AutoBeta(AutoBeta.net)11/28 Report--

According to Interface News and other media reports, Beijing Automobile (hereinafter referred to as BAIC) is working with Huawei to jointly develop a new model, which is expected to go on sale in 2024.

According to the report, the new car will adopt a cooperation model similar to Huawei's smart selection, equipped with Hongmeng smart cockpit, intelligent car control and intelligent driving technology provided by Huawei, and will be sold in Huawei stores. According to people familiar with the matter, the new car will be developed based on the existing platform of polar fox, but will not continue to use the polar fox brand.

In response to the above news, BAIC Jihu responded to the media by saying: "there is no relevant news yet."

Data show that BAIC cooperated with Huawei as early as 2017, and Huawei first provided cloud computing and vehicle networking technology to BAIC. Huawei and BAIC jointly established the "1873 Davidson Innovation Lab" in January 2019. Since then, they have begun to cooperate on the whole vehicle, with the goal of developing the next generation intelligent network connected electric vehicle technology. In May 2019, Huawei launched car BU to cooperate deeply with car companies as a supplier, and launched the Huawei Inside smart car solution in October of the following year. Polar Fox was the first car brand to carry the "HI" solution.

According to the official website, Ji Fox currently owns three models: Alpha S, Alpha S HI and Alpha T, of which the newly launched Alpha S Huawei "HI" version is one of the few products on the market with "magnificence", but the cooperation route of "HI" of polar fox is not smooth. According to the original plan, the first version of the polar fox Alpha S HI will be delivered at the end of 2021, but nearly a year after the launch of the new car, the car was still skipped several times and was not officially announced until July this year. On May 7 this year, the Alpha S HI version was officially launched, with a total of two new models, priced at 397900 yuan and 429900 yuan respectively, which are powered by Huawei's full-stack smart car solution, integrated with Huawei's intelligent high-end self-driving system and Hongmeng OS Smart + connected cockpit, representing Huawei's highest level of self-driving. Xu Zhijun, Huawei's rotating chairman, had previously said: "not all cars provided by Huawei can be marked with HI's LOGO, only those with our self-driving solution can be marked with HI's LOGO."

At present, there are three modes of cooperation between Huawei and automobile companies, namely, selling soft and hard parts to automobile companies, that is, Huawei acts as an upstream supplier; Huawei Inside (HI) model, which cooperates to develop customized complete self-driving and intelligent cockpit solutions; and Huawei smart car selection model, that is, Huawei is deeply involved in product definition, vehicle design and channel sales. In short, the main difference between these three modes of cooperation lies in the depth of cooperation. Among them, the cooperation mode between BAIC Polar Fox and Huawei is the Huawei Inside (HI) model, that is, it is led by itself, and Huawei provides technical support. This model is different from the "Huawei Smart selection" model of Saili, which can be fully connected to Huawei channels and can be test-driven and sold in Huawei stores. While polar fox can only rely on its own and BAIC's sales system, Huawei, as a sponsor, only provides some retail stores for display.

At present, the only car company to announce cooperation in the "Huawei Smart selection" mode is Cyrus. In April 2021, Cyrus officially reached a partnership with Huawei, and the two sides signed a memorandum of cooperation in the field of new energy vehicles, followed by the launch of the first cooperative model, "Cyrus Huawei Smart SF5", with a price range of 21.68-246800 yuan. The car is sold in both Huawei's online and offline stores. Since then, Cyrus has also carried out a second cooperation with Huawei to launch the high-end new energy brand AITO. If the above news is true, BAIC may become another partner in Huawei's smart selection model, industry insiders said. BAIC uses a cooperation model similar to Huawei's smart choice to co-build cars with Huawei or wants to change the car-building model to save the current depressed polar fox brand.

According to the insurance figures, the Jihu brand sold a total of 8138 vehicles in the first three quarters of 2022, less than 25% of its annual sales target, including 3431 Alpha T and 4707 Alpha S. As a reference, sales of Huawei's question series with Selis have continued to soar since its launch. Official figures show that delivery of 12018 vehicles in October, an increase of 461.4% over the same period last year, has achieved delivery of more than 10,000 vehicles for three months in a row. As of October this year, the cumulative sales of the series has reached 57000. In terms of sales data, it is clear that the question series is no longer on the same order of magnitude as the polar fox that follows the Huawei Inside model.

For Huawei, although Huawei claims that it does not build cars, it wants to help car companies build good cars. Wang Yanyi, president of Huawei's smart car selection business, said at the 2022 China Automobile Forum on Nov. 10 that Huawei chose to do smart car business because Huawei's blessing did not make some new cars with gears of more than 300000 yuan popular. The launch of the smart car business is to avoid this serious problem, and Huawei hopes to step in from the early stages of the smart new energy vehicle business to design, build, sell and sell cars into hot models with car partners. Based on this background, BAIC adopts the smart car model to cooperate with Huawei, on the one hand, to solve the shortcomings of BAIC's sales channels, so as to boost sales; on the other hand, it can also consolidate BAIC's position in the new energy market. Of course, so far, whether the cooperation between BAIC and Huawei can be further depends on the official verification of both sides.

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