost analysis shows that Huawei has injected five major businesses, including smart driving solutions, into the joint venture company, which has split the fruits of the past four years, but retained the spark of chips and clouds. The spin-off enabled Huawei to unload its asset burden and introduce external funds to share the cost. It also gives equity protection to the interests of Huawei and cooperative car companies. Huawei turns customers into shareholders and fixes the smart car selection model. The newly formed joint venture company will become the middle platform of Huawei car enterprise alliance.
A few months ago, it was very likely that Huawei’s thinking was not so clear, and the benchmark of intelligent car selection mode led by Yu Chengdong was in trouble. After the bottoming out of M7 and the launch of S7, the prototype of the ecological matrix also means concretization, which gives the car BU the confidence to split up.
From these two products, we can probably see the common characteristics and differences of the word "Jie" family, and to some extent, we can also know Huawei’s ideas and ideas about automobiles.
First, the difference between the intellectual world and the intellectual world
Although they all belong to the word "Jie" family, Wen Jie and Zhi Jie are playing different cards.
Zhijie focuses on the medium-sized pure electric car market, benchmarking Tesla. At the press conference, Yu Chengdong repeatedly compared the parameters of Zhijie and Tesla Model S, as if playing with Tesla.
For example, the space utilization rate, the OneBox design concept adopted by Zhijie S7, the space availability rate can reach 88%, while the Model S is 78.5%.
For another example, the drag coefficient of Zhijie S7 is 0.203, and Model S is slightly higher than 0.208; Regarding battery life, Zhijie S7 has a battery life of 855 kilometers, and the Model S can reach a maximum of 715km；; The power consumption per 100 kilometers is 12.4kWh for Zhijie S7 and 17.5 kWh for Model S.. In short, the intelligent S7 is superior to Tesla in all indicators.
At present, the world is positioning medium and large SUVs and taking the extended range route. (Although the M5 has been published in pure electric version before, the new M7 that sells well now only has an extended range version. As we all know, the opponent that the world has found for itself is also the head of the industry-ideal.
From the beginning, the world of inquiry has been competing with the ideal dark poke. LatePost reported later that Yu Chengdong’s product project in M7 required, "We want what Li ONE has. 」
You can understand that this is a kind of learning imitation, but it is more of an afternoon, so the ideal can’t be ignored or underestimated.
Li Xiang called directly in Weibo in June this year, but was beaten by the critics last year. At the ideal strategy meeting before the National Day, the ideal high-level officials sent a high-pressure signal, "making some people who didn’t understand Huawei and didn’t value Huawei nervous."
Apart from the differences in positioning and benchmarking, the configurations of the boundary and the intellectual boundary are also different.
Although they are all Huawei’s technical solutions, Zhijie S7 is equipped with the latest version of HarmonyOS Cockpit 4.0, while the two models in Wenjie are version 3.0. The difference between the two versions lies in the upgrade of functions. The later version 4.0 is obviously smarter, including the 3D car control desktop and the Ark engine. At the same time, it is equipped with the AI capability of Pangu model, which makes the car’s small art smarter, such as intelligently recommending gas stations.
As for the intelligent driving system, Zhijie S7, like Wenjie New M7, is a HUAWEI ADS 2.0 advanced intelligent driving assistance system. The difference is that Zhijie S7 is equipped with Huawei’s self-developed 192-line lidar, which comes from a third-party supplier.
In addition, Zhijie also applied two first technologies of Huawei:
First, no one is parking service. In Yu Chengdong’s words, "I can drive, but I can stop". At the press conference, Zhijie S7 appeared in a driverless way.
Second, Zhijie was first equipped with a Turing smart chassis. There are many advantages behind all kinds of complex nouns: you can perceive roadblocks 150m in advance; When sensing bumpy roads, intelligently adjust CDC damping, improve vibration filtering, and reduce the impact by 15%.
It is not known whether these two launching technologies are specially customized for the car models of Zhijie, or whether Zhijie just caught up with Huawei’s development progress. Xinbei daybreak asked Huawei’s intellectual circles about this issue, but did not get a corresponding reply.
Second, the intellectual world is the same as the intellectual world.
Both the intellectual world and the intellectual world are the products of Huawei’s intelligent car selection model.
On the basis of providing smart car solutions, Huawei and car companies jointly develop models and deeply participate in product definition, styling design, marketing and user experience.
In other words, Huawei has a great say in what cars to build and how to sell them.
The direct performance is that the current two models of Zhijie S7 and Wenjie are equipped with Huawei’s HarmonyOS cockpit and advanced intelligent driving system. The appearance of the two brands follows Huawei’s consistent design language, which is simple and pure. At the same time, the two brands share Huawei’s sales network, and they can order in Huawei Mall, Huawei stores or authorized stores.
The most important thing that Cyrus and Chery have in common is that both car companies have actively entered the new energy industry, and they have not improved much.
In 2016, Cyrus, then a well-off stock, landed in A-shares and spent 30 million US dollars to set up a new energy automobile brand "SF MOTORS Company". Through the acquisition of overseas mature assets, it gradually accumulated three-power technology, but the road to commercialization was blocked.
In 2020, the first electric vehicle "Sailis SF5" was delivered, and only 732 vehicles were sold in the whole year. Xiaokang shares lost a total of 2.234 billion yuan that year.
Chery competes for Lisi to enter the new energy even earlier. In April 2010, Chery New Energy Automobile Company was established. But sales didn’t pick up until last year. Yin Tongyue Yin Tongyue, the former chairman of Chery, said with emotion: "Chery got up early in the new energy vehicles and caught a late gathering. 」
From January to October 2022, the cumulative sales volume of Chery’s new energy vehicles reached 207,000, up 182% year-on-year. Bao Siyu, general manager of Chery New Energy, is full of confidence: "Chery’s new energy sales have ranked third in China and ninth in the world. Our goal is to be the first in the boutique smart car. 」
Thanks to two explosive models, Chery Ant broke through 300,000 sales in October last year, and Chery QQ ice cream broke through 110,000 sales within one year of listing.
Unfortunately, the good times didn’t last long. From January to September, 2023, the cumulative insured amount of Chery’s new energy vehicles was 71,200, which was 47.59% lower than that of last year’s 135,900 vehicles, almost equal to the waist, and the situation was not very good.
Therefore, in the face of Huawei’s cooperation olive branch, the two car companies did not hesitate to accept it, and were willing to highly cooperate with Huawei’s strategic cooperation demands. Except for manufacturing, almost all other links are led by Huawei.
Even the top leaders of the two car companies showed more learning attitude towards Huawei.
Zhang Xinghai, the chairman of Cyrus, once compiled a Basic Law for the Development of a Well-off Society in an internal organization. The reference object was the Basic Law of Huawei, and the author was the same person.
Yin Tongyue even bluntly said, "Huawei has a lot to learn. You can’t learn the truth by buying books and going to college. Only by working side by side with Huawei can you learn the truth of Huawei. According to auto business review, Chery’s Eta Ursae Majoris Lab was inspired by Huawei’s 2012 Lab.
Third, HarmonyOS Zhixing Ecology
If we say that the M7 is the symbol of Huawei BU coming back to life, the S7 is the second verification of the success of Yu Chengdong’s intelligent selection model.
At the pre-release conference of Zhijie S7, Yu Chengdong began to use a lot of space to talk about Huawei’s technology empowerment, and gave the smart selection model a brand-new name, HarmonyOS Zhixing.
Yu Chengdong said, "This model is to help car manufacturers build products that consumers really love and trust and have a good user experience, so as to obtain a high NPS value (net recommended value). 」
Input with a unified logo can avoid the internal friction of various brands and strengthen the recognition of consumers. This change has been implemented by concrete actions. At the recent Guangzhou Auto Show, Wen Jie and Zhi Jie were exhibited in the same booth, and the logo of HarmonyOS Zhixing was hung in the center.
At the same time, it also means that under the principle of not building a car, Huawei is deeply involved in key links such as industrial design, all solutions and sales, which is infinitely close to building a car by itself.
According to the interface news report, in the cooperation with Huawei, Cyrus has ceded enough power. Huawei can participate in the supply chain and even decide on the reorganization and selection of core suppliers in traditional parts such as interior and exterior trim, body system and chassis system that Huawei has not set foot in.
In addition to Cyrus and Chery, HarmonyOS Zhixing camp also includes Jianghuai and BAIC, which are also named after the "X boundary". As Yu Chengdong said, the products of various car companies do not conflict. Some make SUVs, some cars and some make MPVs, but they can be combined to work together.
With the launch of follow-up products, it will be possible for Huawei to build a product matrix covering all kinds of vehicles, so as to compete with competitors, and the scale effect will also dilute the cost to ensure the continuous hematopoietic capacity and long-term development of this model.
In December last year, Yu Chengdong bluntly stated that Huawei BU was Huawei’s only loss-making business, with an annual R&D investment of more than 10 billion yuan. In the first half of 2023, the revenue of Huawei’s smart car business was 1 billion yuan, accounting for less than three thousandths of the group’s total. And set the goal of making Huawei BU profitable in 2025.
Considering from reality, this goal is still arduous. Huawei needs to speed up the pace, take Cyrus as a benchmark, invite more car companies to join and build more cars.
On November 26th, BU, Huawei’s smart car solution, was split into an independent subsidiary, and at most 40% of its equity was released for external financing.
Changan Automobile announced that it had signed the Memorandum of Investment Cooperation with Huawei. Cyrus subsequently announced that it had received an investment invitation from Huawei’s new company.
Yu Chengdong said at the press conference, "Several partners of Smart Car have also been invited, and at the same time, more powerful car factories in China, such as FAW, are also welcome to participate and jointly create leading and ultimate smart car solutions. 」
This may be Huawei’s first move to speed up the pace. Although there are still many unknowns, it is certain that Huawei’s presence in the automotive industry will become stronger and stronger.