Evergrande Auto and Tencent jointly set up a joint venture to jointly develop an in-vehicle operating system

On March 15, Evergrande Auto (0708.HK) announced that it had signed an agreement with Beijing Wutong Autolink Technology Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of Tencent Holdings, to establish a joint venture with a capital contribution of 60% and 40% respectively, to jointly develop an in-vehicle operating system with independent intellectual property rights.

It is reported that Evergrande Auto has already carried out in-depth cooperation with Tencent on the development of intelligent vehicle operating systems. The establishment of the joint venture this time can be regarded as a further deepening of the cooperation between the two parties, aiming to give full play to their respective advantages in the fields of new energy vehicle research and development and manufacturing, artificial intelligence, big data, cloud computing, and travel ecology, and jointly create a world-leading intelligent vehicle ecosystem.

Image source: Evergrande Auto

As one of the most popular new car brands in China, Evergrande Auto has released 9 models so far. The first batch of 6 models were released in August 2020, covering the entire series of passenger cars from A to D level as well as sedans, coupes, SUVs, MPVs, crossovers, etc. According to Evergrande Auto's plan, these models will start trial production in the first half of 2021 and will be mass-produced in the second half of the year. Three models were released in February 2021, namely Hengchi 7, Hengchi 8, and Hengchi 9. Among them, Hengchi 7 is a pure electric B-class sedan, Hengchi 8 is a pure electric C-class coupe, and Hengchi 9 is a pure electric B-class mid-size SUV.

Evergrande Auto once said that the company has 14 models under development, which means that in addition to the above 9 models, there may be 5 more models to be announced in the future. With these products, Xu Jiayin said: Evergrande Auto plans to invest 45 billion in three years to build 10 major production bases around the world, reach an annual output of 1 million vehicles in 3-5 years, and become the world's largest and most powerful new energy vehicle group.

Although these words are a bit exaggerated, with the orderly progress of all work of Evergrande Auto and the gradual arrival of relevant partners, Evergrande Auto will undoubtedly move closer to the above goals.

As a system-level solution provider under Tencent, Wutong Autolink was spun off from Tencent in July 2018, and introduced Changan Automobile and Jiaxing Xinlian as initial shareholders. Since its establishment, the company has been committed to creating highly open, highly adaptable, and deeply personalized operating system-level Internet of Vehicles solutions for the industry. In 2019, Wutong Autolink officially released the TINNOVE OS automotive intelligent system, which deeply integrates the basic capabilities of Tencent Autolink and Tencent's core ecological resources, and was first installed on the Changan CS85 COUPE model.

Wutong Autolink ecological partner, image source: Wutong Autolink

After that, Wutong AutoLink launched TINNOVE 2.0 and TINNOVE 3.0, and released the product details of TINNOVE OpenOS "technical base" and TINNOVE 3.0 integrated solution for the first time in November 2020. Among them, OpenOS is expected to be equipped with products from 40 to 50 ecological partners. The prototype system has been verified on more than 400,000 vehicles and is expected to be installed on Changan models around June 2021. TINNOVE 3.0 further refines the driving scenarios and builds a more complete intelligent travel scenario service solution.

This cooperation with Evergrande Auto means that the Hengchi models that will be launched in the future, empowered by Tencent's Internet ecosystem, Internet of Vehicles, artificial intelligence, big data and other capabilities, are also expected to become a highly technological intelligent mobile space that can realize scenario-based applications such as office, entertainment, education, shopping, and telemedicine, providing users with a smarter life experience.