HI's ambition: not to build a "Huawei car", but to build every car inside

"Huawei is still a long way from being able to build complete vehicles," Wang Jun, president of Huawei's Intelligent Automotive Solutions BU, said in an interview with Gasgoo and other media outlets.

Because it was revealed that Huawei was going to transfer its automotive business to its consumer business, and because Huawei's consumer business CEO Richard Yu had frequently "stood up" for the automotive business, it gave Huawei's automotive BU a lot of room for imagination to shift its business direction from to B to to C. Recently, the rumors about "Huawei making cars" have become popular again. Huawei's denial was as straightforward as ever.

Wang Jun believes that for a complete vehicle, whether it is the layout, manufacturing or process, it is very complex, and Huawei's capabilities are far from enough to build such a vehicle. "So our ideal is to bring the digital world into every car," Wang Jun said. More specifically, it is to provide the automotive industry with a full stack of intelligent solutions through the intelligent vehicle solution brand HI, which was just released on October 30, to realize Huawei Inside.

Like Intel Inside, Huawei is installed in every car

Intel Inside refers to the brand recognition that Intel has established in the minds of consumers in the computer field - a good computer should use a processor produced by Intel, so that many consumers tend to prefer products containing Intel processors when purchasing computers, and many computer brands are very popular because they use Intel's central processing units.

In the automotive field, Huawei also has such an "Inside Dream", that is, to make the HI brand the representative of the "element brand" in the automotive industry, and to be widely adopted by major automakers. Huawei's technology is used in the car, and the HI brand logo is printed on the body, giving the automaker brand blessing and endorsement. At the same time, with the empowerment of the HI brand, consumers can also trust Huawei's technology, trust the automakers that cooperate with Huawei, trust the cars "made" by Huawei and the automakers, and trust the "brand" they "build" together.

HI full-stack intelligent vehicle solution, Image source: Huawei

To this end, Huawei has injected all the full-stack intelligent solutions accumulated in the automotive field over the past few years into the HI brand, including a new computing and communication architecture, 5 major intelligent systems - intelligent driving, intelligent cockpit, intelligent electric, intelligent networking and intelligent car cloud, as well as 30+ intelligent components such as LiDAR and AR-HUD. At the same time, the HI brand has also planned three computing platforms for intelligent driving, intelligent cockpit, and intelligent vehicle control from the computing power and operating system levels, as well as three operating systems: AOS intelligent driving operating system, HOS intelligent cockpit operating system and VOS intelligent vehicle control operating system. It covers almost all the key components of a smart electric vehicle .

"If these technologies are put into an electric car, the incremental parts we are targeting will account for about one-third of the total vehicle cost, and the other two-thirds are batteries, as well as traditional parts such as the lower body, upper body, and seat interior, which we will not touch." Talking about the development direction of the HI brand after the business integration, Wang Jun pointed out. Even so, the prospects of this market are still very attractive.

In the interview, Wang Jun gave a set of data: when the degree of automobile intelligence increases by 1%, the global automobile parts market (excluding the US market) may expand by 3.3 billion US dollars; if the degree of intelligence and electrification increases by 1% at the same time, the market for the entire automobile parts market will expand by more than 6 billion US dollars. "So this market is large enough, and from a market perspective, we see opportunities everywhere," Wang Jun said.

Huawei's three major operating systems, Image source: Huawei

So, how does Huawei plan to eat this "cake"? According to Wang Jun, there are three main business models: the first is to be a traditional Tier 1 and directly provide intelligent components such as LiDAR and AR HUD to car companies; the second is to provide platform services to OEMs based on the three major computing platforms of intelligent driving, intelligent cockpit, and intelligent vehicle control, as well as the three major operating systems of AOS, HOS, and VOS, so that OEMs and third-party partners can develop upper-level applications; the third is to provide customers with a full stack of HI brand solutions. The models are very diverse, and customers can flexibly choose according to their actual needs.

"Only models equipped with Huawei's full set of HI solutions will be marked with the HI brand logo," Wang Jun pointed out. This means that the HI LOGO not only represents Huawei's technological innovation and business model innovation in the field of smart cars, but is also a symbol of Huawei's full-stack smart solutions and its commitment to brand and technology.

"As early as this time next year, the cars we have developed in cooperation with car manufacturers based on the HI model will be launched one after another, and you will be able to see cars with the HI logo by then." Wang Jun revealed when talking about the current market progress of the HI model. "In addition, our three-electric system has been gradually installed in cars since this year, and more parts will be launched next year, such as smart cockpits, smart car cloud services and sensor products, which are all ready to go."

Building the HI technology foundation based on software, algorithms and ecology

In the automotive field, printing a parts supplier's brand logo on a car as a "core element" was something that many companies dared not think of in the past, but Huawei not only thought about it, but also did it. It has to be said that although Huawei does not make cars, its "ambition" is no less than that of making cars. Therefore, many people are curious about what the basis of Huawei's confidence is.

In this interview and the "Automotive Media Entering Huawei" event held at the same time, Huawei once again explained this question through a comprehensive display of its smart car solutions: the core is still Huawei's past accumulation in the ICT field. In Huawei's view, smart cars are the product of the integration of the ICT industry and the automotive industry. The underlying logic of each business of smart car solutions is actually related to Huawei's traditional ICT business. With the acceleration of the new four modernizations of automobiles, ICT-based hardware and software will play a greater role in the future automotive industry. This is the fundamental reason why Huawei entered the field of smart cars.

For example, Huawei's charging, power supply, electric control and battery management solutions in the field of smart electric vehicles are actually the extension of Huawei's digital energy product line (formerly Huawei's network energy product line) in the automotive field. Millimeter wave radar originates from the wireless product line, because 5G's millimeter wave and millimeter wave radar technologies have the same origin. As the main interactive center of future smart cars, the future control center is, to some extent, a Pad, which is completely consistent with Huawei's accumulation in the fields of mobile phones and computers.

Wang Jun (right), President of Huawei Intelligent Automotive Solutions BU, and Su Qing (left), President of ADS Intelligent Driving Product Line

As for the technical foundation of ICT, Wang Jun believes that Huawei's advantages are mainly concentrated in three aspects: software, algorithms and ecology, especially software, which is the focus of Huawei's current investment. Because in Huawei's view, the future intelligent connected car is a platform. Once the hardware platform is built, it can continuously add functions and features through rapid software iteration like a smartphone, providing a better driving experience and solving the problem of "no need to think or do things" during driving.

"In terms of software, our team size has reached 4,000 people, not including the software staff in the 2012 laboratory, where we have 500 to 600 staff engaged in the research and development of AOS, VOS, etc. Most of our investment at this stage is in software." Wang Jun said. In the field of algorithms behind the software, Huawei has accumulated a large number of talents based on its past accumulation in the wireless field and artificial intelligence field, including fusion algorithms, perception algorithms and other types, which can meet the diverse needs of smart cars. Ecosystem is Huawei's core capability. In this field, Huawei has developed multiple operating systems for the automotive industry, including AOS, VOS, HOS, etc. Among them, HOS-A, according to Wang Jun, was developed by Huawei exclusively for car machines, aiming to fill the gap in the field of car machine OS.

However, just as the advantages are obvious, the challenges Huawei faces cannot be ignored. Especially in terms of safety, since Huawei had no experience in the automotive industry before, Wang Jun admitted that Huawei still lacks experience in how to build capabilities in safety so that its products can truly meet automotive-grade requirements. It is reported that because of this, although Huawei's Intelligent Automotive BU was established only a year and a half ago, it has taken almost two years to take a detour, and there has been no shortage of doubts from car companies during this period.

"There is also the issue of profitability, especially for a company, whether it makes money or not is the most important thing. As for Huawei, according to the investment rules of the automotive industry, we estimate that it will take an average of eight years for Huawei's new business to break even," said Wang Jun. This process is undoubtedly long, and once the market matures in the future, how Huawei can switch from incremental to value-added is also a problem.