Hello everyone! My name is Chen Jie
At the Beijing Auto Show that just passed, friends who have been there will definitely find that Huawei not only built a large booth, but also brought a variety of auto accessories. It is no exaggeration to say that these things Huawei brings are only one car shell away from building a complete vehicle.
Is Huawei planning to build a car? However, Huawei has stated many times that it does not intend to build cars. At last year’s Shanghai Auto Show, its rotating chairman said helplessly under repeated questioning by the media: "I only want to say one thing today, that is, if Huawei does not build cars, everyone will not." If you doubt me again, there’s nothing you can do about it. Do you still have to write a bloody letter?”
Huawei’s products exhibited at the Beijing Auto Show
Having built such a large booth, Many accessories, but no cars, so what exactly is Huawei going to do? Today let’s talk about Huawei’s ambitions that are greater than building cars, or what its goals are.
Some people say that Huawei is entering the automobile industry because of the current situation. In fact, Huawei began to develop vehicle-mounted modules for 4G networks in 2009. In 2013, Huawei officially established the "Internet of Vehicles Business Department". Last year, Huawei officially established the smart car solution BU (Business Unit). It can be seen that Huawei has been actively developing its presence in the automotive industry.
But automobiles are an industry with a very long industrial chain. There are many examples of technology companies investing in the automobile industry, but they all have their own main directions of attack. Google and Baidu occupy their own territory in autonomous driving; Alibaba and Tencent are flourishing in vehicle systems and application services; Microsoft is focusing on cloud platform services. In terms of automotive chips, Intel, Nvidia, Qualcomm, etc. are also competing with each other, fearing that they will be left behind.
Huawei’s self-driving test vehicle
So which direction will Huawei focus on when entering automobiles? In Huawei's view, children only have to answer multiple-choice questions, and Huawei's choice is to ask for them all. Huawei has internally planned five major sectors: automotive cloud services, intelligent connectivity, intelligent driving, intelligent cockpit and intelligent electric power. Huawei also continues to cultivate its internal skills around these five major sectors.
Smart Car Cloud
Future smart cars are inseparable from cloud computing and services. Smart Car Cloud can analyze driving behavior and profile car owners and vehicle portraits to This provides personalized car maintenance services for car owners and their cars.
Intelligent Internet Connection
Intelligent Internet Connection mainly refers to vehicle communication technology. The application of 5G in the Internet of Vehicles will bring unlimited space for imagination. In addition, intelligent network connection also refers to the interconnection between cars and cars, cars and people, cars and transportation facilities, and cars and urban infrastructure. That is to say, the car and the entire transportation are integrated into the city.
Smart driving
Huawei is a latecomer in smart driving, but Huawei relies on its advantages in chips to provide powerful computing power support for autonomous driving. In addition, Huawei has also made breakthroughs in vehicle-mounted lidar. Huawei's Wuhan Optoelectronics Technology Research Center has a total of more than 10,000 people, and the center is developing lidar.
Vehicle lidar
Smart cockpit
Smart cockpit is also easy to understand. Common smart cockpits mainly refer to heads-up display, language control, smart car and so on. Future smart cockpits will also include AR technology, AI artificial intelligence, and the Internet of Things. The Internet of Things allows you to control home appliances in the car and connect to various network services.
Huawei Smart Cockpit
Smart Electric
Smart Electric mainly refers to motors and batteries. Huawei does not produce motors and batteries, but it will develop battery management for new energy vehicles. systems, motor controllers and other equipment. At the Beijing Auto Show, Huawei brought an electric drive system that integrates motors, electronic controls, reducers, on-board chargers, and high-voltage distribution boxes.
In addition, Huawei is also actively developing the charging pile business. Of course, Huawei is not building charging piles, but has developed a set of charging modules called HUAWEI HiCharger. This charging module can be understood as a charging pile. brain. The function is to make charging more efficient and safer.
These five major sectors of Huawei’s smart car solutions basically cover most areas of new energy vehicles. Then buy batteries and install a car shell, and a car is basically built. .
Nowadays, some new car-making companies can produce cars by hiring OEMs for factories they don’t have themselves. So given Huawei’s current conditions, why doesn’t it build cars?
Car-making is not Huawei’s specialty
Building cars sounds simple, but compared to traditional large manufacturers, Huawei’s car-making experience and technology accumulation are almost blank. Moreover, even if it is tens of billions, it can only be considered a small sum when it is used to build a car.
Even Tesla is top-notch in terms of technical reserves and capital strength. But even so, when it comes to car manufacturing, Tesla's models still suffer from poor workmanship and many quality problems.
Moreover, Huawei’s advantages lie in 5G technology, chip computing power, and the research and development of intelligent driving. As for building factories, building cars, and selling cars, these are not Huawei's strengths. If you rush to build a car, you will be using your shortcomings to compete with the major car manufacturers with a century of experience. Of course, Huawei will not do such a stupid thing.
Don’t build cars
Talent is the friend of all car companies
For all Huawei’s layout in the automotive field and all the products it develops, the ultimate customers are cars Enterprises. If Huawei builds its own cars, these car companies will no longer be customers, but will all become competitors.
Huawei booth slogan at the Beijing Auto Show
It is precisely because Huawei is in the game but does not build cars that Huawei can have the widest circle of friends. In May of this year, Huawei teamed up with 18 car companies including FAW, SAIC, GAC, Great Wall, BYD, and Chery to jointly establish a "5G automotive ecosystem" to accelerate the launch of 5G cars.
At last year’s Shanghai Auto Show, although Huawei is not a car company, Xu Zhijun, Huawei’s rotating chairman, was called the busiest person at the show. I was very busy giving platforms to various car companies and signing cooperation agreements.
Huawei, which does not build cars, has become a hot potato. On the contrary, Magna, a well-known parts supplier, once tried to acquire Opel with the intention of building its own cars. As a result, he was threatened by Volkswagen, a major customer. In the end, Magna gave up building cars for various reasons and rekindled its old relationship with Volkswagen.
Magna Concept Car
So, not building a car is actually taking a step back to make progress, in order to turn all car companies into partners.
The future of automobiles
It is not in manufacturing but in ecological services
In the 1970s, the cost of software on a car only accounted for 50% of the cost of the entire vehicle. Around 2. But according to relevant research, by 2017, this proportion reached 17, and will rise to 45 in 2030.
In other words, even if it cannot be said that building factories and building cars is a sunset industry, it is difficult to have much room for development. This is why Tesla sold only more than 360,000 vehicles last year, but its market value once exceeded Toyota and Volkswagen combined.
Tesla Cybertruck
This fully demonstrates that the future of smart cars and autonomous driving represented by Tesla is full of unlimited room for development. No matter how large the production and sales volume of traditional car companies are, they no longer represent the future. It is precisely because Huawei has seen this that it has firmly stated that it will not build cars, but will focus on building a smart car ecosystem with unlimited prospects in the future.
In the automobile industry, in addition to Toyota, Volkswagen, etc., there are also many behind-the-scenes bosses hidden in the field of spare parts. How powerful are these behind-the-scenes bosses? According to rankings by foreign media, in 2019, the world's largest automotive supplier was Germany's Bosch, with revenue of US$46.555 billion, approximately 313.8 billion yuan. It is basically equivalent to the combined revenue of Geely, Great Wall and BYD.
These behind-the-scenes bosses also lead the development of the entire industry to a considerable extent. For example, ESP was first launched by Bosch in 1995. Today, ESP has almost become a standard feature of vehicles, and even various car companies regard being able to get Bosch's latest generation ESP as a selling point.
In terms of autonomous driving assistance, Bosch is also an invisible leader.
Many autonomous driving assistance systems of independent brands are provided by Bosch, or are jointly developed with Bosch.
Huawei’s goal is to become a behind-the-scenes boss like Bosch of future cars. Moreover, in the future era of smart cars, the role of suppliers will be even more important than now. Some studies believe that only 30% of the value of future cars will lie in traditional components, while 70% of the profits will lie in new functions such as autonomous driving and intelligent networking and full ecological services.
In other words, although Huawei does not build cars, it is targeting 70% of profits in the future car market.
In addition, Huawei not only does not compete with car companies for jobs, but it also does not intend to compete with the big guys behind the scenes. The five sectors of Huawei’s smart car solutions are all targeting the incremental market, not the existing market. I have to say that Huawei’s approach is indeed a smart move.
After decades of development of Chinese automobiles, independent automobile companies have begun to take shape. However, in the field of auto parts, domestic brands are still very weak, and the gap between OEMs and major international manufacturers is even wider.
Among the top 10 global automotive suppliers in 2019, there is not a single Chinese company. Among the top 100, there are only 7 domestic companies. As we have said in the article, most of the innovations in future automobiles will focus on innovations at the software level such as intelligent ecology.
Therefore, auto parts will also be an important battlefield for future competition in the auto industry. I hope Huawei can become an industry leader in the automotive field as it has in the 5G field. Of course, we also hope that China can have more auto suppliers like Huawei. Only in this way can Chinese automakers become truly powerful.
What do you think of Huawei’s deployment of cars but not building cars? Welcome to leave a message for discussion.
This article comes from the author of Autohome Chejiahao and does not represent the views and positions of Autohome.