The competition for smart cars is no longer a parallel model (car companies and car companies, Tier 1 and Tier 1), nor is it a one-sided car company self-research model, nor a pure B2C model.
With the launch of in-depth cooperation between Volkswagen Group and Xiaopeng and SAIC yesterday, the competition around electrification and intelligence will undoubtedly enter a new cycle that is more intense.
In order to save the decline in the Chinese market, Volkswagen Group began to abandon the internal software self-development strategy planned a few years ago. According to the plan, the cooperation agreements with SAIC and Xiaopeng mainly involve the development of exclusive electric intelligent networked vehicles (ICV) in the Chinese market.
Among them, the first model of cooperation between Volkswagen and Xpeng Motors will be jointly developed based on the electric vehicle platform and software of Xpeng G9; in the cooperation between the two parties, Xpeng Motors will contribute the vehicle platform as well as the smart cockpit and intelligent driving system. Responsible for engineering and supply chain capabilities.
The strategic memorandum signed between Audi and SAIC is to further deepen cooperation on the basis of the existing joint venture. Through joint development, the two parties will quickly and efficiently expand the product portfolio of intelligent connected electric vehicles in the high-end market.
As a first step in planning, Audi will enter market segments that were not previously covered in China by launching a new electric model. Audi is aiming at the electric vehicle platform of the Zhiji brand under SAIC Motor, including the three-electric system and the intelligent driving system.
In the view of Bernard, the managing director of the Volkswagen Group in charge of the business in China, in a highly competitive and dynamic market environment, cooperation is needed to create synergies and launch new products to the market faster that meet the unique needs of Chinese customers. At the same time, development and procurement costs are optimized.
As we all know, the software development of the Volkswagen MEB platform is delayed and OTA preparations are insufficient. Prior to this, many problems have been exposed in the ID series of pure electric vehicles.
CARIAD, which is responsible for the development of a unified software platform within the Volkswagen Group, has also undergone a high-level personnel adjustment this year. The reason is that the development progress is not as fast as expected, resulting in the failure of high-end brands such as Audi and Porsche to launch new models as planned.
Similar problems do not only appear in the Volkswagen family.
Interestingly, on July 20, in the company's financial report conference call, Volvo Car CEO Jim Rowan said that since the EX90 flagship pure electric model is the brand's first standard-equipped lidar, the corresponding software integration still needs some work. Time can guarantee the normal release of functions.
In order to ensure the full-stack internal self-development of the software, Volvo Cars also made a wholly-owned acquisition of Zenseact, a subsidiary of autonomous driving software development, at the end of 2022. This is seen as a key step in the software autonomy strategy for key functions in future cars.
However, some Zenseact employees said that due to the general lack of practical ability and decision-making experience of most middle and senior management, and the fact that full-stack development involves too many fields, internal work efficiency is low. According to previously disclosed data, the company has around 500 employees.
Previously, the Volkswagen Group also internally cleaned up a series of radical strategies left by the previous CEO, including the previous radical self-research goal of 10,000 software developers. "We can't and don't want to develop everything ourselves, we need partners."
In fact, for car companies, in addition to the cost of hardware, the biggest development efficiency problem is still in the software part, involving OS, middleware, data and function interaction, and application ecological integration.
"We can't and don't want to develop everything ourselves," the new CEO of the Volkswagen Group said in response to the software strategy adjustment. "We need partners. If there are ready-made systems on the market, there is no need to reinvent the wheel."
This gives an excellent time window for car companies leading in intelligent technology. Because compared with third-party suppliers, these car companies have fully accumulated system-level Know-how in the past few years, which is the most critical experience.
Coincidentally, in June this year, Tesla CEO Elon Musk stated that the company is willing to license autonomous driving technology to other car companies. "In the same way that Android as a common standard may help the mobile phone industry, we may open source more code."
Just last week, Musk once again disclosed that a large OEM has had preliminary discussions on using Tesla FSD. "We're not trying to keep this a secret, and we're more than happy to license the technology to other businesses."
This means that some of the top intelligent car companies that have run through the data-driven closed-loop development model are seeking another B-end potential besides the C-end market (the model of vehicle delivery to consumers) and Robotaxi (the policy is yet to be implemented). Chance.
In May of this year, Ideal Auto disclosed to the public that it had established two subsidiaries. Among them, Jiangsu Changxiang Power Technology Co., Ltd. has a registered capital of 200 million yuan, and its business scope includes integrated circuit chip design and services, auto parts and accessories manufacturing, and motor manufacturing.
Another company, Jiangsu Changxiang Automobile Technology Co., Ltd., has a registered capital of 180 million yuan, and its business scope includes technical services, technology development, and manufacturing of auto parts and accessories. As the founder of Ideal Auto, Li Xiang also announced in 2022 that he would open source all self-developed AEB system codes.
Prior to this, many car companies including Great Wall Motor, Changan Automobile, BYD, and Lotus have also established or participated in joint ventures to establish companies related to intelligent technology. On the one hand, they serve internal services, and on the other hand, they are also seeking solutions sell.
Among them, BYD and Lotus have established joint ventures with Momenta, whose technologies and products include comprehensive solutions for autonomous driving, software, game models, tool chain systems, etc.
For example, last year, Changan Automobile issued an announcement that the company's board of directors passed a proposal to participate in the establishment of a smart driving company. The establishment of these companies actually aims to create a system (based on closed-loop data) for scene self-learning, experience self-evolution, and style self-adaptation.
And in April this year, as the main supplier of Great Wall Motors' intelligent driving system, Momo Zhixing officially announced that it has won three fixed-point contracts with OEMs, and related projects are being delivered.
"Not every OEM insists on full-stack self-research, and will adopt some self-research and some partners to jointly promote. In addition, as the industry chain matures and improves, more players will choose to adopt third-party solutions." Behind it is actually the balance between function and cost.
However, most people may ignore the potential competition of car companies.
This means that, next, the market competition among third-party intelligent driving system suppliers will enter a more intense cycle. The self-developed program competes head-on.
According to Gaogong Intelligent Automobile Research Institute, the strategic layout of Volkswagen Group in the Chinese market will have a huge impact on the entire automotive intelligent supply chain. Whether it is Tesla, Xiaopeng, or ideal technology self-developed car companies, software and system architecture capabilities are the core competitiveness.
This means that a group of pure software start-up companies that benefit from the concept of "software-defined cars" will need to think about the next direction adjustment. Hardware-based companies will directly benefit from the huge business opportunities brought about by joint centralized procurement. After all, for car companies, cost is one of the most critical competitiveness.
From software to hardware, it has also become the main track.
Take Thundersoft as an example. The company's intelligent networked car software business continues to grow rapidly, with a compound annual growth rate of 102% from 2016 to 2020. However, starting from 2020, the growth rate began to enter a downward cycle.
In 2020, the company's automobile business achieved operating income of 770 million yuan, an increase of 60.09% over the same period last year. In 2021, the auto business revenue will be 1.224 billion yuan, a year-on-year growth rate will drop slightly to 58.91%. In 2022, the auto business revenue will be 1.793 billion yuan, a year-on-year growth rate will drop to 46%.
To this end, Chuangda invested and established a subsidiary company, focusing on product providers for autonomous driving domain controller computing power platforms, developing software platforms and domain control hardware platforms. Different from focusing on software before, it is the first time to set foot in the design and development of intelligent driving domain control hardware.
With the rapid increase in the penetration rate of intelligence, hardware suppliers will continue to benefit. In contrast, software will enter a long data-driven iterative cycle from the early stage of building from 0 to 1.