Who Will Control The "Soul" Of Smart Cars?

On June 30, the last day of the first half of 2021, Chen Hong, chairman of SAIC Group, made a speech at the 2020 annual general meeting of shareholders, which showed the strong side of China's largest traditional automobile enterprise in the transformation, and put the game relationship between traditional automobile enterprises and the Internet in cooperation in front of the stage.

"It is very difficult for SAIC to accept that a single supplier like Huawei can provide us with an overall solution, which will turn into" he is the soul, I am the body ". We can not accept it. Our soul must be in our own hands. " Chen Hong said that he would not accept the overall solution of any supplier, but cooperation at most.

In the past half a year, Internet giants such as Huawei, Baidu, Xiaomi, Didi, 360, etc. have deeply poured into the automobile industry, stirring up a pool of spring water. Originally standing in the center of the stage, car companies are faced with different multiple-choice questions.

An important case of the overall solution in Chen Hongkou is the cooperation mode between BAIC new energy arcfox and Huawei. The hi version of polar fox alpha s Huawei created by both sides will adopt a complete set of Huawei's intelligent vehicle solutions, including not only the core intelligent hardware such as lidar, but also the full stack solution of Huawei's ads automatic driving. The new car, which Huawei is deeply involved in building, is scheduled to be delivered in the fourth quarter of this year.

The 21st century economic reporter learned that the price of this car is no longer decided by the car companies unilaterally as in the past, but decided by the joint discussion between BAIC new energy and Huawei.

Although Huawei has always stressed that it should be an incremental supplier of intelligent vehicles instead of making cars, in fact, Huawei's "Hi" mode has broken the traditional boundary of purchasing relationship between suppliers and automobile enterprises.

The cooperation between automobile enterprises and technology companies has become a common choice for the automotive industry to embrace change. However, the strong internet giants, with great ambition to enter the intelligent electric vehicle industry, which undoubtedly makes some car companies nervous.

Despite the argument that Internet companies are trying to master the "soul", there are different views. However, the fight for dominance in the automotive industry has become more intense in 2021.

Despite the argument that Internet companies are trying to master the "soul", there are different views. However, the fight for dominance in the automotive industry has become more intense in 2021. IC photo

Three ways for technology giants to "build cars"

As early as a few years ago, when the concept of "new four modernizations" was just put forward, there was already a concern in the automobile industry. If technology companies enter the automobile industry and have more say power, automobile enterprises may become "OEM factories".

With the deepening of the concept of software defined cars, this concern is gradually becoming a reality.

AI, big data and cloud computing are the strengths of technology companies and the weaknesses of traditional car companies. In the future, they will become the core competition points of smart cars. This provides a huge business prospect for technology giants to enter the field of intelligent vehicles.

On the whole, in the first half of this year, the three paths for technology giants to participate in "car building" have been very clear. The representative enterprises of these three modes are Huawei, Baidu and Xiaomi.

Huawei's intelligent car business is mainly in two ways. More often, Huawei adopts the traditional Tier1 and tier2 parts supply mode, which is not different from the traditional solution. The other is the "Huawei inside" (HI) mode, which is deeply bundled with auto companies.

Wang Jun, President of Huawei's intelligent vehicle solution Bu, said in an interview with the 21st century economic reporter that the essence of Huawei's inside mode is that from the vehicle definition, joint design and joint development of the teams of both sides are integrated together. The joint design and joint development should at least use Huawei's full stack automatic driving solution to be called hi.

In short, in this mode, traditional car companies are responsible for the definition, modeling and manufacturing of the whole vehicle, while Huawei is responsible for providing the "soul" of intelligent cars such as parts and overall software solutions. Huawei sells these to auto companies to make profits, and the two sides are not involved in equity cooperation.

At present, Huawei's hi model has three most important partners BAIC, Changan and GAC, among which BAIC arcfox will be the first to land.

In March this year, Baidu and Geely Automobile Co., Ltd. jointly established Jidu Automobile Co., Ltd., with a registered capital of 1 billion yuan. Baidu and Geely hold 55% and 45% shares respectively.

The division of labor between Baidu and Geely is very clear. Baidu is responsible for software technology, while Geely is responsible for automotive engineering development and vehicle manufacturing. What Jidu automobile, a joint venture, needs to do is to better integrate the two.

To put it more vividly, the car launched by Jidu is to empower the intelligent ability of Baidu Apollo on the vast architecture of Geely's electric vehicle platform, so as to make a complete set of automatic driving solutions that Baidu has laid out for many years on the real vehicle.

Overall, the logic of Huawei hi model and Baidu's car making scheme is basically the same. According to Chen Hong's description, "technology companies (software) are the soul, traditional automobile enterprises (hardware) are the body".

The difference between the two is that Baidu has the dominant power over Jidu automobile, while Huawei tries to fully empower its intelligent capability to different traditional automobile enterprises.

The path of Xiaomi group's car making is similar to that of Weilai, Xiaopeng and idealism. However, it will rely on Xiaomi group as a support to expand the existing ecosystem of Xiaomi group to the application field of intelligent vehicles.

At present, Xiaomi has not disclosed to the public that it will build its own factories or look for "OEM" car companies to build cars. However, it is certain that Xiaomi group has strong software development ability, and the software development rate of Xiaomi automobile will also be responsible by itself, rather than adopting the whole set of solutions of other technology companies.

In other words, technology companies want to have a say in smart car software, whether they build their own cars, cooperate with them, or "don't make cars to be suppliers.".

The core competitiveness of automatic driving is data-driven. If the ability of data acquisition is limited by automobile enterprises, the technological progress of these companies will be limited. That's why Xiaomi wants to build its own cars, Baidu and Huawei cooperate with car companies in depth. These companies with strong ability of automatic driving technology hope to establish closer cooperation with automobile enterprises, and even incorporate the vehicle manufacturing ability into their own system, so as to ensure that data can be collected continuously and used to train their own algorithms, so as to make the algorithm more and more perfect.

Self research, cooperation or "OEM factory"?

Car companies are not willing to put all their hopes in the same basket. At present, most of the powerful automobile enterprises often choose to cooperate with many technology companies to build their own core competence through cooperation.

Apart from Huawei, arcfox, a high-end brand of BAIC new energy, has more plans than Huawei. In June this year, Jihu joined hands with Baidu to jointly launch a new generation of mass production and shared unmanned vehicle Apollo moon, so as to realize the dual line layout of 2C market with Huawei and 2b market with Baidu. However, of the above two solutions, the intelligent vehicle system solutions are provided by technology companies.

For BAIC, this implies certain risks, which may make enterprises face challenges in the competition of intelligent vehicle technology.

The core of the competition of intelligent vehicle is the accumulated data and the product iteration ability. Outsourcing technology makes it difficult for automobile enterprises to have the ability of data-based iteration, which is the core competitiveness of companies like Tesla.

In this case, there is a risk that auto companies will become "OEM factories". However, for some weak automobile enterprises with weak technical strength, they do not have the ability of software development, nor can they invest more resources and funds in software. Such a complete set of outsourcing technical solutions may be a way for them to survive in the future intelligent automobile industry.

A person from a car company told the reporter of the 21st century economic report that the great risk of cooperation with Huawei lies in that under the current situation of cooperation, data is shared, and data is actually the core of the future smart car. In terms of volume, Huawei may master a lot of data, while a car company may only master its own data.

In addition, it is worth noting that Huawei has a high voice in the whole process of cooperation. However, in the era of intelligent automobile, automobile enterprises hope to change the situation that the parts giants in the traditional automobile era are too strong.

SAIC also has different cooperation with Huawei, Baidu and Ali in different business areas. However, SAIC hopes to maintain a certain "sense of propriety" in its cooperation with technology companies and take the initiative in technology development in its own hands.

It is understood that SAIC has laid out five major centers, including data center, cloud platform center, software center, artificial intelligence algorithm center and network security center, to build the whole basic system. In April this year, SAIC also released its own SOA platform and held the first SOA platform developer conference. SAIC hopes to build its own software ecology based on SOA platform. At the same time, SAIC has also incubated 14 innovative companies to lay out new tracks for intelligent electric vehicles.

From the current industry development point of view, Tesla, Weilai, Xiaopeng, ideal automobile and other new automobile manufacturing forces are more firm self-study groups. This is due to the fact that auto driving technology is regarded as the core differentiation competition point in the future, and they do not want to give the voice to technology companies.

Li Bin, chairman of Weilai Automobile Co., Ltd., he Xiaopeng, chairman of Xiaopeng automobile, and Li Xiang, chairman of ideal automobile, expressed similar views when interviewed by 21st century economic reporter on different occasions, that is, we must adhere to software self-study, and it is difficult to obtain system capability only through cooperation.

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