Huawei makes cars, and this topic has become a cliché. Although Huawei has repeatedly declared that it will never build a car, in fact, Huawei has become a supplier of car companies, deeply involved in the entire process of car manufacturing by providing solutions such as motors, intelligent cockpits, and automatic driving.
In the past, there are Cyrus SF5, Polar Fox Alpha S, the existing M5 and the Avita 11 that has just been filed with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, in addition, many traditional car companies' models have also been equipped with Huawei products, but the new forces prefer to highlight Huawei's participation to get more attention, it seems that Huawei is the traffic password of the car circle.
So today, let's put aside patriotism and talk about what Huawei has brought to the automotive industry.
A set of bull X's autonomous driving
In fact, as early as the 2018 Full Connectivity Conference held by Huawei, Huawei released the MDC (Mobile Data Center) 600, a computing platform that can support L4 level autonomous driving. This MDC is Huawei's intelligent driving platform, or car computer. At the same time, Huawei also develops hardware parts such as lidar and millimeter-wave radar related to automatic driving.
But what really attracted public attention was the Huawei autonomous driving road test video that was suddenly exposed on the network on the eve of the release of the BAIC Polar Fox Alpha S. The video shows that test vehicles equipped with Huawei's autonomous driving can increase and decelerate, turn, change lanes more smoothly and naturally on the streets of Shanghai, where the road conditions are more complex, and avoid pedestrians and non-motorized vehicles that suddenly sprang out.
Although it has been nearly a year since its release, the Polar Fox Alpha S Hi version equipped with Huawei's automatic driving is only close to official delivery, but it should be known that in the 2018 list of driverless technology companies, Huawei only ranked 14, two years later today, Huawei's high-end automatic driving products have landed, and Baidu, Weima, Weilai and other top-ranked car companies are still holding L2+ driving assistance as automatic driving blowing.
And from the video at that time and the recent media test of the test car, Huawei's automatic driving has been very close to the reaction and operation of human drivers, and the degree of automation far exceeds the various PILOT driving aids bragged by various new forces, even if it is a year later, Huawei's automatic driving is also a unique level.
A more competitive motor
On March 11 last year, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology's 342nd batch of new cars appeared in the list of new cars, in the name of the motor driver. The TZ210XY584 permanent magnet synchronous motor has a peak power (kw) of 195/230, which is close to the highest level in the recommended catalog. The supporting models are Changan CS95 pure electric version and Xilix SF5 pure electric version, and applied for related invention patents.
Taking the Xilis SF5 as an example, after the motor is replaced with Huawei motor, the price is lower by 2 or 3w, and the endurance is increased by 30km, and in terms of efficiency and price, Huawei motors have good competitiveness. Even BYD, which has always been proud of its self-development and self-production, is also equipped with Huawei's Drive ONE all-in-one motor on the new Song PLUS EV.
However, the electric drive system is independently developed and produced by Huawei, the motor body is produced by welling motors under the Midea Group, and the reducer is provided by Aoyama Industries. Although the motor is also one of the core three electric vehicles of new energy vehicles, its technical barriers and cost proportion are far less than that of power batteries, and the product price and gross profit margin have been declining in recent years. Therefore, Huawei is not expected to personally get involved in the hardware manufacturing of motors, and will rely more on software to define cars.
A good but still imperfect car-machine system
When it comes to the M5, the focus of the car company's publicity has become the Huawei Hongmeng system that is equipped for the first time. In fact, before the Hongmeng car machine, Huawei HiCar has been applied on many models, he can be said to be a high-end version of CarPlay/CarLife, can be sensorless connection, control more vehicle functions, so that Huawei mobile phone users secretly call cool.
The Hongmeng car machine is more powerful than HiCar, the use experience is closer to the mobile phone, and there are special features such as bracelet unlocking. But here we have to pour some cold water on the Hongmeng system, the current car engine system should still be concise and stable as the first standard, compatibility as the second standard, and Hongmeng car machine only focuses on speed and photography /video. There are too many areas wasted on the homepage, and the connection to other brands of mobile phones is only a way of Bluetooth, and CarPlay and CarLife are not supported.
Although the Hongmeng system has been completely open sourced, there are still no models from other manufacturers that can be installed, right? Therefore, without Huawei mobile phones, the use experience of Hongmeng car machines will be greatly reduced. Although I believe that in the future, Xiaomi's car machine will also have many exclusive functions of the MIUI system, but a good car machine should not be a vassal of the mobile phone, at least not a vassal of a certain brand of mobile phone.
Huawei is becoming the Bosch of the tram era
Talk about not building cars, but Huawei has become a supplier of car companies, and has established different levels of cooperation with Volkswagen, Audi, Toyota, BAIC BJEV, Changan, Jianghuai, SAIC, FAW, Citroen, Great Wall, Dongfeng, Geely and many other first-line OEMs at home and abroad. Although it is not yet possible to build anything and lead others in everything, Huawei is already a presence that cannot be underestimated in the field of electric vehicles. Perhaps when Huawei unlocks more "new skills", it is only a decision to build a whole car.
But the strange thing is that at present, Huawei products are more scattered in the car, Jihu uses automatic driving, Qingjie uses a car machine, Xilis and so on uses a motor, and there is no model that fully adopts Huawei's technology. It may not be that Huawei does not want to, but that car companies are not willing to give up more dominance to Huawei, and Xilis and Qingjie are a good example.
In order to highlight Huawei and enhance the brand image, the Q&I brand has emerged, so that the owner of The Celeste has just bought a car and become out of print, but in the Q&C, there is still a situation where car companies and Huawei compete for dominance, and each of them never mentions each other in the media workshop.
In the past two years, domestic brands have completed the leapfrog in terms of interior, configuration and power, and electric vehicles have bypassed the technical barriers of traditional oil vehicles, so the homogenization of electric vehicles in the future will become more and more serious, and Huawei endorsement will be a good publicity point for emerging brands. But consumers may be concerned about the highlights of one or two Huawei endorsements, but it is difficult to order a car based on Huawei's name alone, after all, there is still a world of difference between bulk consumer goods and FMCG. In addition to the Hongmeng system, the highlights of the M5 are lackluster, and even the car-making process is still somewhat lacking, but the price is quite confident, which is also a major reason why he has changed from more than 2,000 orders on the day of release to a major reason for the whole network to complain now.
But in any case, we all hope that in the new era, more Chinese companies like Huawei will become the world's top Tier1 (Tier 1 parts supplier), truly master the core technology, rather than just using the supplier's ready-made solution to assemble an electric vehicle to sell gimmicks, pull financing, and go public in the United States.
Because the foundation of overtaking in curves is not a car brand, but the entire industrial chain.