This article is authorized to be transferred from ID:CBN- Cai Yi.
In 20 18, Huawei successively cooperated with FAW, BAIC, SAIC, Dongfeng, Guangzhou Automobile, Changan, Audi and Mercedes-Benz, among which the cooperation with BAIC was highly praised by Xu Heyi, Chairman of BAIC Group, and the two sides also signed a second strategic contract, and established Davidson Innovation Laboratory in 1873.
In addition, Huawei has mastered the core technology of autonomous driving in a speech suspected to come from Huawei's internal executives. The executive said, "In the future, except for the chassis, four wheels, housings and seats, all electric vehicles with autonomous driving capability are technologies owned by Huawei."
In other words, Huawei already has the ability to "build a car".
It can be seen that in recent years, with the rapid development of artificial intelligence, big data and cloud computing technology, the industrial ecology, product form and business model of automobiles have all entered new changes, and the intelligence represented by driverless and car networking has become the commanding heights of differentiated competition in the future automobile industry. With the participation of scientific and technological enterprises, the voice of "new forces to build cars" has been pushed up all the way, and many new faces have appeared on the car runway.
But compared with the complete vehicle technology and complete supply chain and sales system mastered by traditional automobile giants, what impact can the participation of science and technology enterprises bring to this industry? What changes have technology companies like Huawei, Apple and Baidu made to autonomous driving? Who can dominate the future "autonomous driving" market, traditional car companies or internet companies? Obviously, there is no unified answer yet.
Do you make cars?
From the outside world, Huawei has made frequent moves in "building cars" in recent years.
Two years ago, the news of in-depth technical cooperation between Huawei and Tsinghua University on driverless cars was widely spread, and a seemingly crude "prototype" of driverless cars was also exposed. Then, Huawei announced a high-profile joint development of 5G vehicles with Audi and other car companies. He Gang, president of Huawei's consumer BG mobile phone product line, even said on social media that 5G connected cars are expected to come out before 2020. "The cooperation between Audi and Huawei will launch a materialized automobile product within two years, providing an assisted driving system before fully automatic driving."
The OceanConnect car networking platform released last year pushed Huawei's "car dream" to a climax. The slogan "Digitize every car" seems to hide the company's ambition in the automotive field.
Huawei OceanConnect IOT platform:
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However, whether internally or externally, last year or this year, Huawei's official attitude remains the same: Huawei will focus on the ICT field and advocate extensive cooperation with automobile manufacturers. "The company has no plans to enter the automobile manufacturing industry, and there is no plan to launch Huawei brand cars." Huawei insiders told reporters.
In the interview of June 5438+1October 65438+July this year, Ren, founder and CEO of Huawei, made it clear to reporters that Huawei would never build a car.
"We are the module of car networking, the electronic part of the car, and we do the edge calculation. We may be the best in the world. But it's not a car. We need to cooperate with the car and use our module to enter autonomous driving. I will never build a car. So, we won't cross the line. We have boundaries. The field centered on the electron flow must be cut off. " Ren said.
Regarding the noise about Huawei's "building a car", a Huawei insider told reporters that Huawei has its own business boundaries. In the automotive field, one is not to do upper-level applications, and the other is not to do complete vehicles. He emphasized that the "building a car" understood by the outside world is actually Huawei's layout on the Internet of Vehicles, but this is not the same as grabbing the business of car companies. More importantly, Huawei did not start to invest in the Internet of Vehicles in recent years. Due to the industrial space and its own business expansion, Huawei has already begun to lay out.
According to the reporter's understanding, in 20 13, Huawei officially launched the vehicle module ME909T, and at the same time launched a continuous investment plan for this field. At that time, the claim amount reached 1 100 million yuan per year. In the same year, Huawei also released products such as front-end mobile hotspots, on-line diagnosis systems for automobiles, and 3G and 4G communication modules that meet vehicle regulations and standards.
At a previous industry forum, Yuan, vice president of Huawei Academia Sinica, mentioned, "Now the total code number of some high-end cars is about 654.38 billion lines. What is this concept? The amount of code in the car exceeds Facebook and Microsoft Office. " Yuan believes that in the future, cars will integrate data centers, computing centers and control centers and become an inseparable part of our humanity.
In other words, from the overall trend of automobiles, software is devouring and occupying the whole industry. Electronization, software and informatization are replacing the previous mechanical power as the value center, and the automobile will return to the essence of transportation. Driverless driving is an inevitable trend.
And this is the opportunity that Huawei sees.
Unmanned vehicles will bring thousands of times of traffic challenges, computing challenges and data challenges. In the future, self-driving vehicles can reach ten times or even thousands of times of human driving ability. The processing and processing of massive data is exactly what Huawei is good at. To some extent, the traditional mechanical manufacturing module in the automotive field is not what Huawei values most. In the automobile industry, the internet software module with unmanned driving as the core and the driving module with power battery as the core are the most valuable modules.
"Every step towards a smart society is full of challenges, but it is undeniable that all kinds of births will become opportunities and turning points for a new round of growth. Any enterprise that wants to seize the opportunity must become a digital organization. Only in this way can it not fall behind. " At an industry conference, Xu Zhijun, the rotating chairman of Huawei, said that in the intelligent society, no enterprise can be immune from it. He even said, "I hope that the competition among manufacturers will be more intense, and Huawei is more likely to realize the digital transformation needs of its own business. Before that, Huawei will only invest and will not have any return."
Who can subvert the "automobile industry"
The automobile industry is at the turning point from traditional cars to intelligent networked cars, from vehicles to travel services, from bicycle intelligence to smart cities. Obviously, Huawei is not the only one who sees this. China and global technology giants are increasing their investment in this field.
Take the international manufacturer Apple as an example. In 20 14, the Apple Titan project was officially approved, and Apple's automobile business started, and a special automobile research laboratory was set up to recruit software engineers, automobile engineers and even rocket scientists on a large scale.
Apple initially hoped to seize the market of traditional car intelligence and enter the car networking industry by releasing CarPlay in-vehicle system. CarPlay in-vehicle system can transmit the information on iPhone to the front screen of the car. Apple's layout in the field of in-vehicle systems and maps provides more possibilities for its self-driving cars, enabling it to conduct more accurate tests.
In 20 17, Apple obtained the license to test self-driving cars in California, and released the first research result of self-driving cars, which is a software system that can detect pedestrians on the road more easily. Apple CEO Cook even called the driverless system "the mother of all Apple AI projects", and the importance attached to it can be seen.
Google, which owns Android, started the driverless car project in 2009. Now, Google's test car has reached the third generation. It is estimated that from 202 1, millions of new cars around the world will provide in-vehicle infotainment systems based on Android operating system.
Domestic technology companies have already smelled business opportunities in this field.
On April 29th, 20 17, Baidu released the Apollo program, which is a software platform provided by Baidu to partners in the automotive industry and autonomous driving field. Ali's YunOS operating system was established on 20 10 and officially launched on 20 1 1. 20 16 On July 6th, Ali and SAIC released a Roewe SUV named RX5 and its Ali YunOS operating system, positioning it as the world's first internet car. Tencent has invested in companies including Weilai Automobile, FMC and Cheng Aichi. At present, Tencent has signed strategic cooperation with FAW, BMW, Guangzhou Automobile, Chang 'an, Geely, Dongfeng Liu Qi and other enterprises, and a number of models equipped with "AI in car" Tencent car coupling scheme have been put on the market.
On June 0, 20 1 165438+ Tencent Global Partner Conference, Zhong Xiangping, Vice President of Tencent, released the business strategic plan of "four horizontals, two verticals and one China platform". The so-called "four horizontals" refer to Tencent Car Federation, Tencent Autopilot and Tencent Location Service, and "two horizontals" refer to Tencent content platform and security system. "One China Taiwan Province" refers to Tencent AI and Tencent Cloud.
According to the calculation of Boston Consulting Group, the market value created by self-driving cars will reach 42 billion US dollars; Before 2035, there will be180,000 cars with partial self-driving function in the world, and120,000 cars will become fully self-driving cars, which is a huge market opportunity.
However, from the current point of view, the distance between the ideal and reality of autonomous driving is still large.
Autopilot technology is mainly divided into L0 to L5 levels. At present, many experimental vehicles can reach L4 level, and many Internet and start-ups are developed from L4 level. However, the traffic situation in China is complicated and changeable. At present, the accuracy of map navigation system is low, and consumers still have doubts about the reliability of self-driving cars. In addition to new technical challenges, autonomous driving also has many problems to be solved in terms of laws and standards.
In the opinion of analysts, there are two types of companies in the field of autonomous driving in the future: