Therefore, the high-end smart car brand that the three parties want to build is eye-catching. Recently, some media broke the news that the name of the platform they cooperated with came out, called "CHN", which was taken from the pinyin initials of three companies.
In fact, Rome was not built in a day. This "CHN" was originally the internal name of this cooperation project, not the final name of the platform. Moreover, according to the internal workflow of Chang 'an, this name existed long before the brand was released.
Does the name matter? Of course it's important, and it's not important. The important thing is, what will these three companies do together? Also, where is the original Wei Lai? A series of related events, let's sort out the context.
Break the curse of "CHN"
In 2020, anyone without a pure electric platform will be embarrassed to say that he is "electrified". Moreover, the research and development of pure electric platform is very expensive, and car companies without strength dare not engage in it. Dare to say that you have a platform, naturally full of confidence.
And in the past two years, more and more joint venture brands have shown sincerity. Pure electric platforms that have been put into production/released, including Volkswagen MEB, Toyota e-TNGA, GM BEV3, Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi CMF-EV, and Hyundai Motor Group's pure electric platform E-GMP, which was released on February 2, 65438, are undoubtedly time to compete for pure electric platforms.
As the head of the independent brand camp, how can Changan fall behind? 165438+ 10/4. On the first CCTV "First Launch" program, Zhu Huarong, Chairman of Changan Automobile, officially announced that Changan Automobile will jointly build a brand-new high-end smart car brand with Huawei and Contemporary Ampere Technology Co., Ltd., and its high-tech high-end smart products will be listed soon.
The high-end smart car brands jointly built by the three parties include the world's leading, independent and controllable smart electric car platform, a series of smart car products and super "car driving" smart life and smart energy ecology.
Among them, the core is of course the platform jointly built by the three parties. According to the reporter, this platform will be a pure electric platform. This platform has been established in Chang 'an, and the project name is CHN project. This is also the origin of the name of the relevant media platform.
In addition, "holding a group to fight the world" is already the most favorable way for the industry to fight against the unknown future. In addition to Changan, Huawei and Contemporary Ampere Technology Co., Ltd., at the end of 10, SAIC and Ali also announced the launch of the high-end intelligent pure electric brand "Zhiji Automobile".
On the other hand, this high-end brand is mysterious to the outside world and discloses little information. The reporter took the name "CHN" to ask the relevant people of Changan Automobile. This "CHN" is like a spell, and everyone avoids it, just like an empty valley echo.
Is it really so mysterious? That's not true. According to internal information, many clues can be analyzed clearly.
In fact, as early as July 8, Yao Fuhai, director and chief supply officer of Huawei, led a team to Chang 'an for an inspection, and exchanged views on supplier management, management of opening two stores, sunshine procurement and signing procurement contracts. The two sides expressed their intention to cooperate in intelligence and supplier management.
Then, Zhang, the chief verification officer of Huawei Smart Car BU, led a team to visit Changan New Energy (the main partner of Changan Cooperation). The two sides had an in-depth exchange on "test equipment capability, verification scheme of project intelligent cockpit, NVH performance guarantee scheme of power system and efficient thermal management, project schedule requirements and regulatory certification requirements", which is the core of cooperation.
In addition, the person in charge of Chang 'an's team this time is the "strategic partner of EPA2 project". Pay attention to this "EPA2 project". The reporter said in the last article that the two platforms being developed by Changan New Energy are EPA 1 and EPA2.
Subsequently, at the end of July, Chang 'an Procurement Center led a team to Huawei's two bases in Shenzhen and Dongguan for benchmarking study and exchange. "In view of the current pain points, we have conducted detailed docking and discussion." On August 18, Chang 'an made a report sharing exchange meeting on this benchmarking exchange.
Most importantly, on June 65438+1October 65438+June 6, the "Reading Summary Meeting of CHN Cooperation Project between Changan and Huawei" was held, which was the first time that the Huawei team had a collective meeting in Changan Automobile to jointly develop. Next, we know that 165438+ 10/4, Changan officially announced the tripartite cooperation to build a high-end smart car brand.
So from the whole work and docking process, we know that this project started very early. The project name CHN has existed for a long time, which does not represent the final platform name.
Which platform is the platform?
When the reporter asked the relevant technicians of Changan Automobile, one question he wanted to find out was, which platform is this CHN platform? What is the relationship between this platform and EPA 1 and EPA2 platforms of Changan New Energy?
We know that the time to develop a platform is always three to five years. Changan, Huawei and Contemporary Ampere Technology Co., Ltd. have released a platform in such a short time, and it is definitely too late for new development. The most realistic solution is to use an off-the-shelf or mass-produced platform.
So, the answer is obvious. Changan, Huawei and Contemporary Ampere Technology Co., Ltd. will jointly launch the platform EPA2. Moreover, according to the information of snowball forum, EPA2 is a high-performance version of EPA platform, which is obviously forward-looking. EPA 1 platform (called C385 project by Chang 'an) is an ordinary platform because it is a compact pure electric vehicle platform.
When the reporter asked the relevant people inside Chang 'an, the interviewees kept their mouths shut. It can be said that everyone knows what this platform is about, but they just won't say it. But in fact, this CHN platform is also the EPA2 platform, which is equivalent to the use of Chang 'an New Energy Association, and will also be enjoyed by Huawei and contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Ltd.
So, what can Huawei do in this cooperation? What is certain now is that the "CHN platform" will be equipped with Huawei's intelligent cockpit platform CDC, intelligent driving platform MDC and some three electrical components. Actually, there are two domain controllers. And the first production car is expected to be in? Listed in 2022.
Judging from the current situation, Changan, Huawei, Amperex Technology and Limited all have cooperation, and Changan still dominates. The role of contemporary Amperex Technology Limited in this cooperation project is as a brand battery supplier, and it is possible to cooperate with Huawei and Changan at the capital level. This specific situation remains to be continuously concerned in the future.
According to Chang 'an Home, an internal community in Chang 'an, 10, 16, "CHN? The project aims to study the automobile application ecology and vehicles based on the ability advantages of the three parties. Platform technologies such as OS, computing and communication architecture, high-voltage system and chassis machinery. "
After this meeting, the person in charge of the project of Chang 'an Intelligent Institute stressed that it is necessary to combine the leading technology of Huawei's central electronic and electrical architecture with the professional advantages of Chang 'an Machinery, such as high voltage, collision, CAE, etc., so as to form technical complementarity and consolidate the technical foundation for traditional cars to turn to smart cars. In other words, Huawei is "soft", Changan is "hard", and it is a combination of soft and hard.
Huawei's solution
In fact, after Changan released this high-end smart car brand, together with the high-end product sequence UNI series, the industry called it "double high-end" mode. Changan has also made consistent preparations in the process of "new four modernizations" and high-end modernization.
In this cooperation, Huawei mainly provides intelligent solutions, namely the intelligent cockpit platform CDC and the intelligent driving platform MDC. Why are there only two domain controllers?
This is what I said before. Huawei is "soft", Chang 'an is "hard", combining soft and hard.
On June 22nd last year 10, Xu Zhijun, the rotating chairman of Huawei, emphasized his determination not to build cars, and said that the automobile industry should fully integrate ICT technology after moving towards intelligent networked cars. The development and achievement of these decades should be to make cars move towards the architecture of distributed Ethernet+three-domain controller and realize software-defined cars.
In other words, Huawei has defined three domain controllers: VDC (Intelligent Vehicle Control Platform) is responsible for the vehicle and chassis domain, MDC (Intelligent Driving Platform) is responsible for the autopilot domain, and CDC (Intelligent Cockpit Platform) is responsible for the entertainment domain. However, in the field of vehicle and chassis, it is impossible for Changan to transfer control. This is where Huawei does not dare to challenge.
Therefore, the first car of this smart high-end brand will not be equipped with Huawei's complete set of smart car solutions in five aspects: intelligent driving, intelligent cockpit, intelligent network connection, intelligent electric power and cloud service. Therefore, it will not be marked with Huawei's eye-catching HI trailer like ARCFOX.
CDC is Huawei's strong point. It is based on the Kirin chip of the logo (with down-conversion processing and 14nm technology), the HarmonyOS OS operating system (which needs to be verified), including the Harmony cockpit operating system under the HI brand just released (previously, the HiCar system in the industry was only the screen projection function of mobile phones) and other overall solutions. This is also a function that Changan values.
In terms of autonomous driving, Changan, which is stronger than this, has its own solution. UNI-K, which was unveiled at Guangzhou Auto Show, and the previous brand day, Changan brought its own developed solutions.
UNI-K is based on the Ark architecture, with 36 sensors (including 6 millimeter-wave radars, 13 camera, 5 laser radars and 12 ultrasonic radar), high-precision maps and 5G-V2X modules, which can realize L3-level pressure-free automatic driving function.
It is worth noting that as one of the most important components of L3~L5 autopilot, the lidar used in the Ark architecture is expected to come from Huawei. Huawei has previously released a semi-solid lidar, which has the advantage of low cost and is expected to cost hundreds of dollars.
In August this year, at the Wuhan Blue Book Forum, Wang Jun, president of BU, Huawei's smart car solution, said, "Huawei has a photoelectric technology research center and is developing lidar technology, with the goal of developing 100 line lidar quickly in a short time. In the future, it is planned to reduce the cost of lidar to $200 or even $65,438+000. " At this price, the ark architecture may give priority to Huawei's lidar.
Besides,? 165438+1October 27th, at the forum of "Internet car Wuzhen Nighttalk", ARCFOX, deputy general manager of BAIC New Energy? Yu, president of BU, also revealed: "Together with Huawei, we have created HBT, the latest product of ARCFOX Extreme Fox. The new car is equipped with three 96-line laser radars, six millimeter-wave radars, 12 cameras and 13 ultrasonic sensors. The chip computing power provided by Huawei reaches 352 trillion times per second. " The rumor that Huawei lidar got on the bus is true.
Let's look at Changan Automobile's description of this CHN project: "Changan team and Huawei team respectively combed and summarized the work progress, achievements and problems in the stages of ZOA and SOA design driven by DVP architecture, SOA development process and tool chain design, high and low physical architecture design, mechanical and high-voltage interface standardization." The meaning is clear.
Which company will do it?
Then, the next question is, which company is the main body of Changan, Huawei and Contemporary Ampere Technology Co., Ltd.?
According to the reporter's previous test drive experience in Chang' an e-student, 20 18? Changan Weilai, established in 2008, has already participated in Huawei and is "led by Huawei". The reporter was still very surprised at the time. Why does Huawei lead?
Changan Weilai New Energy Technology Co., Ltd. was established on 20 18 and 10, and was originally set as the holding shares of Changan Automobile and Weilai Automobile respectively. 45%, and another 10% is held by the company's senior management team. However, the actual share ratio is 50% for Changan Automobile and 50% for Weilai.
It is worth noting that in September this year, Changan Automobile disclosed in the semi-annual report of 2020 that during the reporting period, Changan Automobile acquired Changan Weilai and included the company in the scope of consolidated statements, and the direct shareholding ratio of the company increased from 50% to 95.38%. In other words, Weilai's share ratio has dropped to 4.62%.
Now that the answer has come out, Wei Lai has obviously withdrawn from this cooperation project. Changan Weilai will definitely change its name in the near future. At that time, the relevant person told the reporter, "Weilai recruited a team of more than 100 people in Chongqing, and none of them came from the headquarters." This shows that Wei Lai did not intend to put too much energy into this project before.
Why did you quit? In fact, the reason is very simple. Wei lai's front has been stretched too long. In the early stage, due to strategic considerations, many partners were pulled to expand their momentum. Now the Hefei municipal government has invested 654.38+0 billion yuan, and the situation in Weilai has stabilized. It is the best way to start shrinking the front line and gradually withdraw. Chang 'an Weilai was the first.
Next, GAC Weilai may be the second one to withdraw from Weilai in the future. Recently, we saw Liao Bing, co-founder of Guangzhou Automobile Weilai, frequently interviewed by the media, calling for a voice. In fact, the fate of GAC Weilai is not optimistic.
Then, it is obvious that the high-end smart car brand built by the three parties is based on Changan Weilai, and Huawei should gradually inject capital to complete the relevant share conversion. Of course, the amount of capital injection needs to be negotiated by both parties.
There are also rumors that Tencent may take over Weilai's equity in Changan Weilai Company. This possibility exists, because Tencent has cooperated with Changan since Wu Tong Science and Technology, and the car-machine system used by Changan E-life is the car-machine coupling system in Wu Tong in which Tencent participated.
Therefore, Tencent will not fall into this game regardless of the official confirmation of Chang 'an. After all, Alibaba is betting on SAIC and Tucki, while Baidu has invested in Weimar and various car companies many times. Among BAT, Tencent is the second largest shareholder of Weilai.
According to the reporter's judgment, Tencent will join Changan's high-end smart car brand anyway, and Changan, Huawei, Contemporary Ampere Technology Co., Ltd. and Tencent will "save" Changan's new high-end brand, which will undoubtedly bring more imagination. Changan, as the leading force of its own brand, needs more partners on the road of "new four modernizations" in the face of competition from various forces.
Text/Wang Xiaoxi
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This article comes from car home, the author of the car manufacturer, and does not represent car home's position.