**: The world's car wisdom Ding Meng.
SAIC Shou "soul" loses, and Cialis does not make money by "selling souls", so there is more opportunity to keep warm and master core technologies.
The success of AITO has brought Huawei's position in the Chinese automotive market to a new level.
On February 1, 2024, AITO Wenjie delivered all new car 330,000 units, 1,800 units ahead of Li Auto, topped the sales list of new power brands.
It is undeniable that the success of AITO is also inseparable from Huawei's aura. Huawei intends to replicate the success of AITO, so in 2023, Huawei established HarmonyOS Zhixing, and cooperated with Chery to launch the "second world" - Zhijie, and the first product Zhijie S7 has also been launched.
It is worth noting that in addition to Wenjie and Zhijie, Huawei will also cooperate with BAIC Blue Valley and JAC Motors to launch Xiangjie and Aojie respectively, the former will be announced on the eve of this year's Beijing Auto Show.
Although Huawei's relationship with car companies is closer, there is still a voice in the cooperation between Huawei and car companies: who is the leader of the cooperation.
Some time ago, the unfavorable delivery of Zhijie S7 reflected this problem. Some internal employees of Chery said that in the production process, Huawei participated more and did not have a good run-in with Chery.
It may not be said that in the cooperation with Huawei, Chery has no "soul", but at least the degree of freedom is not so high, and it is for this reason that shortly after the launch of the Zhijie S7, Chery also launched the Star Era ES at the same time.
The "soul theory" has been picked up again. The first time the word appeared was in the speech of Chen Hong, chairman of SAIC. At SAIC's 2020 shareholders' meeting, when asked whether SAIC would consider cooperating with Huawei and other third parties in autonomous driving, Chen Hong was shocked: "It's like having a company that provides us with an overall solution, so that it becomes the soul and SAIC becomes the body." For such a result, SAIC is unacceptable, and wants to take the soul into its own hands.
Now, two and a half years have passed, China's auto market has also undergone earth-shaking changes, China has become a new energy vehicle power, looking back, the "soul" of SAIC seems to be left behind.
Sticking to the "soul" is not a bad thing, if you dig deeper, the Cialis who handed over the "soul" to Huawei does not seem to have come out of the loss. In the final analysis, the development of car companies must learn from their excellent peers and keep warm, but they must not lose their self-research capabilities.
The soul is not the same as profit
Everyone only saw the increase in sales of Wenjie, but they didn't know that Huawei's Cialis on the list not only did not make money, but also lost more than 2 billion yuan in the end.
On January 24, Cialis announced its 2023 performance forecast, with revenue expected to reach 35.5 billion yuan to 36.5 billion yuan, net profit loss of 2.1 billion yuan to 2.7 billion yuan, and non-net profit loss of 4.6 billion yuan to 5 billion yuan.
Regarding the performance loss in 2023, Cialis explained: "Mainly due to the high R&D investment in the core technology and products of high-end smart electric vehicles, resulting in an increase in R&D expenses and labor costs, while sales in the first three quarters were sluggish, and fixed expenses and related expenses were also high. ”
In fact, this is the fourth consecutive year that Cialis has suffered a large loss. In 2020, 2021, and 2022, the attributable net profit of Cialis will lose 172.9 billion yuan, 182.4 billion yuan, 383.2 billion yuan, with a cumulative loss of more than 94 in four years8.5 billion yuan.
According to the relevant ** calculation, since the official cooperation with Huawei to launch AITO in 2021, Cialis has deducted a net profit loss of 116 non-attributable to the parent company8.9 billion - 120$8.9 billion.
Going around and around, although Huawei's Cialis on the list has won the name, it has also made the market question whether it has become a foundry for Huawei's car-making.
Cialis has not yet made a profit, and SAIC, which claims that it will not hand over its "soul", has not been able to stand alone in the increasingly competitive Chinese auto market.
Judging from sales, SAIC Motor will have a bit of a difficult time in 2023. It is reported that in 2023, SAIC Group's sales volume will accumulate 502090,000 units, down 5 percent year-on-year31%, which is nearly one million units short of the target set at the beginning of the year of "striving to achieve annual vehicle sales of 6 million units in 2023, a year-on-year increase of more than 10%".
Under the onslaught of Chinese brands, the sales of SAIC Volkswagen, SAIC-GM, SAIC-GM-Wuling and other three "profit cows" under SAIC Group have all declined without exception.
The sluggish sales volume had a direct impact on SAIC's earnings. According to the third quarter report of 2023 released by SAIC, its revenue in the first three quarters was 52334.2 billion yuan, down 077%；Net profit 1140.7 billion yuan, down 9 percent year-on-year82%；Operating costs 51553.8 billion yuan, down 06%。
One of the most important tasks during Chen Hong's tenure is to promote the development of SAIC's own brand, but when the independent brand is advancing by leaps and bounds with the east wind of new energy vehicles, SAIC's newly incubated new energy sub-brand is dumb.
Chen didn't want to hand over the "soul" of intelligence to others, so in the "pro-son" of Zhiji Automobile, SAIC Motor gave enough support for manpower and material resources. However, Zhiji Automobile, which has always taken intelligence as its selling point, has planted a heel on its own longboard.
On the first day of 2024, many Zhiji LS6 owners have spent their time in complaints, including but not limited to lying in the nest, all the basic driving parameters have disappeared, and the reversing radar suddenly has no prompt sound. Li Weimeng, executive director of Zhiji Auto's software and user multi-contact points, apologized on Weibo, saying only that "this incident is a very naïve software bug".
Obviously, in terms of intelligence, Huawei has more advantages than car companies. Yu Chengdong has used "far ahead" more than once to describe Huawei's intelligent driving system. Among them, we should mention Huawei's intelligent driving system ADS 20 and HarmonyOS intelligent cockpit, the former can bring a more relaxed and safe intelligent driving experience, while the latter can allow in-car users to experience the industry's leading human-computer interaction experience.
In the "soul theory" dispute, we see the confusion of the OEMs' initial transformation of the new energy vehicle industry, they urgently need to create their own intelligent driving products, but at the same time, they are also afraid of relying too much on the first business and becoming a foundry.
Cooperative upgrades
In the era of fuel vehicles, the discussion on the "soul" between OEMs and OEMs is rarely mentioned, because the core technologies of fuel vehicles such as engines and gearboxes are generally in the hands of car companies, and the relationship between the two is more obvious, and OEMs have the absolute right to speak.
In the new energy era, the three electric vehicles required by electric vehicles have replaced the engine and gearbox as the core technology, and the value of intelligent driving is becoming more and more prominent. When it comes to long-term experience in developing and maintaining complex software systems, perhaps no one beats Big Tech.
In the past few years, the development of new energy vehicles, Alibaba, Tencent, Huawei and other technology companies and mobile phone manufacturers have entered the automotive industry in an attempt to get a piece of the pie. Compared with traditional car companies, they have a deeper understanding of intelligence. For example, Tencent's instant messaging, Huawei's operating system, and Alibaba's cloud computing all have more than ten years of development experience.
In the cooperation between OEMs and technology giants, there have been no incidents of "soul snatching", and the cooperation between Huawei and Cialis is an example. At the beginning of 2022, the M5 was sold in Huawei mobile phone stores, and nearly 1,000 offline stores were built within a year.
Just when the sales of the M5 soared, AITO became "Huawei" in the propaganda caliber of the world, everyone speculated that Huawei began to make cars, and Cialis became the foundry of Huawei's cars, although Huawei has since refuted the rumors again and does not make cars, but this also makes the OEMs begin to worry about whether they will also be pumped out of the soul.
As a result, OEMs are fighting with intelligent driving and chip manufacturers, and on the other hand, they are promoting "full-stack self-development" and swearing "technical sovereignty".
The OEMs of the "soul theory" are looking for a balance, and that balance is being found. On November 26, 2023, Changan Automobile and Huawei officially signed a Memorandum of Understanding on Investment Cooperation in Shenzhen. Specifically, Huawei plans to establish a new company, in which Changan Automobile will take the lead, and the company will focus on the research and development, production, sales and service of intelligent driving systems and incremental components for intelligent and connected vehicles. Since then, Mr. Yu has been recruiting new shareholders for the new company and offering an olive branch to traditional car companies such as FAW.
In the face of the development of new energy vehicles, Chinese auto brands are anxious and forge ahead at the same time, whether it is SAIC Motor, which "guards the soul", or Celis, which "hands over the soul", it is not at fault. Behind the "soul theory", car companies should actively cooperate with major Internet companies with advantages, learn their advantages in software, and form their own self-developed links.