Recently, there are rumors that Huawei intends to invest in Changan NIO, a new energy vehicle company that has only been established for two years and currently has no products. People familiar with the matter also said that Huawei may not necessarily invest and may invest through its funds.
In response, Huawei responded that it had not heard of the incident, while Changan Automobile did not respond.
Is Huawei, which has always promised to "never build a car", start building cars?
In response to the above rumors, a person close to Huawei revealed that Huawei only invests in technology and will not do equity business.
He also emphasized that Huawei invests in technology and technology companies to buy technology, so it is basically impossible to invest in Changan Weilai.
"Many car companies want to establish a joint venture with Huawei, but Huawei has never agreed." From this point of view, this rumor is most likely wishful thinking of the car companies.
But is this really the case?
Today’s Huawei “does not build cars.” There has been a long-standing discussion in the industry about whether Huawei will build cars.
In order to smoothly develop its smart car business, Huawei has made it clear in many public occasions since last year that it will not build cars.
In order to dispel the doubts of OEMs, Huawei even wrote "not building cars" into the company's development strategy.
During the 2019 Shanghai Auto Show, during his debut at a major international auto show, Xu Zhijun, Huawei's rotating chairman, personally announced in front of many car companies that Huawei would not build cars. He said that Huawei would help car companies "build good" cars.
, Build "good cars".
At that time, Huawei established its position in the automotive industry chain as an incremental component supplier for intelligent connected vehicles.
Since then, from April 2019 to the present, Huawei's senior executives have always emphasized Huawei's commitment not to build cars on different occasions.
At the World Intelligent and Connected Vehicle Conference on October 22, 2019, Xu Zhijun, Huawei's rotating chairman, once again emphasized that Huawei's strategy in the automotive field is to help car companies "build good" cars and build "good cars."
At the 12th Automotive Blue Book Forum on August 12, 2020, Wang Jun, President of Huawei Smart Car Solutions BU, also said: "Huawei does not build cars, and our mission is to help car companies build good cars." In a press release issued to the public
, Huawei has also repeatedly emphasized that "focusing on ICT technology, helping companies build good cars, and building good cars" is its development philosophy.
It can be said that the entire company is unswervingly implementing Huawei's commitment not to build cars.
Also starting from the announcement that it would not build cars, Huawei clearly positioned itself and released many results in the past year.
Specifically, Huawei's smart car business consists of two parts: hardware and software, of which software research and development is the core.
In terms of hardware, Huawei has MDC hardware developed based on the autonomous driving platform, which integrates Huawei's self-developed Kunpeng CPU and Ascend AI processor, and is equipped with a self-developed intelligent driving OS. It is an open, standardized, and serialized
Autonomous driving computing platform products.
At present, Huawei's MDC intelligent driving computing platform has joined hands with partners to establish cooperation with 18 mainstream car companies and Tier1, covering a variety of intelligent driving application scenarios such as passenger cars, commercial vehicles, and special operation vehicles.
The most typical one is that Huawei and Audi are conducting a series of autonomous driving tests on the road.
Huawei also has a major killer feature in the hardware field, which is its self-developed lidar.
According to Huawei, Huawei’s Wuhan Research Institute currently has a team of 10,000 people researching technologies in the field of optoelectronics.
Huawei has also established a lidar research team in this team. Huawei's goal is to achieve 100 lines and 200 lines in a short time, with a cost of 500 US dollars or even lower, and support all smart cars to be equipped with lidar.
In terms of software, Huawei is currently focusing on the electronic and electrical layer and the basic software platform layer to build a digital system architecture (electronic and electrical architecture) to enable car companies to efficiently develop smart cars.
For cockpit usage scenarios, Huawei has created the Hongmeng cockpit operating system HOS, which decouples cockpit software and hardware and is open to the north and south.
It has developed basic services for core capabilities such as voice interaction, visual recognition, and audio optimization, which are open to upper-layer applications, and supports the joint definition of open interfaces with car companies.
When cars no longer require people to drive them, the core competitiveness of car companies will shift from providing driving experience to providing car-using experience.
For automotive OS, Huawei has developed the intelligent vehicle control operating system VOS, which makes the smooth migration of original ECU system codes and the centralized development of multiple ECUs simple and efficient.
Compared with the existing operation, Huawei VOS will be more open and the basic OS is open source, helping car manufacturers achieve independent control.
In order to facilitate the development of intelligent driving, Huawei has developed an intelligent driving operating system AOS, which also meets the core requirements for intelligent driving software development such as ecology, vehicle regulations, and data-driven development.
It has passed ASIL-D&EAL5+ certification and supports a rich AI native development library to make intelligent driving system development more efficient.
It is reported that the new architecture developed by Huawei for car companies has many benefits.