Huawei is building a car? Nope! It actually has bigger ambitions

Hello everyone! I'm Chen Jie

At the Beijing Auto Show this past year, anyone who was there must have noticed that Huawei not only set up a big booth, but also brought in a variety of auto parts. It's not an exaggeration to say that what Huawei has brought to the show is just a car shell away from building a whole car.

Huawei is planning to build a car? But Huawei has repeatedly said it does not intend to build a car, last year's Shanghai Auto Show, its rotating chairman of the media in the repeated questions helplessly said: "I only say one thing today, that is, Huawei does not build a car, we should not be suspicious, you doubt me again there is no way, is not also to write a book of blood?"

Beijing Auto Show Huawei exhibits products

Built such a big booth, built so many accessories, but do not build cars, then Huawei this is in the end to do what? Today we will talk about, Huawei than the car bigger ambition, or target in the end is what.

Some people say that Huawei is now forced by the situation to enter the automotive industry. In fact, in 2009, Huawei began research and development of 4G network car module, in 2013, Huawei formally set up a "car networking business department". Last year, Huawei formally established a smart car solutions BU (Business?Unit). It can be seen that Huawei has been actively laying out the automotive industry.

Car is a very long industry chain, technology companies layout of the automotive industry, there are many examples, but have their own main direction. Google and Baidu have occupied their own turf on autonomous driving; Ali and Tencent are playing a lively game on the car system and application services; Microsoft is focusing on cloud platform services. In the car chip, Intel, Nvidia, Qualcomm and so on also compete with each other, lest they be left behind.

Huawei self-driving test car

Then Huawei's entry into the car will focus on which direction? In Huawei's view, children only do multiple choice questions, Huawei's choice is all to be. Huawei internal planning of automotive cloud services, intelligent network, intelligent driving, intelligent cockpit and intelligent electric five plates. Huawei is also centered around these five plates constantly cultivate internal strength.

Intelligent vehicle cloud

Future smart cars are inseparable from cloud computing and services, intelligent vehicle cloud can be through the analysis of driving behavior, tracing the car owner and vehicle portrait, in order to provide personalized car owners and car maintenance services.

Intelligent networking

Intelligent networking mainly refers to in-vehicle communication technology, and the application of 5G in the car networking will bring unlimited imagination. In addition, intelligent networking also refers to the interconnection of cars and vehicles, cars and people, cars and transportation facilities, and cars and urban infrastructure. That is, the car and the entire transportation and city connected to the city as a whole.

Intelligent driving

Huawei is considered a latecomer in intelligent driving, but Huawei provides strong arithmetic support for autonomous driving with its advantages in chips. In addition, Huawei has also made a breakthrough in vehicle LIDAR, Huawei in Wuhan Optoelectronics Technology Research Center, totaling more than 10,000 people,? The center is then developing LiDAR.

Car LiDAR

Intelligent cockpit

Intelligent cockpit is also well understood, the common intelligent cockpit mainly refers to the head-up display, language control, intelligent car machine. The future of smart cabins will also include AR technology, AI artificial intelligence, and the Internet of Things. The Internet of Things will allow you to control your home appliances in the car and interface with various network services.

Huawei Smart Cockpit

Intelligent electric

Intelligent electric mainly refers to motors and batteries, Huawei does not produce motors and batteries, but will develop battery management systems, motor controllers and other equipment for new energy vehicles. At the Beijing Auto Show, Huawei brought a set of electric drive systems including motors, electronic controls, speed reducers, on-board chargers, and high-voltage power distribution boxes.

In addition, Huawei is also actively laying out the charging pile business, of course, Huawei is not to build charging piles, but to develop a set of charging modules called HUAWEI?HiCharger, this charging module can be understood as the brain of the charging pile. The role is to make charging more efficient and safer.

These five major segments of Huawei's smart car solutions basically cover most areas of new energy vehicles,? Then you buy a battery, put a shell on it, and a car is basically built.

Now some of the new forces car-making enterprises, their own no factory, looking for someone OEM can produce cars, that Huawei's current conditions, why not build a car?

Car-making is not Huawei's specialty

Car-making is easy to say, but compared to traditional big factories, Huawei's car-making experience and technology accumulation is almost blank. Moreover, even tens of billions of dollars can only be counted as a small amount of money when it comes to building cars.

Even Tesla, both technical reserves and capital strength are top. But even so, really to build the car link, Tesla's models are still poor workmanship, quality problems.

And Huawei's strengths lie in 5G technology, in the arithmetic power of chips, and in the development of intelligent driving. As for building factories to build and sell cars, this is not Huawei's strong point. If you rush to build a car, you are using your own short boards, and have a hundred years of accumulation of car-making manufacturers to die, Huawei of course will not do such a stupid thing.

No car

To be a friend of all car companies

Huawei in the automotive field of all the layout, research and development of all the products, the ultimate customers are car companies. If Huawei builds its own cars, then these car companies will no longer be customers, but all become competitors.

Beijing Auto Show Huawei booth slogan

It is also because Huawei, into the Bureau but do not build cars, so Huawei can have the widest circle of friends. In May this year, Huawei joint FAW, SAIC, GAC, Great Wall, BYD, Chery and other 18 car companies, *** with the establishment of the "5G automotive ecosystem", to accelerate the launch of 5G cars.

At last year's Shanghai Auto Show, Huawei was not a car company, but Huawei's rotating chairman Xu Zhijun was known as the busiest person at the show. To the various car companies on stage, signing cooperation agreements, busy.

Huawei, which doesn't build cars, has become the meat and potatoes. On the contrary, the well-known spare parts supplier Magna once tried to buy Opel, intending to build their own cars. The result was a big customer, Volkswagen, threw its face in the air and threatened. In the end, Magna gave up building cars for a variety of reasons, and Volkswagen renewed their relationship.

Magna concept car

So not building cars is actually a step backward in order to turn all car companies into partners.

The future of the car

Not in manufacturing but in eco-services

In the 70s, the cost of software on a car only accounted for about 2% of the cost of the whole car. But by 2017, according to the study, that was 17 percent, and it's set to rise to 45 percent by 2030.

That is to say, building factories to build cars is hardly much room for development, if not a sunset industry. That's why Tesla, which sold just over 360,000 units last year, once had a market capitalization that exceeded that of Toyota and Volkswagen combined.

Tesla Cybertruck

This fully demonstrates that Tesla represents the future of smart cars and driverless cars is full of unlimited space for development. The traditional car companies, even if the production and sales volume is large, but no longer represents the future. Huawei is also precisely to see this point, only resolutely said not to build cars, but to focus on the future has unlimited prospects for the creation of smart car ecological.

In the automotive industry, in addition to Toyota, Volkswagen, etc., in the field of spare parts also hides a very large number of behind-the-scenes big brother. How powerful are these big men behind the scenes? According to the ranking of foreign media, in 2019, the world's largest automotive supplier is Germany's Bosch, whose revenue is 46.555 billion U.S. dollars, about 313.8 billion yuan. It is basically equivalent to the combined revenue of Geely, Great Wall and BYD.

These behind-the-scenes bigwigs have also led the industry to a considerable degree. For example, ESP was first introduced by Bosch in 1995. Today, ESP is almost standard on all vehicles, and even car companies have made it a selling point to get their hands on the latest generation of ESP from Bosch.

Bosch is also a big, invisible player in automated driving assistance. Many autonomous brands of automatic driving assistance system, are provided by Bosch, or and Bosch **** with the development.

And Huawei's goal is to become the Bosch-like big brother behind the scenes of future cars. And, in the future era of smart cars, the role of suppliers will be even more important than it is now. Some studies have suggested that only 30% of the value of future cars lies in traditional components, while 70% of the profits lie in new features and ecosystem-wide services such as autonomous driving and smart networking.

That is to say, although Huawei does not build cars, but is targeting 70% of the profits in the future car market.

In addition, Huawei not only does not snatch rice bowls with car companies, but also does not intend to snatch rice bowls with the big boys behind the scenes. The five segments of Huawei's smart car solutions are aimed at the incremental market, not the stock market. I have to say, Huawei's approach is really a smart move.

China's automobile after decades of development, independent car companies have taken shape. But in the field of auto parts and components, domestic brands are still very weak, even more than the gap between vehicle manufacturers and international manufacturers.

Not a single Chinese company is among the world's top 10 auto suppliers in 2019. There are also only 7 domestic companies in the top 100. And as we said in the article, most of the future innovation in automobiles is focused on software-level innovation such as intelligent ecology.

So auto parts, too, will be an important battleground for competition in the automotive industry in the future. I hope Huawei can become an industry leader in the automotive field, just as it did in the 5G field. Of course, it is also hoped that China will have more Huawei-like automotive suppliers, so that China's automobile can be truly strong.

What do you think about Huawei's layout of the car and not build a car? Welcome to leave a message to discuss oh.

This article comes from the author of the automobile home car, does not represent the views of the automobile home position.