Then, Yu Chengdong, CEO of BU, Huawei's smart car solution, stated in the evening of 3 1: "Wenjie Store will begin to dismantle all promotional materials related to Huawei dialect tomorrow (April 1 day)."
All this is only 23 days after March 8, when "AITO asks the world" was quietly changed to "Huawei asks the world".
I have to admire Ren's wisdom, pattern and realm.
0 1, Huawei has two choices to enter the automobile industry. In front of Huawei, there are two choices. One is to build "Bosch of China", instead of building cars by itself, to help car companies build good cars; The other is to build your own car, so that "Huawei" will eventually become a vehicle brand.
Practically speaking, Huawei has missed the opportunity to build a car, which is the best opportunity before the car market takes off, and there is almost no opportunity in the process of rapid growth of the car market. But now the China auto market is already a highly competitive stock market. The chances of latecomers are slim, and the most important thing is not to make money.
In 2022, the net losses of Weilai, Tucki and Ideality were as high as 654.38+0.44 billion yuan, 965.438+0 billion yuan and 2 billion yuan respectively.
The new energy vehicle market looks lively, but except BYD and Tesla, almost no one makes a profit, and the losses of new forces continue to increase. The sales scale of Miko Wu has reached 300,000 vehicles, and it is still at a loss. The entire new energy automobile industry has a serious overcapacity, much more than the mobile phone market. At this time, it is really not a wise choice for Huawei to build a car by itself.
Therefore, Huawei's initial strategic choice is to build "Bosch of China" to help more car companies build cars. In fact, in the vehicle field, a number of very powerful enterprises have emerged in China, whether Geely, BYD, Great Wall, Changan, Guangzhou Automobile, SAIC, and their comprehensive strength is already very strong. It is very difficult for Huawei to kill any such competitors in the China market.
China accounts for 1/3 of the global auto market, and there has never been a giant supplier of auto parts and systems like Bosch, which is of course a pity, but it is also a great opportunity. From the market perspective, the probability that Huawei will build a "Bosch of China" is far greater than the probability that Huawei will become a "Volkswagen of China" or another BYD.
In 2022, there will not be a China enterprise in top 15 of global auto parts.
In 2022, Bosch's global sales reached 88.4 billion euros, about 646.67 billion yuan, and its profit before interest and tax reached 3.7 billion euros, about 27.07 billion yuan. Among them, as the core business of Bosch, the sales of automobile and intelligent transportation technology business reached 52.6 billion euros in 2022, about 384.78 billion yuan, up 17% year-on-year.
Huawei's global revenue in 2022 was 642.3 billion yuan, slightly lower than that of Bosch. If we can successfully build a "Bosch of China", it is equivalent to building another Huawei.
This is certainly not easy, so Huawei needs a model.
This model is AITO asking the world.
02. The meaning of AITO asking the world "AITO" and "asking the world" are actually two trademarks. After the name change on March 8th, some media have inquired about the industrial and commercial registration information of these two trademarks. In short, "AITO" is owned by Cyrus, while "candlestick" is indirectly owned by Huawei.
Therefore, the name "AITO Challenge" also reflects the cooperation mode between Huawei and Celes, which is an intelligent electric vehicle brand built by both parties through deep cross-border integration. The two sides call this cooperation model "Huawei Intelligent Car Selection".
The most important significance of AITO to Huawei is that it provides a demonstration effect of "Huawei empowerment", creates a successful model of "Huawei helps automobile manufacturers build cars", and finally "drives the large-scale sales of Huawei smart car parts".
Now, this model has achieved initial success in stages.
AITO was formally established on 202 1, and the first model M5 was delivered in March last year. 1 year, AITO has delivered more than 80,000 vehicles, making it the fastest growing brand of new energy vehicles in China. Driven by AITO, the sales volume of Cyrus new energy vehicles reached 65,438+03,554,38+00,000 in 2022, a year-on-year increase of 225.9%!
AITO Wenjie M5 is the first model equipped with Huawei HarmonyOS intelligent cockpit, and its market performance is of great significance to Huawei.
Therefore, many automakers are interested in the brand-new business model of "Huawei Smart Car Selection" and are eager to join it. Some media said that in addition to AITO, there may be "Jianghuai, Chery, Changan, etc." in the future. This is probably the real background of "AITO asking the world" quietly changing to "Huawei asking the world". Of course, Huawei also responded to the outside world for the first time-"The business model and cooperation strategy of eco-cars will not change. "
No matter what Huawei's real intention is, this kind of practice objectively gives people the impression that Huawei is eager to stand in front of the stage, which is a big taboo for the grand strategy of building "China Bosch". Bosch can become Bosch because there is not only a car called "Bosch" in the world, but also a whole vehicle brand actually controlled by Bosch. Only in this way can Bosch be accepted by the majority of automobile OEMs.
Can't Bosch build a car? If you can't, you can't. Bosch is willing to hide behind every big name.
If the cars of different partners all use the brand of "Huawei asks the world", then it is actually Huawei's own car, and the relationship between Huawei and these partners will become similar to Weilai and Jianghuai, which seriously violates Huawei's established strategy, so it was stopped in time and decisively.
03, Celeste's main contributor, who changed "AITO Ask the World" into "Huawei Ask the World", obviously failed to understand the fact that AITO Ask the World's current success cannot be simply copied.
In addition to Cyrus, there are many brands in the industry that adopt Huawei smart car solutions and even have deep cooperation with Huawei, but not all of them are very successful. This is not surprising, just like many cars in the industry use Bosch products, some are successful and some are unsuccessful.
The contribution of Huawei and Cyrus to AITO is 50-50, and the owner personally thinks that Cyrus is more, because the category of automobile must be supported by software and hardware with the same definition, both of which are necessary factors for the success of current automobile products.
Indeed, Huawei has greatly empowered AITO in terms of intelligence, marketing and brand, but Cyrus' contribution has been seriously underestimated.
Celeste's 1.5T four-cylinder range extender, which is specially built for the range-extending system, has the super high power generation efficiency of compression ratio 15: 1, thermal efficiency of 4 1% and 3.2kWh/L, which is an excellent premise for AITO Wenjie M5, a range-extending electric vehicle.
A friend changed his BMW to AITO and asked M7. I asked him how his car was, and he said it was fine. I asked him about the details, and he said that the power and control are very good, and there is almost no need to refuel in daily driving, and there are almost no minor problems. What he said was not brought by Huawei.
Similarly, when driving the M5, what impressed Zhu Qing most was not Huawei's intelligent cockpit, but its excellent power handling performance, luxurious chassis performance and ultra-low fuel consumption, which were not Huawei products.
The excellent handling performance of AITO M5 comes from the DE-i super electric drive intelligent technology platform independently developed by Cyrus, and the luxury chassis suspension system with front double wishbone and rear trapezoidal multi-links.
Perhaps the public doesn't know much about Cyrus, but in fact Cyrus has nearly 20 years of experience in vehicle manufacturing. Since 20 16, the research and development of high-end electric vehicles has been started, and the DE-i super electric drive intelligent technology platform with independent intellectual property rights has been formed and cultivated. Cyrus is also one of the few car companies in China that really master the core technology of Sanpower.
Yu Chengdong once proudly declared that "none of Wenjie's cars caught fire spontaneously", which mainly benefited from Cyrus' CTP modular battery pack design, and each battery cell adopted independent fireproof packaging technology, which greatly improved the battery safety.
Cyrus adopted the mature modular CTP battery technology of Contemporary Ampere Technology Co., Ltd..
Tianjie's advantages in the core key fields such as three-electricity technology, vehicle-mounted platform and intelligent manufacturing, combined with Huawei's advantages in the fields of intelligence and digitalization, formed AITO "1+1>; 2 "effect. Similarly, whoever leaves may produce "2- 1
Quality is the most important thing for a car, and good quality needs to be guaranteed by a high-level factory. With the smart factory built according to the Industry 4.0 standard, Cyrus won the 2022 smart manufacturing benchmark enterprise and was the only one among the new forces in automobile manufacturing.
In 2004, focusing on AITO industry is the best choice for Huawei at present. On April 1 day, Yu Chengdong also made a little defense for the renaming of AITO Industry, to the effect that after the unification into "Huawei Industry", more manufacturers will participate, which will make sales faster and realize commercial realization faster.
This idea is understandable, but it is a bit naive.
As mentioned above, in essence, the unification of Huawei into "Huawei asks the world" has become an automobile brand, and the cooperative manufacturers are only foundries. I believe this is unacceptable to any car manufacturer with dignity and pursuit, except those who don't care about losing their souls and just want to survive.
A few days ago, the board of directors of Guangzhou Automobile Group passed the "Proposal on Changes of Guangzhou Automobile Ai 'an AH8 Project" and suspended joint development with Huawei.
But the problem is, if these manufacturers join in, I'm afraid not only can't really do a good job in the sales of candlestick, but also it is very likely that the brand of candlestick will be destroyed because of one failed model after another.
In essence, this is also the idea of "having more children and fighting", which is the same as an enterprise engaging in too many brands or a brand engaging in too many models. Over the past 20 years, different manufacturers have repeatedly proved that this is an extremely wrong route.
In fact, there is another way to do sales, and that is to pay more attention to AITO. Only by paying more attention can we sharpen the brand image and explode.
Tesla is a typical success story. Tesla seems to have four models on sale, but in fact, only two models really contribute to sales. In 2022, Tesla sold 65,438+0,365,438+0.4 million vehicles worldwide, while Model 3 and Model Y contributed 95% of the sales. In contrast, when Weilai Automobile has only three models, its monthly sales have exceeded 10,000. There are 7 models now, and the sales volume will exceed 10,000 in March.
Vehicle type planning is easy to do, but the difficult thing is how to make the product explode.
It should be said that so far, Huawei's various models in the automotive field, as well as the AITO model that cooperates with Cyrus, are the most successful. Of course, this is only a staged success and still faces great challenges. Only when Huawei and Cyrus cooperate sincerely and devote themselves wholeheartedly can AITO be truly successful.
Numerous market practices show that it is too difficult to build a successful automobile brand now, and a successful brand can sell more than a dozen or even more. In 2022, in the China market, BYD's sales will exceed the sum of all the new car-making forces!
Based on this, if the nascent Huawei intelligent car selection model is to succeed, Huawei should pay more attention to it, and fully bet on Cyrus, which has achieved initial results, is the rational choice with the lowest opportunity cost.
At this juncture, there is really no need to be half-hearted, causing unnecessary suspicion between the two sides. This will not only bring more uncertainty to the AITO community, but also make other manufacturers wary of cooperation with Huawei, even contradictory.
For Huawei, it will not only fail to become a "leading automobile brand", but also completely lose the opportunity to build "China Bosch". In this respect, Ren can be said to be perfect! (Text | Green Master)
This article comes from DearAuto, the author of Easy Car Number, and the copyright belongs to the author. Please contact the author for any form of reprint. The content only represents the author's point of view and has nothing to do with the car reform.