Huawei'S Car Adventure

Huawei's auto business is speeding up.

On April 17, Huawei joined hands with BAIC's high-end brand arcfox to launch the alpha s Huawei hi version. The logo of Huawei inside appeared on mass production vehicles for the first time.

On April 18, Huawei's intelligent vehicle solution bu (hereinafter referred to as vehicle BU) held a hi new product launch conference, and released a new generation of intelligent components and solutions including Hongmeng OS vehicle machine operating system, 4D imaging radar, mdc810, etc.

On April 20, Yu Chengdong, the helmsman of Huawei's consumer business, officially announced that Huawei began to sell cars. Huawei smart select officially launched the sale of Cyrus sF5, which will enter Huawei's stores and flagship stores.

"After being sanctioned by the United States for many times, Huawei's mobile phone business has been affected. After thinking about it, Huawei decided to sell cars, which can make up for the decline in profits caused by the impact on the sales of mobile phone business." Yu said.

For Huawei, the original three major supporting business operators BG, enterprise BG and consumer BG have been relatively mature. When the mobile phone business encounters huge development obstacles, Huawei needs to find new business opportunities. The automotive sector is undoubtedly a good choice.

With the in-depth development of the new four modernizations of the automobile industry, traditional vehicle enterprises, Internet giants and parts suppliers have been deployed in the field of intelligent connected vehicles. As an enterprise with ICT (information and communication) infrastructure and intelligent terminal provider, Huawei has not hesitated to "get involved" in this competition.

From manufacturing parts for smart cars, to building a new business model of Huawei inside jointly with BAIC, Changan and GAC, and then to selling cars through its own channels, Huawei automotive Bureau has become more and more in-depth. Huawei doesn't make cars. Huawei Bu helps car companies build good cars, and Huawei intelligently chooses to help them sell cars. Huawei's automotive business needs to be both 2B and 2C.

Although Huawei doesn't make cars, it has already deeply involved in the key fields of intelligent vehicles, and is trying to gain a higher voice and dominant power in the industry.

What can be seen is that Huawei's auto dream has not only become "Bosch in the era of smart cars", but also takes itself as the center, embraces the circle of friends and creates a complete ecology.

The business of intelligent vehicles will become an important part of Huawei's future business map, accounting for an increasing proportion.

For Huawei, behind the gorgeous turn is an adventure full of unknown, surrounded by enemies.

Whether it's a traditional 100 year old auto company, a new car maker like Tesla, or a car maker like Xiaomi and Baidu, they may become Huawei's partners in the automotive field, but they are also fierce competitors.

The automobile industry, especially in China, is undergoing profound changes.

The original automobile factory, first-class suppliers and second-class suppliers are undergoing great changes, with a clear division of labor from the top to the bottom, and not much change in decades.

Many start-ups or technology companies may be customers, suppliers, partners or competitors. The relationship between companies is changing in different projects and different occasions. The original concept of hierarchy, which has been fixed for decades, is no longer obvious, and each ecosystem is advancing in the process of integration and collision.

How far Huawei can go in the automotive industry depends on its model and playing method, and what role it will play in such a pattern.

And this adventure is just beginning.

Technology rush to the beach

Huawei's entry into the automotive field can be traced back to the development of on-board modules in 2009. In 2013, Huawei established the Internet of vehicles business department and launched the vehicle module me909t, and began to lay out the field of Internet of vehicles and automatic driving.

In April 2019, Huawei participated in the Shanghai auto show for the first time as a core supplier of automotive incremental components. Moreover, for the first time, Huawei has made clear its positioning in the automotive industry: Huawei does not build cars, but focuses on ICT technology to help car companies build good cars.

In terms of business layout, Huawei will make a layout in five areas: smart car cloud, intelligent Internet connection, intelligent cockpit, intelligent driving and intelligent electric. In May 2019, Huawei officially established the intelligent vehicle solution Bu to implement the strategy of intelligent connected vehicle.

At the same time, Huawei is gradually expanding its circle of automobile friends and cooperating with many automobile enterprises to create an industrial ecology.

During the 2019 Shanghai auto show, Huawei has opened strategic cooperation with several main engine plants and parts supporting enterprises, such as Volvo, SAIC Roewe, arcfox, Ningde times, Siwei tuxin, etc., to provide ICT infrastructure construction and intelligent services. In May 2020, Huawei, together with the first batch of 18 automobile enterprises including FAW, Changan, Dongfeng, SAIC, GAC and BAIC, further established a "5g automobile ecosystem" to accelerate the commercial process of 5g technology in the automotive industry.

"Huawei's entry into the automotive industry is largely to seek the needs of multi industry development. As far as the volume of Huawei is concerned, it is easy to regard automobile as a target industry when seeking new business support and expansion. " Zheng Yun, global senior partner of Roland Berger and vice president of Greater China, told 21st century economic reporter.

External requirements also provide conditions for Huawei to enter the Bureau.

First of all, China's automobile market capacity is large enough, and the value chain of the automobile industry is very long, from the front-end parts to the back of the whole vehicle and after-sales service. Secondly, the automobile industry itself is likely to be subversive and has a clear subversive trend. Third, as a leading technology company in China, Huawei has its own strength and core advantages. When entering the automotive industry, Huawei has the opportunity to stand out. Its existing business capabilities are closely related to the future automatic driving and digital application of vehicles.

Looking back on the development process of China's automobile industry, the automobile manufacturing industry has made many breakthroughs, but it is restricted by the development and application of core technologies.

In the trend of automobile intelligence, networking, electrification and sharing, software is put in a more important position.

In the era of software defined automobile, algorithms, operating systems, data and so on are the core of competition, while intelligent hardware is the basis of technological development.

Huawei has sufficient strength and technology accumulation in intelligent hardware and software, which is an important reason why Huawei can quickly enter the automotive industry.

Huawei hopes to seize the intelligent car market through the rapid development and application of technology.

At the Beijing auto show in September 2020, Huawei held the Huawei intelligent vehicle solution ecological forum in Beijing. Huawei introduced its progress and development logic in intelligent driving, intelligent cockpit and cloud service, which was the first demonstration of Huawei's intelligent vehicle business layout.

The layout of Huawei's intelligent driving field is mainly to provide the underlying core technology for research and development of automatic driving. Huawei mainly builds hardware platform and operating system for automatic driving, which is developed by third-party partners. Huawei provides the MDC computing platform, the operating system AOS / Vos and the cloud service octopus for automatic driving. Through open cooperation, Huawei accelerates the landing of intelligent driving.

In the field of intelligent cockpit, it is mainly based on Hongmeng ecology of mobile phone to build the operating system HOS of Vehicle version, so as to build the ecology of the whole intelligent cabin.

Huawei's intelligent car cloud service is based on big data and AI capabilities, providing auto driving cloud service, high-precision map cloud service, Internet of vehicles cloud service and v2x cloud service.

At the end of October 2020, Huawei released its hi brand to cooperate with auto companies as an incremental component supplier of intelligent vehicles.

Huawei will provide software and hardware for vehicle companies in the "Huawei inside" (HI) mode. However, only models equipped with Huawei ads automatic driving system will have the "Hi" logo on the body.

Auto pilot easy to kill Tesla?

On the evening of April 17, the first mass-produced car with Huawei hi logo, arcfox alpha s, was officially unveiled and pre-sale was launched.

The most outstanding highlight of the hi version of Huawei alpha s is the high-level full stack solution of Huawei ads.

According to the official statement, the full stack automatic driving system designed for China's road and traffic environment and aiming at user's driving experience adopts the design idea of "end as the beginning", and builds a full stack solution for L4 ~ L2 + automatic driving based on L4 level automatic driving architecture.

In terms of hardware, the hi version of alpha s Huawei will be the first intelligent car equipped with mass production lidar. Specifically, it includes 3 lidars, 13 cameras, 6 millimeter wave radars and 12 ultrasonic radars. In addition, the super central supercomputing ADCSC of the alpha s Huawei hi version can support 400tops / 800tops computing power.

Huawei said that arcfox alpha s can realize automatic driving without intervention in the urban area of 1000 km.

In terms of intelligent cockpit, alpha s Huawei hi version is equipped with Hongmeng OS intelligent interconnection system for the first time, and Kirin 990A cockpit chip will be used.

From the perspective of product pricing, the price of alpha s subsidy is RMB 251900-344900. The price of the basic version with Huawei ads automatic driving function on expressway is 388900 yuan, and the high-level version with full automatic driving function of Huawei ads (including urban area, high-speed, valet parking, etc.) is priced at 429900 yuan.

From the perspective of pricing range, the price of Tesla equipped with enhanced auto assisted driving function is 32000 yuan, and that of FSD with fully automatic driving is 64000 yuan. In other words, the price of Huawei's self driving solution is slightly higher than that of Tesla. One of the important reasons is that the alpha s Huawei hi version has built three lidars.

"This is the first year of high-level autonomous driving." On April 17, Liu Yu, chairman of BAIC Blue Valley, said in an interview with 21st century economic reporter.

According to the previous media test ride video, the new car in the automatic driving experience is commendable. However, it still takes a long time for high-precision maps to be drawn accurately, so there is still a long way to go from the test area to the life of the general public.

It is revealed that car owners in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen will be able to enjoy the automatic driving system first and second tier cities in succession.

It is worth noting that the domestic laws and regulations on automatic driving still need to be further improved. Whether automatic driving can be widely used in urban areas, and how to define the rights and responsibilities after an accident, there are some problems in the actual scene.

However, there are different voices in the industry for Huawei's high-level automatic driving. As the new car has not yet been fully produced, it needs to wait until the fourth quarter of this year. During this year's Shanghai auto show, a number of insiders told reporters that it is still unknown how many Huawei's current propaganda contents and functions can be carried on real cars.

On April 19, he Xiaopeng, chairman of Xiaopeng automobile, said in an interview with the media that many automatic driving L4 software companies are also working on similar systems and have already done so last year or the year before last. However, Huawei is relatively strong, with a set of hardware system and ecology, which is a great help for Huawei's progress.

A senior manager of an auto parts enterprise told the 21st century economic reporter that although Huawei is really powerful, its propaganda is even stronger. He hopes that they can solve the problem of mass production of the polar fox alpha s as soon as possible.

"Now the market can see the so-called L4 full-automatic driving, people can not intervene or rarely intervene. There are a lot of demos in this part, and there are many companies to do. But when it comes to real L4, considering the level of mass production, each company has a long way to go. " On April 19, Xu Daquan, vice president of Bosch China, said in an interview with the reporter of 21st century economic report.

In Xu Daquan's opinion, it should be said that now we have entered the L2 + era, without the need for safety personnel to sit in the car. At that time, L4 was the real L4.

At this stage, only valet parking can be realized. However, this technology has been implemented by many enterprises. For example, Bosch AVP automatic valet parking scheme is the first truly government approved sae-l4 automatic driving technology in the world, but it is completely low-speed and is used in parking lots.

Although Huawei ads claims to be able to realize the automatic driving without intervention of 1000 km in urban area, since the previously circulated video is from the test road route, in this environment, there is a better accumulation of road condition and environmental data, and it is not difficult to realize it technically at this stage. However, if you want to drive on a wider range of roads in the future, there are still technical difficulties, and also face the restrictions of laws and regulations.

"One of the prerequisites of AI model is data. Where does Huawei's data come from? Want to piss Baidu, waymo? " As for Huawei's claim that it can quickly mass produce automatic driving, some insiders questioned it in an interview with the 21st century economic report.

Some people believe that Huawei has the underlying chip hardware technology, but the algorithm data accumulation may not be prior.

"Data is important, but core data based on coner case is the most important." On April 18, Wang Jun, President of Huawei's intelligent vehicle solution Bu, said.

At present, it is more important for Huawei to support the practical application of ads by collecting high-precision maps.

Huawei has obtained the qualification of high-precision map acquisition. According to Wang Jun, Huawei's preliminary plan is to collect four big cities in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen this year, and expand to more than a dozen cities next year, adding several more cities iteratively every three months. Huawei's ultimate goal is to complete the collection of high-precision maps nationwide and support its operation of autonomous vehicles nationwide.

(please refer to 21 finance and economics app for details)

?