Written by Timensity
In 2016, SAIC and Alibaba brought a "god car" Roewe RX5 to the Chinese auto market, and the selling point of this car is "the world's first mass-produced Internet car". The cockpit of the Roewe RX5 is equipped with a piece of 10The 4-inch large central control screen supports functions such as AI artificial intelligence voice, big data active navigation, travel cloud entertainment, and IoT mobile phone remote vehicle control. These features may seem commonplace now, but they were rare at the time.
In the second month of its launch, the sales volume of the Roewe RX5 exceeded 10,000, and the total sales exceeded 90,000 units from its launch in July to the end of December. This is the first time that China's auto market has been shaken by the Internet.
In fact, the selling point of Roewe RX5 is not comprehensive with "Internet", and a more comprehensive summary should be ICT (Information and Communications Technology, a combination of information technology and communication technology), which is simply IT+CT, covering all communication equipment or application software.
While the Roewe RX5 has become a generation of miracle cars, a number of major ICT manufacturers have entered the automotive industry, including Tencent, Huawei, Xiaomi, Qualcomm, etc. Recently, the official website of China Automotive Center Information Technology released the "Statistical Analysis of China's Automotive Patent Data in 2023", in which a number of major ICT manufacturers have also appeared. These major ICT manufacturers are becoming an important force in the transformation of the automotive industry.
2023 Statistical Analysis of China's Automotive Patent Data" has made multiple lists according to different types. In the list of "Patent Disclosure by Innovation Entity", four of the top 10 are ICT companies, and the ranking from high to low is Huawei, Tencent, Qualcomm, and Vivo Mobile Communications.
Such a ranking is really a bit surprising, and it is reported that vivo executives were a little surprised when they saw the list, suspecting that they had read it wrong.
There are quite a few surprises in this list. For example, in the list of "Patents Authorized by Innovation Subject", Huawei appeared again, it ranked third, and in fourth place happened to be Bosch, which had just said that Huawei did not put pressure on it. In the list ranked by "the number of patents granted by the subject of innovation", there is also OPPO, which ranks tenth.
The main reason why the 2023 list is surprising is that everyone suddenly discovered that the original ICT manufacturers have "penetrated" so deeply into the automotive industry. Among these major ICT manufacturers, Huawei and Xiaomi are the ones with deep penetration.
Huawei entered the automotive industry a little earlier than Xiaomi. In 2013, Huawei entered the automotive industry with the launch of an in-vehicle communication module. At present, Huawei's impact on the automotive industry is mainly reflected in two aspects.
First of all, Huawei does not make cars, only exports technology. Huawei has three modes of participating in the car, namely ** Shang, HI and Hongmeng Zhixing (previously Smart Car). The most involved of the three models is HarmonyOS Zhixing, which also does not involve building cars, but provides design, technology and marketing capabilities to partners.
Taking the AITO M9 as an example, its core components such as intelligent driving, intelligent cockpit, electric drive and electronic control system, and electronic and electrical architecture have all been helped by Huawei. In 2023, AITO will pass Huawei ADS 20, pushing high-end intelligent driving to an unprecedented position. Since then, high-end intelligent driving has become a necessary ability for mid-to-high-end new energy models.
Secondly, with the empowerment of Huawei, Cialis has experienced the process of becoming a popular fried chicken from a small transparent one, and the sales volume of AITO has become higher and higher. In January this year, the sales volume of the entire AITO Wenjie series reached 32,973 units, a record high, and surpassed the ideal to become the first among the new forces.
Xiaomi participates in a different way than Huawei. Xiaomi is the only one of these ICT giants to build a car in person (it has also participated in the construction of cars in the past, but has now changed course), and is expected to deliver its first model this year. Judging from the information that Xiaomi Su7 has been **, Xiaomi Auto has injected new vitality into the car by relying on its accumulation in the field of mobile phones.
In terms of the interconnection function of the car machine and the mobile phone, as long as the user holds the Xiaomi mobile phone equipped with the surging OS system and turns on the Bluetooth function, the car machine of Xiaomi Su7 can display the mobile phone screen, and the screen on the car machine and the mobile phone screen are non-interfering with each other and independent of each other, and users can use different applications on the car machine and mobile phone respectively.
The control functions of the Xiaomi car have also been added to the Xiaomi mobile phone, including navigation, air conditioning, seat adjustment, etc. If the other occupants in the car are also using Xiaomi mobile phones, they can use their own mobile phones to control some common functions of the car after being authorized.
The automotive industry is undergoing major changes unseen in a century, and the key point is the four modernizations, namely electrification, networking, intelligence and sharing. The impact of major ICT manufacturers on the automotive industry is reflected in the "Four Modernizations".
"Intelligence" is the most understandable and easy-to-find aspect of the four modernizations, and Huawei's blessing to Cialis goes without saying. Take Tencent, which is also on the list, as an example, it is contributing to the intelligent development of automobiles through cloud computing.
This can be understood in two ways.
High-end intelligent driving is already a hot spot in the industry, and whether it is Huawei or Mobileye, they provide a complete set of solutions that can be used directly by car companies, while Tencent provides the best training environment for simulating intelligent driving.
Tencent has launched the self-driving virtual ** platform "Tadsim", which has a logic similar to Tesla's shadow mode, which can learn human driving techniques through simulation algorithms without interfering with the driver, and continuously optimize through algorithms. Tencent's advantage is that it has accumulated game engine technology in games, which allows Tadsim to restore the real world more realistically in the virtual world and provide a more realistic training environment.
It is also relatively easy to understand the empowerment of "networking" by major ICT manufacturers. Networking can also be called the Internet of Vehicles, and cars that can be connected to the Internet of Vehicles are like smart phones. Therefore, some major Internet manufacturers have their own advantages in this regard, such as maps needed for navigation scenarios, and automobiles continue the industry pattern on mobile phones, such as AutoNavi maps and maps.
Sharing refers to car sharing and mobility, and Didi is best known in this regard. Some car companies are also doing shared travel, such as Geely has made Cao Cao Travel, GAC has done Ruqi Travel, and SAIC has invested in Xiangdao Travel.
The most difficult thing to connect with ICT manufacturers is electrification, and the first thing that comes to mind when people mention electrification is power batteries, and CATL and BYD will come to mind. In fact, the accumulation of ICT manufacturers in the energy field can also be reused in the electrification of automobiles.
Or take Huawei as an example, Huawei entered the electrical industry in the last century, established Huawei Electric, and later sold this business to Emerson. Around 2010, Huawei re-entered the electrical industry, and in the following years, Huawei rebuilt a "Xinhuawei Electric" with a richer product line and wider coverage. Currently, these businesses are part of Huawei Digital Power and can provide solutions in the fields of photovoltaics, site energy, smart charging, smart charging networks, and embedded energy.
In the field of three electric (battery, electric drive and electronic control), in addition to Huawei can not provide batteries, electric drive and electronic control can be provided, and have been mass-produced on the car, **AITO Wenjie M7 uses Huawei Digital Energy's three-in-one electric drive system and BMS (battery management system).
Huawei's 3-in-1 electric drive system deeply integrates a motor controller (MCU), an asynchronous motor, and a reducer, with a peak power of 270 kW in four levels. At the same time, Huawei can also provide charging equipment (liquid-cooled supercharging, charging module).
In general, the four modernizations are the general outline of the current transformation of the automotive industry, and major ICT manufacturers are entering the automotive industry from these four aspects and empowering the industry.
There are two sides to everything, and it is a positive side that ICT manufacturers can promote the development of the four modernizations of the automotive industry. At the same time, they have also stirred up the "catfish" that affect the automobile industry.
Here are two high-profile cases. The first case is Wang Weiliang, President of the Board of Directors of Bosch Intelligent Mobility Group, Bosch (the world's largest automotive technology company), who recently responded to Bosch's pressure on Huawei, saying that "I don't feel particularly strong competitive pressure."
Although Wang Weiliang said that he did not feel the pressure, Bosch has actually competed with Huawei in the field of intelligent driving. In December last year, Chery released the Star Era ES, a high-end intelligent driving system jointly developed by Bosch and WeRide, and the Zhijie S7 on the same platform is equipped with Huawei ADS 20。
With the independent development of Huawei's smart car BU business, there will be more and more competition between the two, and Huawei has also launched a signboard through AITO, and the competition will be more intense.
Therefore, regardless of whether Bosch feels the pressure or not, Bosch and Huawei will have to engage in short-term combat in the field of high-end intelligent driving, and with Huawei's capabilities, the cake on Bosch's plate is bound to be affected.
The second case is SAIC's "soul theory". Previously, when asked whether SAIC would consider cooperating with third parties such as Huawei in autonomous driving, Chen Hong, chairman of SAIC, threw out the soul theory: this is like a company providing 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. Behind the soul theory is the impact of ICT manufacturers on the automotive industry.
These two cases show that the ICT giants will be the catfish of the automotive industry, and with its entry, all other parties will have to run to avoid losing their souls.
In fact, the four modernizations of the automobile industry have not yet reached the end, and traditional manufacturers and OEMs will complain about ICT manufacturers because they see the development trend of the industry, but they are powerless.
As mentioned earlier, the general outline of the transformation of the automobile industry is the four modernizations, and in the four modernizations, software is more important than ever. If 90% of the value of a car today comes from hardware and only 10% from software, in the future, software will account for more than 50% of its value. Do traditional OEMs and OEMs only need to do their software homework well to go through the cycle? No, this is the reason why traditional manufacturers and OEMs are anxious.
OTA (air ** technology) is a common function of new energy vehicles, and it is also one of the embodiments of networking and intelligence, which traditional OEMs cannot do. To put it simply, OTA optimizes the software of the product through information transmission, and the system update and APP update on our mobile phone are OTA.
Tesla is the pioneer of the automotive OTA, and the Modes S is the first model to adopt OTA technology. Automotive OTA is divided into two types: SOTA (software OTA) and FOTA (firmware OTA). OEMs can do SOTA well, but they can't do FOTA, because FOTA is more difficult.
FOTA involves changes in the logic of automotive R&D, specifically the fact that traditional distributed E/E architectures cannot support FOTA. The earliest electronic and electrical architecture in the automotive industry is distributed, and fuel vehicles use this architecture, and Tesla created a domain architecture, which divides the functions of the vehicle into five domains, which belongs to a centralized architecture.
Based on a centralized architecture, Tesla's OTA updates not only update the software, but also improve the performance of the hardware. Tesla has used OTAs to increase range and battery capacity. At present, there are not many car manufacturers that can use OTA technology for the whole vehicle, except for Tesla, mainly new forces, and the new forces regard the vehicle OTA as a highlight of publicity.
Whether it is a catfish or a partner, the historical trend is unstoppable, and all that traditional manufacturers and OEMs can do is to actively embrace the trend and find their place in the new era.