Hongmeng system car machine will reveal its true appearance, and domestic automobile systems will embark on the road to rise

Huawei's Hongmeng car machine may soon reveal its true face.

On February 27, Chery New Energy Automobile's official Weibo account announced, "#CheryNewEnergyS61 is here#CheryNewEnergyS61 is equipped with the world's leading Hongmeng car system and L2.99 level automatic driving assistance system..."

At present, this Weibo post has been deleted, and only other Weibo information such as the range and space design of Chery New Energy S61 remains.

Interestingly, this news was quickly summarized by Banma Zhixing as part of its weekly report, and the company generously stated, "Welcome Hongmeng to join us and work together to enable domestically produced cars and domestically produced operating systems to embark on the road to rise."

In a certain sense, Banma Smart Driving, Hongmeng Car Machine, and Car Android are competitors, and they are based on AliOS, HarmonyOS, and Android respectively.

Image source: BBC

Take a look at the current landscape:　

Some models of brands such as Audi and Volvo favor in-car Android;

Some models of brands such as Toyota and Honda are mainly cooperating with Apple Carplay;

After Banma Smart Driving gradually opened up, its cooperative models mainly include some models under SAIC, Dongfeng Peugeot and Ford brands.

In comparison, Huawei is also welcomed by many car companies, especially domestic brands.

As early as August last year, Geely Auto expressed its favorability towards the Hongmeng system.

When Geely Boyue Pro was about to be released, an official poster put the "HarmonyOS" system of the Hongmeng car machine and the Geely Boyue Pro together. For a time, the outside world speculated that Boyue Pro would become the first model equipped with the Hongmeng car machine system.

Now, Chery New Energy S61 has once again revealed information about Hongmeng car machine. Perhaps Huawei is ready.

Hongmeng car machine is launched

In April 2019, when Huawei appeared at the Shanghai Auto Show, it did not announce that it would build cars. Instead, it announced its positioning as an "incremental supplier in the smart car industry", demonstrating its business logic of "focusing on ICT technology to help car companies build better cars."

At the subsequent developer conference, one of Huawei's weapons to help car companies build better cars, its independently developed "HarmonyOS" - Hongmeng OS was officially unveiled.

Hongmeng OS is an operating system that is distributed in all scenarios based on a microkernel and can be applied to IoT devices such as home robots, autonomous driving, and smart industry.

How to understand it?

It can be roughly understood as a combination of operating systems such as Windows and Android.

According to Chen Lifang, Huawei's director and senior vice president, "Hongmeng OS has been developed for many years. It is not designed for mobile phones, but for industrial systems. Its main feature is very low latency, from milliseconds to sub-milliseconds. Its second feature is extremely secure, and its architecture is very advanced."

Ren Zhengfei also emphasized that the creation of the Hongmeng operating system was not for use in mobile phones, but for use in the Internet of Things, such as autonomous driving and industrial automation, because it can accurately control the latency to less than five milliseconds, or even to the millisecond to sub-millisecond level.

Therefore, low latency and security seem to be the strengths of Hongmeng car computers.

In the field of car computers, cars are adding more and more functions such as in-car navigation, music, and third-party applications. The low latency feature will help the data processing of the car computer system, making the user experience smoother and free of lag, while also facilitating remote control of the vehicle.

In addition to life services such as infotainment, some domestic brands are also adding functions that touch on driving control, such as remote parking. In this case, safety becomes the top priority.

In this case, car companies do not want to see vehicle failures or driving accidents caused by car computers. Therefore, safety will also be an important consideration for car companies when choosing car computer suppliers.

However, the more important point about the Hongmeng car machine is that the operating system behind it can connect the ecosystems between different platforms.

Huawei's rotating chairman Xu Zhijun once said that Huawei's biggest advantage is that smart terminals and smart cockpit platforms share an ecosystem, bringing the hardware capabilities, software capabilities, and application ecosystem accumulated by Huawei in smart terminals into smart cockpits. This is also what car companies value most.

In fact, whether it is the operating system of a mobile phone or a car computer, it cannot be separated from a rich ecosystem.

How many ecosystem players are willing to access your operating system means how many services users can ultimately enjoy, and ultimately determines whether users will buy mobile phones or car computers.

The Android operating system in the mobile phone industry accesses a rich ecosystem through open source, and eventually competes with Apple's iOS system.

The automotive industry also requires a rich ecosystem.

According to Yu Chengdong, CEO of Huawei's consumer business, the Hongmeng operating system at the bottom of the Hongmeng car machine has cross-platform capabilities, including support for all scenarios and across multiple devices and platforms.

That is to say, in addition to car computers, the Hongmeng operating system will also be used on smart terminals such as smart screens and smart watches.

Connecting these ecosystems means that more and more other smart terminals can be controlled by Hongmeng car functions, and it also means that car owners can enjoy more ecological services.

This should be one of the important reasons why car companies choose Hongmeng car computers.

An essential puzzle piece

The importance of the Hongmeng car system within Huawei can be observed from two perspectives.

One line is the automotive business.

In May 2019, Huawei established the Intelligent Automotive Solutions BU, with Wang Jun, former president of Huawei's Wireless Network Business Unit and Japan Carrier Business Unit, as CEO of the unit.

In August, Huawei released the Hongmeng system, which caused a sensation in the global technology community. On the one hand, it was because Huawei has a global influence, and on the other hand, it was because Huawei has strong R&D capabilities. In addition, it was a special period at that time, so it caused a sensation.

Industry insiders in the automotive field have previously stated that currently in the automotive market, except for Alibaba's aliOS, everyone is basically using the Android system, and the Android system has a larger share. If domestic smart cars are to develop in the future, the problem of the car system must be solved, such as the rise of domestic car-machine systems, otherwise it will still be strangled by foreign countries.

In October of that year, at the World Intelligent Connected Vehicle Conference, Xu Zhijun gave a detailed interpretation of Huawei's layout in the automotive business, namely "one architecture as the foundation, three platforms as the development focus, and connectivity and cloud services going hand in hand."

Here, one architecture refers to the "CC architecture" which stands for computing + communication, and the three platforms refer to the MDC intelligent driving platform, the CDC intelligent cockpit platform and the VDC vehicle control platform.

Connectivity refers to Huawei's intelligent network connection solution, which solves the problem of high-speed network connection inside and outside the car. Cloud service refers to services provided based on cloud computing, such as online car owner services, entertainment and OTA.

According to the functional classification, the car system naturally corresponds to the smart cockpit and the "connected" intelligent network solution.

In other words, Huawei is not just a car computer system provider like other automotive suppliers. Its greater ambition is to become a software solution provider for car companies. Its goals include ADAS, high-level autonomous driving, and cloud services.

From this perspective, Hongmeng car machine is a sub-sector involved in the automotive business.

The other line is Huawei's overall business.

When Huawei's Hongmeng operating system came out, Yu Chengdong gave a keynote speech. The consumer business software department and the smart car solutions BU where the Hongmeng system is located are two independent departments.

At the beginning of the release of Hongmeng operating system, Huawei's consumer business set the "1+8+N strategy" in its long-term strategy for the next 5-10 years:

1 refers to smartphones, 8 refers to PCs, tablets, large screens, speakers, glasses, watches, car computers, and headphones. N refers to the Huawei HiLink ecosystem consisting of pan-IoT hardware.

It is worth noting that the number 8 means that the Hongmeng operating system can be used not only in the field of car computers, but also in PCs, smart speakers, smart watches and other products.

In other words, Hongmeng car machine is Huawei's means of connecting smart cars, and the ultimate goal is to create an Internet of Things connected by a 5G network.

In this sense, the Hongmeng car machine has become an indispensable piece of the puzzle.

Therefore, to judge the performance of Hongmeng car machine, we should not only look at what functions or ecological services it can provide for the car, but also whether it can connect efficiently with other smart terminals.

Who will cooperate first?

The ambition is great, but it still has to be realized in the end.

Back to the automotive field, if Hongmeng car machine wants to make some achievements, it must eventually be installed in the car. Now it seems that Chery, Geely, Dongfeng, Changan and BAIC are likely to be among the first car companies to install the system.