Recently, Chery Automobile released a new car poster with the word "Hongmeng". Although it was quickly deleted, the outside world has already speculated that Huawei, one year after its high-profile entry into the automobile market, is expected to launch a new car this year. Implement product implementation.
In fact, this is not the first time this has happened. In August last year, Geely also released a poster with the words "Welcome Hongmeng to start a new era of Chinese brand wisdom" and "We are jointly committed to the ultimate experience of users' full-scenario ecology", but so far there has been no further news broke.
Image source: Huawei official
Previously, Huawei had denied car-building plans on many occasions, emphasizing that it would only focus on ICT (Information and Communication Convergence Technology) technology to help car companies create cars. Nice car. Now, with the emergence of multiple cooperations, Huawei's positioning as an "incremental component supplier for intelligent connected vehicles" has become increasingly clear.
Although Huawei does not build cars, its ambitions remain unchanged. ?
Layout of Internet of Vehicles
Nowadays, the boundaries between automobile companies and technology companies have become increasingly blurred. On the one hand, Apple and Dyson can’t wait to show their ambitious plans to the outside world. On the other hand, traditional car manufacturers represented by BMW have announced that they will transform into technology companies.
Many ordinary people hope that the independent brand Huawei, which has risen strongly in recent years, will also move towards the "road of building cars". However, as a traditional communication technology company, the Internet of Vehicles is its strongest area. In view of the fact that in recent years, car central control has become the "fourth screen" after TVs, computers, and mobile phones, the intelligence and connectivity of cars that extend around this smart screen have also become a big market. Huawei's layout in the field of Internet of Vehicles can be said to be just in time.
As early as 2013, Huawei launched the vehicle-mounted module ME909T and established the "Internet of Vehicles Business Department" to provide network connection technology to car companies, and promised to invest hundreds of millions of yuan every year in the Internet of Vehicles. related research and development. ?
In 2014, Huawei cooperated with domestic automobile companies such as Dongfeng and Changan in the Internet of Vehicles and smart cars. Among them, the cooperation between Changan Automobile and Huawei focuses on new technology fields such as L4 autonomous driving, 5G Internet of Vehicles, and C-V2X (Internet of Vehicles based on cellular networks).
In 2018, Huawei cooperated with Audi and planned to launch models equipped with 5G Internet of Vehicles in 2020. In October, Huawei released the MDC600, a computing platform that can support L4 level autonomous driving capabilities, and announced a strategic cooperation with Audi. This chip will be integrated into Audi's cars produced in China to help the latter achieve autonomous driving capabilities. ?
At that time, the only SOC in the world that had high computing power and could support L2 level autonomous driving requirements and could meet the requirements of vehicle regulations was Mobileye’s Eye?Q series, so Huawei chips were unstoppable. When it was born, you can imagine the shock to the industry.
Image source: digitaltveurope.com
In January 2019, Huawei released the world’s first vehicle-mounted multi-mode 5G chip Barong that supports V2X (information exchange between vehicle and outside world) and autonomous driving. 5000.
At the end of May 2019, Huawei officially established a smart car solutions department, aiming to provide smart car ICT components and solutions, and increase its investment in smart connected cars, in-vehicle computing, autonomous driving and other fields. Strategic investment. Ren Zhengfei once pointed out in relevant documents: Huawei does not build cars, but focuses on ICT technology, becoming an incremental ICT component supplier for cars, helping companies build good cars.
Although Huawei has made it clear that it does not build cars, it has been hovering on the edge of building cars. Not only is it technically interconnected, Huawei has also been recruiting talents for the automotive business in the past two years.
It is reported that in addition to the Internet of Vehicles Innovation Center of Huawei’s Central Research Institute, Huawei also has another secondary laboratory, headquartered in Hong Kong, specializing in artificial intelligence and big data, and also involved in autonomous driving. . Not only that, Zheng Gang, who once served as Party Secretary and General Manager of BAIC New Energy, has been appointed as Vice President of Huawei’s Intelligent Automotive Solutions Business Unit (BU). Zheng Gang’s joining is considered by the outside world to be a step for Huawei to fill the talent gap in the automotive field. .
Regarding the noise from the outside world about Huawei’s “car-making”, Huawei stated that in the automotive field, it does not do upper-layer applications and secondly does not build complete vehicles.
What the outside world understands as "making cars" is actually Huawei's layout in the Internet of Vehicles, but this does not mean that it wants to steal the business of automobile companies.
Prepare to "get on the bus"
According to data from IPlytics, a world-renowned statistical organization, Huawei has 66 patents in autonomous driving patents and intelligent connectivity, ranking second in the world. Bit.
Huawei MDC has actually obtained the ISO? 26262 functional safety management certification from Germany's TüV Rheinland Group, which means that Huawei's related technologies and products have passed vehicle-level certification, and mass production and commercial use are about to begin.
Huawei’s five major business segments for smart car solutions proposed last year include five major parts: smart electric, smart connectivity, smart cockpit, smart driving, and smart car cloud. Today, these capabilities have changed a lot. Xu Zhijun, Huawei's rotating chairman, once said bluntly: "What Tesla can do now, Huawei can also do." This shows Huawei's confidence in this aspect. ?
In January this year, HUAWEI Octopus has been launched in Xiangjiang New District, which will effectively lower the threshold for R&D companies in the field of autonomous driving in Xiangjiang New District and encourage more companies, institutions, and schools to actively invest in autonomous driving and intelligent network connectivity. The trend will drive the vigorous development of this forward-looking industry in the local area and help Xiangjiang New Area create a new highland for the ecological gathering of intelligent networked industries.
Image source: Huawei official
Huawei believes that autonomous driving cloud services are at the top of the pyramid of its five major business segments of smart car solutions. Together with Huawei MDC and car OS, *** Together they form a car-cloud collaborative intelligent driving platform, which can effectively help car companies and developers quickly develop autonomous driving applications and facilitate the rapid commercialization of autonomous driving.
In Huawei’s view, the technology and experience accumulated on mobile terminals can improve the user experience of smart cars. Judging from feedback from some car companies, the priority of cooperation for this capability is also higher than other capabilities. Huawei's HiCar smart interconnection system can interconnect cars and terminals to create a new smart lifestyle. Currently, Huawei's HiCar ecosystem partners more than 30 car manufacturers, including BAIC, Chery, JAC and other car companies, and has joined in, with more than 120 cooperative models.
Not only that, Huawei has also been testing intelligent connected car technology in Chinese cities such as Shanghai, Shenzhen and Wuxi, and has signed cooperation agreements with many automakers such as FAW to conduct Hongmeng OS testing. ?
For Huawei, after seven years of exploration, it has basically mastered the overall architecture and key technologies of future smart cars. In Huawei's own words, except for the chassis, four wheels, shell and seats, the rest are technologies owned by Huawei, which makes changing the electronic and electrical architecture of the car no longer a slogan. ?
Not only that, Huawei also announced that it will enter the research and development of sensors such as lidar and millimeter wave radar; it also released the autonomous driving network solution Autonomous Driving Network (ADN) and iMaster intelligent operation and maintenance series products to help The telecommunications industry builds autonomous networks with artificial intelligence as the core.
It can be said that Huawei has made all preparations and can "get on the bus" at any time. ?
Future Increment
Industry analysts pointed out that looking at the current automobile market, traditional automobile companies are facing operational pressure and are slow to turn towards intelligentization; new automobile manufacturing forces have difficulties in financing and difficulty Build an ecology. It can be said that the entire market is in a game, and this process will last for a period of time.
As an international ICT giant with an annual revenue of 100 billion U.S. dollars, Huawei does not lack money, technology, or manufacturing capabilities. It is just based on its insights into the development of intelligent networking and the transformation of the automobile industry that it recognizes Future growth points will be more in high-tech fields such as chips and platform computing processing. It is pointed out that 70% of the value of future cars will come from incremental components.
Therefore, at a time when the automobile industry and the ICT industry are colliding, Huawei is committed to leveraging its technology accumulation and leading advantages in the ICT industry, transforming with the automobile industry, and promoting the traditional automobile industry to move toward intelligent networks. Connected Cars. Huawei Rotating Chairman Xu Zhijun proposed a new idea of ??"changing lanes and overtaking". In his view, the main track of the automotive industry has switched from internal combustion engines to electronic intelligence duels, such as computing, vehicle-road collaboration, 5G, etc.
The realization of all this requires companies like Huawei to provide vehicle-road collaboration, chip computing, 5G and other infrastructure as support.
Huawei has significant advantages at the hardware level, with self-developed AI chips Ascend 310 and Ascend 910, full-scenario AI computing framework MindSpore, and the launch of the world's fastest AI training cluster Atlas 900 and Ascend 910. Huawei Cloud Ascend Cluster Service, and the MDC600, a computing platform that can support L4 level autonomous driving capabilities. The MDC600 computing platform is directly installed on the Audi Q7 prototype car, which can effectively realize the operation of Audi's urban autonomous driving environment.
Not to mention communication technology, Huawei itself is the world's leading provider of ICT (information and communications) infrastructure and intelligent terminals, providing the industry with open intelligent driving computing platforms, V2X platforms, and 4G /5G vehicle-mounted mobile communication module (based on the Balong 5000 module) and T-Box, etc. The technical advantages of mobile 5G, IoT, and communications have made Huawei a fish in water at the level of the Internet of Vehicles.
Huawei’s smart car concept is more advanced than any domestic company. Huawei has an independent smart car solution BU, which fully leverages the technology/scale synergy of various industries to build five major solutions: smart electric, Smart car cloud, smart cockpit, smart network connection, smart driving.
Image source: Huawei official
There are many technical capabilities like this. Huawei does not have to compete with car-making and will delve deeply into the professional and technical fields for more scenarios. With the expansion of the market, the market is still extremely large, and manufacturers will naturally come to cooperate one after another. ?
CITIC Securities analysts have said that Huawei is expected to gain a certain market share in the fields of smart cars and Internet of Vehicles, and its revenue growth is expected to reach tens of billions of dollars. It is expected that Huawei’s sales of smart car electronic components are expected to be It will reach the level of 50 billion US dollars in the next ten years and become an automotive electronics giant on par with Bosch. ?
In this regard, Huawei obviously has its own plans. It is reported that Huawei will vigorously promote the development of autonomous driving technology and has set an internal goal-to become China's leading autonomous vehicle by 2025. Platform provider. "Even though the autonomous vehicle industry is facing the impact of the COVID-19 epidemic this year, Huawei still requires us to prepare for many tests." A Huawei supplier said, which shows that Huawei's radical attitude towards autonomous driving has become increasingly clear. .
It is still unclear whether Huawei, which has one foot in the automotive industry, can dominate one side, but the power of this behemoth with its "sword unsheathed" should not be underestimated. This will at least provide a China's automobile industry has achieved "overtaking" and created more possibilities. ?
This article comes from the author of Autohome Chejiahao and does not represent the views and positions of Autohome.