Recently, there are rumors that Huawei intends to invest in Changan Weilai, a new energy vehicle company that has only been established for two years and currently has no products. Insiders also said that Huawei may not necessarily invest and may pass Its funds invest. 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?

Currently 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, the rotating chairman of Huawei, 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 and 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 its press releases issued to the outside world, Huawei has repeatedly emphasized that “focusing on ICT technology to help companies build good cars and build 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 realizes the decoupling of 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 code 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 smart driving, Huawei has developed the smart driving operating system AOS, which also meets the core requirements for smart driving software development such as ecology, vehicle regulations, and data-driven development. It has currently 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. For example, it is expected to save 15-20% of the weight and length of the wiring harness. At the same time, due to centralization, the number of ECUs can be reduced; it can also shorten the time to market of the model, and the development cycle of the model is shortened to 6-8 months; based on this architecture , and can also achieve continuous evolution from L0 to L4 architecture.

The obvious benefit of Huawei’s architecture is to help car manufacturers increase development speed and reduce development costs.

It can be seen that Huawei has penetrated into the strategic high ground guarded by car companies and Tier 1 - the electronic and electrical architecture of the vehicle. In the era of software-defined cars, electronic and electrical architecture is undoubtedly the core competitiveness of car companies. Huawei helps car companies develop core technologies. Does this also mean that Huawei is indirectly building cars?

Huawei and Changan cooperate closely

Changan NIO has always been regarded by Changan Automobile as the cornerstone of breaking through the high-end bottleneck. This company was jointly established by NIO and Changan in October 2018 and is headquartered in Nanjing, Jiangsu. The initial equity structure was that NIO and Changan each held 45% of the shares, and the remaining 10% were held by the founding members.

The initial high-level composition is that the chairman is Li Bin, the founder, chairman and CEO of NIO, the vice chairman is Li Wei, executive vice president of Changan Automobile, and the CEO is Yang Fang from Changan.

Changan Automobile has also expressed its high hopes for Changan Automobile in public on more than one occasion. Tan Benhong, executive vice president of Changan Automobile, said: "Changan Automobile's mid-to-high-end brand must be built with partners." Yang Dayong, the current general manager of Changan New Energy, also said, "The Changan mid-to-high-end brand is the responsibility of the Changan NIO team. ".

But in the past two years, Changan Weilai has actually made no substantial progress, let alone related product planning. Changan and NIO may have differences regarding the development of Changan NIO. GAC NIO, which was born in the same year as Changan NIO, currently has products launched, but amid the "attack from above and below" between GAC and NIO, its survival space is almost exhausted. Almost no one cares about its products, and there are almost no products in the market. Sense of presence.

With the lessons learned from GAC NIO. Changan Weilai obviously can no longer implement the strategic guidelines it established at the beginning. Changan and Weilai also parted ways. In June this year, Li Bin stepped down as chairman of Changan Weilai, and Li Wei, the former vice chairman, also quit at the same time. The new chairman is Tan Benhong, executive vice president of Changan Automobile. At the same time, Changan Weilai’s registered capital increased from 98 million yuan to 188 million yuan, an increase of 92%.

NIO withdrew, and Changan began to take full control of Changan NIO. What is the future of Changan Weilai? Changan may have already planned it in his heart.

Before and after Changan Automobile released its third entrepreneurial plan at the 2018 Beijing Auto Show, it almost reached major cooperation with top domestic technology companies, including Huawei.

In April 2016, Changan and Baidu signed a smart car strategic cooperation. Baidu’s three core application platforms CarLife, MyCar and CoDriver will be installed on Changan Automobile; in July 2017, Changan and Baidu’s Cooperation began to deepen and began to penetrate into the field of autonomous driving. Changan Automobile officially joined Baidu's Apollo program and cooperated with Baidu to develop mass-produced cars.

In October 2017, Changan Automobile reached a cooperation with Alibaba. The two parties launched strategic cooperation in three major aspects: intelligent Internet of Vehicles platform, Internet of Vehicles services and corporate social networking. In addition, the two parties will establish a joint laboratory to conduct research and development work in artificial intelligence, vehicle applications, information security and other related fields.

In April 2018, Changan and Tencent copied the cooperation model between Alibaba and SAIC, and the two parties established a joint venture for intelligent connected vehicles. The joint venture is called Wutong Auto Alliance and is headquartered in Beijing. According to the plan, the Internet of Vehicles products developed by Wutong AutoLink will be mainly installed on Changan Automobile’s latest products.

On January 11, 2018, Changan Automobile signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Huawei, China Mobile Communications, and China Mobile Internet of Things Co., Ltd. in Chongqing to comprehensively carry out joint development research on LTE-V and 5G Internet of Vehicles.

In July 2018, Changan announced that it would join hands with Huawei to establish a joint innovation center. The two parties will cooperate in vehicle mobile communication systems, multi-terminal interconnection, vehicle operating system development, vehicle chip development, Internet of Vehicles evaluation system standard construction and new energy technology exploration. Realize the in-vehicle operating system and in-vehicle chips to be mass-produced and installed on Changan models. At the same time, the two parties will continue to cooperate in the fields of industrial Internet and ICT infrastructure.

In January 2019, the Joint Innovation Center, the fruit of the cooperation between Changan and Huawei, was officially unveiled. The cooperation between Changan and Huawei has further deepened. In the field of intelligence, the two parties will cooperate more comprehensively and deeply in more than 10 forward-looking technology fields such as L4 autonomous driving, 5G Internet of Vehicles, and C-V2X to provide users with a more intelligent experience; in the field of new energy, *** Together, we will build a world-class and China-leading smart electric vehicle platform.

It can be seen that Huawei has fully established partnerships with Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu, and Huawei in the past three years. However, in terms of the final implementation results, it was a bit more thunderous than rainy. Joining hands with Baidu, the self-driving taxis piloted by Baidu are hardly seen in Changan; establishing a joint venture with Tencent, and in-vehicle WeChat is installed on Changan, Haval, and GAC Trumpchi at the same time; relying on Alibaba, but Alibaba is interested in it is the entire market, and began to independently operate its own Internet of Vehicles company, Banma Network.

Judging from the results, after getting along with Changan Automobile, the relationship between Baidu, Tencent and Alibaba began to gradually fade. At present, Huawei is the only one that does not have deep ties. People are looking forward to how the joint innovation center jointly established by both parties will operate.

Previously, Changan Automobile’s annual Brand Day event originally planned to be held at the end of August has been postponed. With the change in the ownership of Changan NIO and the news of cooperation between Changan and Huawei, the brand launch day suddenly became more suspenseful.

Where is the transfer?

Huawei has actually broken its promises before.

In 1995, Huawei was at the beginning of its development period from 1994 to 2010. This year, Huawei began product research and development in the wireless field, using the GSM protocol in advance. In the same year, Huawei's R&D team began to apply to develop GSM mobile phones, but was opposed by Ren Zhengfei. At that time, in order to allow Huawei to produce mobile phones, the former Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications even took the initiative to request Huawei to independently develop and produce mobile phones and issue it a mobile phone production and sales license. This was later rejected by Ren Zhengfei. Since then, Huawei's wireless business department has submitted reports on mobile phone projects many times, but all of them have been rejected.

At that time, Ren Zhengfei made the decision that "Huawei will never make terminals in its lifetime", which also caused Huawei to miss a golden opportunity for mobile phone research and development.

A turning point began to appear after entering the new century. In 2000, Huawei cooperated with Motorola to do the latter's original commissioned production, but the products were sold under Motorola's trademark.

This enabled Huawei to take the first step in independently producing mobile phones.

In the same year after joining the International Telecommunications Union in 2001, Ren Zhengfei began to reflect on his stubbornness in Huawei’s terminal project. Finally, at the "Ten Key Points of Huawei's Corporate Management in 2001~2002" meeting held in October 2001, Ren Zhengfei admitted that he had made decision-making mistakes on three projects in the past, namely CDMA, PHS and mobile terminals, and told the attendees senior officials apologized.

Since then, Huawei has established an independently operated mobile phone business company, which is now Huawei Terminal Company. After more than ten years of development, Huawei's mobile phone business stands on top of the world.

At the end of 2015, Huawei announced that its smartphone shipments exceeded 100 million units, 30 times that of 2010. It became the first mainland Chinese mobile phone manufacturer to exceed 100 million smartphone shipments, becoming the second largest smartphone manufacturer. The world's third largest smartphone manufacturer behind Samsung and Apple.

In 2019, Huawei shipped 240 million mobile phones globally, surpassing Apple and only falling behind Samsung, becoming the absolute powerhouse in the smartphone market.

Huawei, which once swore not to make mobile phones, has now become the dominant player in the world’s mobile phone market; now it swore not to make cars, do you really believe it?

This article comes from the author of Autohome Chejiahao and does not represent the views and positions of Autohome.