After sending invitations to Celis, JAC, BAIC, Chery and other smart cars to buy shares, Huawei now wants to expand its circle of friends to overseas markets!
A few days ago, it was reported that Huawei has sent invitations to Mercedes-Benz and Audi to inquire whether the two companies are interested in buying a minority stake in Huawei's smart car software and hardware companies.
The move is seen as an effort by Huawei to expand its business network to brands outside of China. Huawei also expects to mitigate the risk of further sanctions it may face by bringing in foreign investors, according to a source close to the situation.
According to reports, Huawei has held preliminary negotiations with Mercedes-Benz in recent weeks, and proposed to Mercedes-Benz to buy 3% to 5% of the new car company's shares, and the valuation is still to be negotiated.
People familiar with the matter previously said that Huawei's new car company will be valued at between 200 billion yuan and 250 billion yuan.
However, Mercedes is not so interested, and the reason given is that it wants to continue to take control of its software business in order to maintain its premium brand positioning, rather than outsourcing it to the top vendors.
In terms of autonomous driving, Mercedes-Benz was approved to deploy the Level 3 autonomous driving system Drive Pilot in Nevada at the beginning of the year, becoming the first automaker to be approved in the United States. Mercedes-Benz's automatic lane change assist feature is also scheduled to enter the North American market this year.
Regarding Audi, people familiar with the matter said it was not immediately possible to determine how interested Audi would be in Huawei's stake proposal. However, Audi and Huawei are planning a partnership to develop autonomous driving technology for Audi. These technologies will be applied to vehicles for the Chinese market from 2025 onwards, which will be produced by FAW Audi.
In fact, Huawei and Audi have been cooperating in the field of intelligent and connected vehicles since 2018, when technicians from both parties integrated Huawei's MDC mobile data center into the Audi Q7 prototype for operation in urban autonomous driving environments and publicly displayed them.
After the unveiling of the ARCFOX model equipped with Huawei's autonomous driving technology in 2021, Michael Hofmann, then executive vice president of R&D at Audi China, hinted that the company may further adopt Huawei's autonomous driving solution, that is, Huawei's ADS system on domestic models.
However, there has been no new progress in the follow-up of related cooperation.
None of the three parties has responded to requests for comment.
Last month, Huawei and Changan Automobile signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) in Shenzhen. After negotiations, Huawei plans to establish a new company to focus on the R&D, production, sales, and service of intelligent driving systems and incremental components for intelligent and connected vehicles.
According to the MOU, Huawei intends to integrate the core technologies and resources of the intelligent vehicle solution business into the new company, and Changan Automobile and its affiliates will intend to invest in the company and work with Huawei to support the company's future development.
However, Changan Automobile and its affiliates will intend to invest in the new company, but the shares will not exceed 40%. Commenting on the cooperation, Yu Chengdong said: "We have always believed that China needs to build an open platform for electrification and intelligence with the participation of the automotive industry, an open platform with a 'locomotive'. ”
At the same time, he also said that Huawei and Changan will deepen cooperation and work together with more strategic partner car companies.
It is understood that the newly established company is a subsidiary of Huawei Group, Yu Chengdong made it clear that the proposed new joint venture company will still be led by Huawei technology research and development direction, and the partners of Huawei's smart car business will join the joint venture company in the future.
Cooperation, continue to explore a new model of openness and win-win, and jointly seize the opportunity of the electrification and intelligent transformation of the automotive industry.
It is worth mentioning that at the previous Zhijie S7 and Huawei full-scene press conference, he said that Huawei has issued an invitation to Cialis, Chery, BAIC, and JAC, and hopes that China FAW Group will join.
At the same time, he also introduced that Huawei has three cooperation models in the automotive business, one is the parts model, one is the Huawei HI model, the other is the smart car model, and the third is the model with the deepest cooperation.
According to Yu Chengdong's previous disclosure, the partners will have two "worlds" after the question world and the wisdom world, respectively from BAIC and JAC, and these two products are already in the process of development.