Huawei Purchases Automotive Parts, and Ready To Make Complete Cars?

Recently, because of a public announcement, the topic of “Huawei making a car” was again detonated.

On the evening of May 22, FULIN P.M. announced that it had signed the “Agreement for Purchase of Vehicle retarder

” with Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Huawei). The Company was identified as the supplier of Huawei New Energy Vehicle retarder and related parts and components products.

The news has drawn widespread attention. Although Huawei gave a response the following day that “there is no plan to build a car at present,” the argument that “Huawei wants to start building a car” was even more heated. What exactly does Huawei need to do to purchase car parts?

Huawei purchases automotive parts, and ready to make complete cars (2)

Huawei purchases automotive parts, and ready to make complete cars?

According to the announcement of FULIN P.M., FULIN P.M. and Huawei will cooperate in the field of new energy electric driving assembly around the core technology products and industrial resources of new energy vehicles in the future.

Although Huawei’s side, apart from its simple response, has not talked about the purpose of purchasing the Vehicle retarder. However, judging from the technology and market development of recent years, Huawei is currently working on new energy automobile Powertrain, automobile networking, automotive chips, operating systems, and autonomous driving solutions, including cameras, millimeter-wave radars, The technology fields of laser radar and other sensors have already acquired considerable strength.

“Huawei provides complete vehicle design and even assembly or is an inevitable event in its development process. With the strength of hardware and software in smart manufacturing and precision manufacturing, this seems not a problem for Huawei. ” An industry expert who did not want to reveal his name.

However, some people in the industry hold another view.

“There is still a considerable distance between purchasing auto parts and components for new energy vehicles and manufacturing the whole vehicle. ” Du Fangci, an adviser to the China Automobile Industry Association, told the reporter of China Automobile.

The electric drive systems of new energy vehicles generally consist mainly of motors, retarders, and motor controllers. Even with the “three power” manufacturing capability of a new energy car, it is not a one-time move to build a car that requires technology and personnel in the fields of machinery, electronics, control, design, and process management.

In the past two years, relevant responsible persons of Huawei have repeatedly stated in various public forums that Huawei “would not build a car”, but only supports the auto-enterprise to “build a good car” with its technology. Indeed, Huawei, a former communications business, has long focused on 5G and information and communications technology. In the field of automotive intelligence and digital business, it is committed to becoming an incremental component supplier of smart automobiles, providing products and services to the mainframe plant in several technical fields.

Huawei purchases automotive parts, and ready to make complete cars 3The industry has noticed that in recent years, many enterprises have entered the car industry. However, real estate businesses such as Evergrande and Baoleng generally started by “buying and buying” ways.  few have advanced to the automobile industry with their own technological.

The value and composition of the future automobile industry are no longer traditional car frames and chassis components, but “incremental” businesses such as intelligent network links and autonomous driving with artificial intelligence as the core. These are precisely the strengths of the “technology faction” of Huawei.

Take a closer look at Huawei’s movements in the automotive sector.

  1. For example, in the case of car-mounted systems, Huawei has launched the 5G+Hicar system, which is a solution for connecting cars and mobile phones with a smartphone as the core. Unlike the previous CarPlay and CarLife car systems, HiCar is capable of casting a screen and allowing the phone to integrate with the vehicle in-depth, enabling the use of a mobile phone to control certain functions of the car. In June this year, Huawei HiCar will be the first to appear in a BYD production car.
  2. In terms of the complete vehicle electronics architecture, Huawei’s CC structure of “compute + communications” differs from that of the conventional automotive EE architecture by dividing the vehicle into the smart cabin, The three main components of full vehicle control and intelligent driving correspond to each of the three platforms, and each platform is designed into an ecosystem through the chip + operating system. In response, the industry believes that this may change the traditional automobile architecture and promote the development of intelligent automotive parts standards.
  3. In terms of chips, this has always been an important pivot point for Huawei’s search for a strong presence in the automotive industry. At present, Huawei’s chip company, Hyth Semiconductor, has cooperated with major automobile manufacturers in the world on 4G car-mounted communications chips. Last year, it launched the 5G multi-mode terminal chip, Barron 5000, which can be used for vehicle networking.
  4. This year, Huawei has independently developed an automatic driving chip that meets the requirements of vehicle regulations The chip MDC610 is also coming soon. It has been revealed that Huawei has started to prepare for the research and development of IGBT (Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor) chip, a key core component of new energy vehicles.

So far, Huawei has entered the field of automobile hardware services, software services, and so on, and is building a vast system of intelligent automobile products, including the “core, network, cloud” product lines of cloud, auto networking, smart cabin, smart driving, and three power systems.

“The future of an electric car with automatic driving capability is all about the technology we have, except the chassis, four wheels, frames, and seats.” Xu Zhijun, CEO of Huawei, has clearly stated the Huawei’s advantages

Huawei purchases automotive parts, and ready to make complete cars (1)

The “four modernizations of automobile” brings new opportunities

In recent years, Dessen and Apple have been entering the car business, but the results have been different. After more than six years of burning £500 million (approximately RMB4.2 billion), Dessen announced the cancellation of the electric vehicle project, focusing on the development of solid batteries and innovative electrical appliances.

Apple has launched the project to build cars since 2015 and even before, and has been digging for automatic driving-related talents from major global automakers including Tesla, Chrysler, Volkswagen Group, as well as from Inverda and Waymo However, Apple CEO Cook recently said in an interview with the media, Apple is focusing on the automatic driving system, but will not necessarily develop a real whole car. It seems that he gave up his car-building plan and turned to research and development for self-driving. It can be seen that the road to building a car is not easy.

Huawei has always denied “building cars”, but only claims to force the smart auto parts business. Although Huawei has been emphasized many times that they will not build cars, it has been expanding at the border of the car business. It was not surprising when sources said that Huawei had recently launched a joint venture with domestic auto-brand enterprises to build high-end car brands.

Recently, the trademark of “Cyberverse” registered by Huawei was officially registered. According to Huawei, Cyberverse is the creation of a “global, evolving, and seamless digital new world with reality.” It also includes the digitization of automobiles, which is also the future development direction of automobiles.

“Huawei’s efforts in smart car technology are of concern. ” In an interview with a reporter from China Automobile News, Xue Xu, secretary-general of the marketing expert committee of the China Institute of Marketing, said that Huawei’s support for the development of the automobile industry, based on its technical strength, worth watching