Yu Chengdong, which has made great contributions to Huawei’s terminal business, has encountered unprecedented challenges in the new energy vehicle business.
First, Ren Zhengfei issued a document on March 31, re-emphasizing that Huawei does not build cars, which is valid for 5 years. This is nothing new, but it emphasizes that "Huawei /HUAWEI" cannot appear in the publicity and appearance of the whole vehicle.
Then Xu Zhijun, the rotating chairman of Huawei, criticized at the financial report meeting that "recently, some departments, individuals and some partners are abusing the Huawei brand. We have been investigating and dealing with it. The brand that Huawei has built for more than 30 years will not be abused at will. Huawei has not built a car or any brand of car."
The speech from the top of Huawei is very targeted. Prior to this, Yu Chengdong has been trying to bind HUAWEI brand to the world of inquiry more deeply, and the stores and posters in the world of inquiry have added the logo of "Huawei", but this cross-border behavior was resolutely stopped by Huawei’s top management.
On the one hand, the terminal business is under downward pressure,Yu Chengdong urgently needs to find new growth points; On the other hand, although there are several business models of Huawei’s car business, the space for Huawei to display is very limited. Yu Chengdong hopes to deeply bind with Huawei to alleviate the current predicament.However, in the face of the firm strategy of the Group, Yu Chengdong, who was full of grievances, began to find himself in a dilemma.
Stopped "HUAWEI asks the world"
On April 1, Wu Shu, a dealer in the western province, received a notice from HUAWEI, demanding that the logo and posters in the store be replaced, and the "Huawei" logo be removed, leaving "the border".
Less than a month ago, Wu Shu just hung up Huawei’s logo. He got the news that Yu Chengdong was going to release the upgraded car of the M5 at the Shanghai Auto Show on April 17th. The main highlight was the advanced autopilot, and Huawei AITO was officially announced to provide confidence to the market.
"At present, no matter from which angle, the overall pressure is quite large. This is the truth." Gu Jiatian, a dealer in the Yangtze River Delta region, told the front line of Digital Intelligence that in addition to cars,The performance of the mobile phone is not very good either.Most of the stores in the world are opened by Huawei’s big distributors. Huawei hopes to solve the survival problem of authorized stores in the case of a sharp decrease in mobile phones. Every time a dealer sells a car, he can earn 6 points.
However, the sales volume in the world is not good now. "Asked the world last year or resource car, sell well, everyone is robbing. Not this year. " Wu Shu said that the sales of smart cars and Huawei mobile phones are now facing tremendous downward pressure. "At this stage, everyone has actually been biting their teeth." In March of this year, the sales of mobile phones and cars in his stores all halved.
Yu jianyue, founder of jianyue EV forecast, analyzed that the product strength of these cars is relatively insufficient.Coupled with the frequent price cuts of rivals, especially Tesla ModelY and Li ONE, it is very uncomfortable for the media at present.
Statistics also confirm this. In February and March, the sales volume of the world has dropped to more than 3,000 units. The front line of digital intelligence learned from an insider of Cyrus that the target set by the consulting community this year is 260,000 units, with an average of more than 20,000 units per month. The reality is far from the target.
"Yu Chengdong is in a hurry and has set high goals, but the market performance of the world is not so good." Gu Jiatian believes that,Yu Chengdong hopes to use Huawei brand to give a shot in the arm and improve consumers’ recognition of the world.
According to Gu Jiatian’s observation, Huawei terminals have actually been exploring step by step, adding Huawei elements to the world. The first batch of boundary M5, the left side of the rear of the car is written by Jin Kang Sailis, and the right side is boundary M 5; The left side of the second batch became Cyrus, and Jin Kang was removed, and the right side was still the boundary M5. In March of this year, I was informed that Celeste was still on the left, and Huawei asked M5 on the right. But this car was not delivered in the end.
But this practice was finally rejected by Ren Zhengfei.Ren Zhengfei’s attitude is still clear, and the whole vehicle will not be tied to the Huawei brand.
"In fact, before you changed, everyone privately called Huawei AITO. Just after getting on Huawei’s bid, give the customer a positive statement. " Wu Shu said that this thing was fine without adding it, but it was not very good to be removed after adding it.
The front line of Digital Intelligence learned from a person familiar with the matter that a few days ago, Huawei’s intranet also released a speech made by Ren Zhengfei in October last year, which talked about several things that Huawei needs to make strategic breakthroughs at present, including digital energy, Huawei Cloud and HarmonyOS Euler, and even talked about Huawei’s mobile phone returning to the king, but it didn’t talk about cars. "He didn’t say anything, which means that this matter is not important at present." The above-mentioned insiders said.
Intelligent selection mode is in a torment period.
As we all know, Huawei’s car business has three modes:One is to provide spare parts for car companies and play the role of Bosch in the era of smart cars; The second is HUAWEI Inside.Mode, providing HI solutions including HarmonyOS car machine and self-developed on-board computing chip to car companies; The third is the smart car selection mode, which not only helps car companies build cars, but also helps them sell cars. One of the three is more involved than the other.
"In the face of a sanctioned company, it is difficult for car companies in Europe, America and Japan to regard Huawei as the main intelligent supplier, so we can only find domestic car company partners; Li Xiang, a new force car company like Li Bin, has its own pursuit and will not choose us; If traditional car companies are afraid of losing their souls, they will not choose us. " At the 2023 committee of 100 for Electric Vehicles, Yu Chengdong spoke very pertinently about Huawei’s situation in car business. In other words, the first two modes are not easy to walk.
This situation has also been verified. On March 27th, Guangzhou Automobile Group announced that the joint development of Guangzhou Automobile Ai ‘an AH8 project with Huawei changed from joint development to independent development, and the HI model was downgraded to parts model. In fact, Huawei’s HI mode partner is only Aouita of Chang ‘an. And things like Weilai and Ideals are all self-developed in the intelligent level.
Therefore, Yu Chengdong has always been most concerned about smart car selection, which can not only empower car companies, but also activate Huawei’s sales channels.
According to Yu Chengdong, Huawei wants to make the world an eco-brand.That is to say, not only Celeste, but also other smart cars that cooperate with Huawei may appear in the name of the industry. However, there is no clear answer as to who owns the brand or trademark AITO.
However, the cooperation mode of smart car selection also makes some car companies feel less comfortable.
A Cyrus employee said that Huawei did bring advanced management mode and management experience to Cyrus, but its strong style also made Cyrus somewhat dissatisfied. "Huawei requires that we provide all data to Huawei selflessly, and then if we ask Huawei for something, they will say that this is our internal confidential data."
In addition, the above employees revealed that,Huawei’s things are generally more expensive, and as long as the departments related to this thing have to make money,For example, the combination of software and hardware requires a sum of money, hardware also requires a sum of money, and cloud services also require a sum of money. "The cost of Huawei’s whole set of things is very high, and then he will advise car companies to reduce profits."
Therefore, considering the cost, some things of Cyrus are also used by other suppliers. Like motor, ECUHiCar uses Huawei more, but Huawei is not used for driving assistance. "We also refuse many things.".
More importantly, the sales volume of the world has been deadlocked recently. Yu Chengdong’s attempt to further bind Smart Car with Huawei brand was also rejected. This adds more variables to Huawei’s smart car selection.
In fact, before the car, Huawei tried the smart selection mode in other categories. The most typical is the smart choice of mobile phones. Since Huawei was suppressed by the United States, 5G chips have not been supplied, and Huawei has also provided 5G mobile phones through smart selection mode.Mainly for operators and Huawei mobile phone contractors to trade.
However, smart mobile phones face more embarrassment than smart cars."Smart mobile phones didn’t sell well last year, and they didn’t sell much this year, with a small proportion." The front line of Digital Intelligence learned from many Huawei dealers that Huawei’s smart mobile phones lacked control before, which led to the channel terminals’ complaints. In Huawei Mall, there are only three or four smart phones, all of which are labeled with 5G, but the sales volume is very limited.
Moreover, merchants can only mention Huawei’s smart selection when they publicize, and they cannot be equated with Huawei. Although these mobile phones are different except for chips, operating systems and logo, others are basically the same as Huawei’s original models. However, Huawei does not allow these smart models to be bundled with Huawei for publicity.
Without Huawei’s blessing, chaotic smart brands have also brought troubles to terminal sales.For example, China Mobile’s Huawei Smart Choice model is Enzhong, TCL’s Thunderbird, Dingqiao’s mobile phone is TD, and Unicom’s is U-Magic. "Who is this product, and the after-sales of the product is a problem." A dealer told the front line that consumers’ recognition of smart phones is very low, and some even bought them back and found that they were not Huawei brands and returned.
This year, Huawei introduced very few smart phones, mainly Hi-nova which cooperated with China Telecom.
Although Huawei pays more attention to and invests in the smart car, it also needs to face the entanglement of this business model. Moreover, compared with the smart mobile phone partners, Huawei faces more independent brands, which also tests their cooperation with Huawei.
In Yu Jianyue’s view, there is not much Huawei can do now: First, after the new car is released at the Shanghai Auto Show, Huawei needs to re-price the M5 and M7.In particular, the M5 extended-range version should continue to reduce the price.In fact, there have been some price reduction actions on the channel side, but they have not been carried out in a big way;Second, it depends on the market performance of pure electric SUVs and pure electric cars that Huawei cooperates with Chery.
"Dealers are also relatively conservative, and it is unlikely that there will be a big outbreak in the short term." Gu Jiatian said that he also lost a lot of money in the world, but he will continue to do it.
Yu Chengdong in a dilemma
The emergency stop of Huawei’s top management made Yu Chengdong rather passive, and also made the outside world see the differences between Huawei’s strategic and executive levels.
Huawei doesn’t want to build a complete vehicle, but wants to do business with more car companies.In Ren Zhengfei’s original words, "Smart car solutions can’t spread a complete front. It is necessary to reduce the research budget and strengthen the business closed loop. R&D should take the road of modularization, focus on several key components to make competitiveness, and the rest can be connected with others."
But the reality is not easy. Huawei’s parts model and HI model have not opened up the situation. "This era has changed, which will only make us more difficult. After a few years, everyone will understand and leave time to test! " Yu Chengdong wrote this sentence on Huawei intranet. So,Yu Chengdong prefers deeper involvement.
In fact, from Yu Chengdong’s perspective, we can better understand that it is not easy to break the game. Huawei’s terminal business has suffered a serious decline in recent years. In 2022, Huawei’s terminal revenue was 214.4 billion yuan, which was the only declining sector within Huawei, accounting for one-third of Huawei’s total revenue. At the peak of 2019, consumer business accounted for more than 50%.
Before the chip is solved, the mobile phone is difficult to get up. Whether it is to save the channel or the terminal business, Yu Chengdong needs to open up new water sources. The car business is highly anticipated by Yu Chengdong. But from the current results, it is not ideal.
Besides,A lot of money is spent, but the income is very limited.Huawei disclosed in its 2022 performance report that since the establishment of BU, a smart car solution, the accumulated investment has reached 3 billion US dollars.The R&D team has reached the scale of 7000 people. In 2022, Huawei’s R&D expenditure related to the automobile business exceeded 10.3 billion yuan, and the business indirectly involved more than 10,000 people.
Corresponding to the high investment, in 2022, Huawei’s smart car solution business revenue was 2.077 billion yuan, accounting for only 0.3% of Huawei’s total revenue.
Yu Chengdong’s pressure can be imagined. Now every business unit of Huawei has a profit assessment, and the car is the only loss-making business of Huawei at present. An interesting detail is that in the latest 2022 financial report released by Huawei Group, although Yu Chengdong, the CEO of terminal BG, is still the managing director, his name is behind Zhang Pingan, CEO of Huawei Cloud, and Wang Tao, president of enterprise BG. In 2021, Yu Chengdong came before these two men.
"At this time, Yu Chengdong can only find a way to get through when the sales volume is green and yellow." Yu Jianyue said to the front line of intelligence.
In Yu Jianyue’s view, Huawei’s biggest problem is facing US sanctions and problems in the supply chain. Huawei needs to ensure its main business instead of putting too much energy into innovative business. Besides, in this case, even if the automobile business is bigger,It also faces the risk of being sanctioned.
In addition, building a car itself is a very expensive thing, but Huawei is still in the stage of survival."We can’t simply take the same road as Ali and Amazon … We don’t have that much money, and they have inexhaustible money in the US stock market." Ren Zhengfei said. This is also the reason why Huawei has always attached great importance to profits. It needs money to support huge R&D..
"For an industry, only in-depth insight and deep understanding can we grasp the right direction! Mark it and come back in a few years! " After being publicly criticized, Yu Chengdong left such a sentence on the voice forum of Huawei’s intranet, which was quite aggrieved.
Maybe everything Yu Chengdong said is right. "Cars are very important, but compared with Huawei’s main business, it doesn’t look so important." According to Yu Jianyue,For Huawei, this is a question of survival and development.
