Looking back in 2022: Technology giants face the "sobriety of the world" when building cars

Car building has been one of the hottest entrepreneurial tracks in recent years. But looking back at 2022, which has come to an end, it seems that the sober technology giants in the world are no longer keen on building cars.

At the recent "2022 Lenovo Innovation and Technology Conference" held by Lenovo, Rui Yong, Lenovo Group's senior vice president and chief technology officer, emphasized: "Lenovo has no plans to build cars. What we want to do is car computing." The mission of "car computing" is to combine Lenovo's computing technology accumulation with the intelligent needs of car companies. Lenovo positions itself as "the enabler of the new four modernizations of automobiles."

Home appliance giant Haier has made similar moves. Recently, after Haier officials refuted rumors that "Haier will enter the vehicle field," the relevant business person in charge said, "Currently, Haier relies on its Kaos Industrial Internet platform and is cooperating with relevant automobile companies to empower the automobile industry. Digital transformation of chain enterprises.”

In addition to the two giants Lenovo and Haier, Meizu Technology, which was once famous in the smartphone industry, recently announced job recruitment in the automotive field, triggering speculation about car manufacturing. Later, the vice president of Geely posted on Weibo, "This is a misunderstanding. Meizu does not build cars, it only builds cars." Provide services to car companies.”

In fact, in 2021, many technology companies such as Xiaomi, Baidu, and Skyworth will enter the market to build cars. However, in 2022, why do these giants with technological genes who are considered by the outside world to be capable of building cars unanimously choose to do so? A supplier to a car company? Is the boom period of new car manufacturing really gone?

Why are tech giants no longer building cars?

Why are tech giants no longer building cars? According to Tan Qingshuo AI, there are both external environment reasons and its own reasons.

First of all, in terms of the external environment, the cold capital has suppressed the enthusiasm of giants for building cars.

In the capital market, the attitude of investment institutions towards new power brands is very different from that in the early days of Wei Xiaoli’s establishment.

In 2018, when Niu Innovation Energy was founded, domestic new energy-related industry financing events and financing amounts have begun to decline. By around 2020, with the advancement of the car-making business, even leading brands such as Weilai and Xiaopeng are facing financing Difficulties, Leap Motors even failed to raise money for more than a year.

In the new car manufacturing boom, local governments have played an important role. In order to attract investment, they have spent a lot of money to promote the birth of a number of new energy car companies. For example, Weilai is backed by Hefei, Wenzhou has obtained debt investment and low-interest loans from Wenzhou, and Leapao has received investment from the Hangzhou State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission.

For local governments, car manufacturing is becoming an effective way to upgrade local industries. But not every city is suitable for the development of the automobile industry, and there are many people who bet on the wrong thing. Seeing the failure of new car manufacturers such as Byton, Singularity, and Sailin, local governments will be more cautious in investing in car companies.

What cannot be ignored is that the ongoing epidemic in 2022 has caused many industries to suspend work and production, and the government's tax sources have narrowed.

According to statistics, only a few provinces and regions have fiscal surpluses, while most local governments have serious fiscal deficits. At the beginning of the epidemic in 2020, the Hefei government could still spend 7 billion to save NIO, but such a good story will be difficult to repeat in 2022.

In addition, the new energy market will soon face another challenge. The national subsidy for new energy vehicles ends on December 31. Starting next year, the bicycle subsidy of 4,800 to 12,600 yuan will no longer exist.

In order to reduce costs, brands such as Changan Deep Blue, Nezha, and Leapao all plan to launch lower-cost extended-range models. It can be expected that for new car companies such as AIWAYS, Qiantu, and Tianji that are struggling to survive, they currently have neither mass production lines nor sufficient funds, and they are destined to face more difficult difficulties next year.

According to Li Bin of NIO, the threshold for car manufacturing has been raised to 40 billion. Even though technology giants have big businesses, in the context of the continued economic downturn, the capital market and local governments have tended to be conservative, and the trend of new car manufacturing has basically ended. .

After talking about the unfavorable factors of the external environment for car manufacturing, let’s look at whether the technology giants themselves are fully capable of building cars.

According to Tan Qingshuo AI, the penetration rate of new energy vehicles will increase rapidly in 2022, and the new energy vehicle market will be inflamed. For new players in car manufacturing, technical strength and user operations are indispensable.

First of all, in terms of technical strength, if technology companies want to squeeze into the car manufacturing industry, they need to wait for the arrival of the era of intelligent automobiles and rely on the advantages of intelligent technology to enter.

However, in technical fields such as car-machine interconnection and operating systems that can be extended to automobiles, the development of technology giants is not smooth.

To some extent, the historical event that promoted a key turning point in automobile intelligence should be the birth of Apple CarPlay in 2014.

Since then, domestic Internet companies have begun to see opportunities to empower car companies. Baidu launched Carlife and Huawei launched HiCar. However, looking back at the journey of giant companies such as Alibaba, Huawei, and Lenovo to get on the bus, we will find that none of them went smoothly.

Let’s look at Alibaba first. Alibaba once wanted to develop the YunOS operating system, which could be used in various smart terminals such as cars, smart homes, mobile phones, and tablets. In 2016, the first mass-produced Internet car, the Roewe RX5, was officially launched equipped with the YunOS intelligent operating system. This was an exciting start.

But unfortunately, YunOS cannot circumvent Google's patent barriers. I want to make the operating system bigger, but I am "stuck" by Google. In addition, for Alibaba, as a listed company, continued in-depth deployment of operating systems is inconsistent with the interests of shareholders, resulting in its long-term stunting.

If an operating system lacks the key testing ground of mobile phones, it will be difficult to iterate and improve quickly, and it will be difficult to become mainstream. Therefore, YunOS (renamed AliOS) has developed relatively slowly. Although the Zebra system based on AliOS has been installed on many SAIC vehicles, the ecosystem based on this operating system has lagged far behind.

Compared with Alibaba, Huawei is very determined to invest in research and development. Moreover, Huawei is not a listed company, so its long-term investment in operating system research and development and related industries will not be influenced by shareholders. However, after Huawei's chips were sanctioned by the United States, if it builds its own cars and directly competes with Tesla, it may trigger greater "sanctions" from the United States.

Looking at Lenovo again, in 2015 Lenovo released ZUI, a deeply customized mobile operating system based on the Android system, which was installed on Lenovo's ZUK mobile phone. At a time when car companies are increasingly inclined to cooperate with mobile phone manufacturers, the long-term significance of smartphones is that they can be used as the entrance to smart cars and a springboard to enter the car manufacturing industry.

However, Lenovo's mobile phones have long lost the market and users of the year. The operating system and car-machine interconnection have also lagged behind, and it has not accumulated the technical advantages of building cars.

Secondly, not every technology giant is good at user operations.

According to Tan Qingshuo AI, in the current new energy vehicle market, user operation is a key capability for new power car companies to increase sales. Car companies with Internet genes such as Tesla and Weixiaoli are able to sell cars well not only because of their advantages in product intelligence and technology, but also because user operations are also a key strength.

In contrast, new energy brands owned by traditional car companies such as Jihu, Zhiji, and Lantu have inherent disadvantages in user operations, and their sales volume and product strength are extremely disproportionate.

Take Lenovo as an example. As a PC manufacturer, Lenovo relies on Wintel in the upstream and dealers in the downstream. If consumers do not take their computers for repair, it will be difficult for PC manufacturers to have the opportunity to deal with consumers in the future. Therefore, user operations are not Lenovo’s strong point.

By the way, Baidu, which has officially built a car, has already received a cold reception from users even before the car is built. Jidu released its own concept car ROBO-01 in June this year, but in order to show off its technology, it chose to hold a press conference in the metaverse. As a result, users complained mercilessly because of the live animation of stretching the hips. Ziyoujia suddenly changed when its new cars were about to be delivered. While refunding subscribers, it laid off its employees, which is sad. Xiaomi Auto is working slowly and carefully, and its production qualifications have not yet been obtained. In addition, the autonomous driving track has recently been in trouble, and the progress of Xiaomi's "full-stack self-developed autonomous driving" has not been as expected. There is also Luoke Automobile founded by Chang Jing, the founder of Stone Technology. Except for some noise when it was officially announced that it was building a car, it was silent, as if it was not building a car...