From knock-off old-man's electric vehicles to industrial giant

Chapter 275 Three Minutes, Three Sentences, 380,000
1 month 23 day.

After sending engineering samples and third-party reports to a small group of OEMs, Xingchen Group also sent out invitations to a closed-door meeting to interested manufacturers.

At 1 p.m., Yu Chengdong, head of Huawei's mobile phone business, Liu Zecheng, head of mobile phone supply chain procurement, and others arrived early. This time, they came mainly to inspect the second-generation Polaris battery.

"Mr. Xu, I really like the L7 from Xingchen. Many of our employees have test-driven the car and given it high praise. It's an honor for domestic brands to achieve this level of performance, and it's something we should learn from!"

The two sides met in the reception hall.

After shaking hands warmly, Yu Chengdong started talking about the car before discussing the battery, his face beaming with a genuine smile, his tone and attitude showing great sincerity.

There was no politeness or pretense.

Upon arriving at the company parking lot, Yu Chengdong's eyes practically lit up when he saw a row of Starry Night L7s parked there.

"Has Mr. Yu placed an order yet? If not, just let me know, and I'll personally send you one." Xu Yi was even more "enthusiastic."

“We’ve purchased a few internally. I usually drive the company car…” Yu Chengdong said subconsciously. Seeing Xu Yi’s statement, he quickly took out his phone and said, “How can we let President Xu deliver them? I’ll do it myself. We just need a family car.”

"Oh no—this is terrible!"

"No, no, I've wanted this car for a long time!"

...

After some back and forth, Yu Chengdong showed his support for Xingchen Motors by personally placing an order on his phone, and Xu Yi's attempt to stop him back just in time.

"Mr. Yu, you're just too quick with your hands..." Xu Yi smiled, his eyes narrowing, and his impression of his friend who had come from afar improved even more.

Yu Chengdong spent 380,000 yuan in less than three minutes of meeting a man, all because of three sentences he uttered.

But he didn't pay much attention to it.

However, the delivery date displayed on his phone screen still stirred up a wave of emotion within him. "The Starry Night L7 is selling so well, Mr. Xu... you must have tens of thousands of orders in hand right now, right?"

This order volume is truly astonishing!
Xu Yi smiled and said, "It's all thanks to everyone's support and the consumer market's recognition."

In addition to the surge in orders in the consumer market, our supply chain partners have also provided significant support.

These actions were all spontaneous. Some people actually made money by cooperating with Xingchen, while others genuinely believed in the car and purchased a batch of vehicles for company use.

Liu Zecheng said, "President Xu, we have tried the Polestar second-generation battery. Your company's excellent battery products are truly driving the progress of the entire mobile phone industry. We also need such excellent battery supplies to push into the high-end market."

When Vivo adopted the consumer-grade battery cells from the Polestar 1st generation last year, Huawei noticed them.

At that time, the overall energy density of Polestar batteries did not exceed the industry limit by much, and Polestar also signaled to the outside world that its production capacity had reached its limit.

But this year is different.

The difference between 5000mAh and 4000mAh for the same volume is enormous.

Even an extra 500mAh capacity represents a significant leap forward for the current mobile phone industry.

Moreover, Polestar batteries are exceptionally good at heat dissipation and lifespan.

Xu Yi pondered for a moment and said, "We at Xingchen are dedicated to making batteries. This has always been our strategic plan. We have invested half of our previous earnings into battery research and development. In addition to formula and structure research, we are also conducting research and development on upstream and downstream materials... We strive to connect all aspects of the domestic battery industry."

Yu Chengdong was impressed. It was a very bold move for a car company to invest so much money in battery research and development and to have such a large-scale layout.

Previously, no car manufacturer other than BYD was doing this. As Xingchen rose to prominence, people gradually realized how terrifying this model was for the new energy vehicle sector.

"Starcraft not only makes good batteries, but also good cars, and its in-vehicle infotainment system is quite good. Its intelligent driving system... well, it's pretty good too," Yu Chengdong sincerely commented.

Xu Yi smiled enigmatically: "President Yu is very interested in our car manufacturing business. Does Huawei also intend to enter the car manufacturing industry in the near future?"

The two parties originally intended to discuss cooperation on the supply of mobile phone batteries, but unknowingly they also got involved in new energy vehicles.

"We don't manufacture cars; we just want to be a supplier for the automotive industry."

Yu Chengdong replied, then added, "This is an internal company decision."

The underlying meaning in his tone was clear: Yu Chengdong's main business now is mobile phones, but he has always longed to build cars.

Despite the fact that Xingchen Motors was so successful, his proposal did not gain much traction internally, but it did further accelerate Huawei's progress in developing intelligent driving and vehicle system solutions.

Xu Yi laughed, “Making cars is not easy either. The route for new energy vehicles is very different from that for fuel vehicles. In addition to doing traditional vehicle engineering, we also have to make our own batteries, our own vehicle systems, and intelligent driving solutions... In short, it’s very tiring.”

“Many car manufacturers have contacted Huawei. If Mr. Xu is interested, you can also try our C-V2X solution. It is indeed a great achievement that L7 has gradually opened up highway navigation, but if it is placed on the roadside, it will be very difficult to sense... In the future, 5G-V2X will have lower latency and higher bandwidth. Through the information between the roadside unit (RSU) and the on-board unit (OBU), more effective interaction can be carried out. And this route is less demanding on computing power.”

Yu Chengdong explained with great enthusiasm. In his view, although the Xingchen L7 has achieved high-speed navigation capabilities, both its computing power and sensing hardware have reached their limits, hitting the physical boundaries.

It's virtually impossible to achieve seamless integration of intelligent driving in cities.

This necessitates the intervention of another approach.

In addition to providing 3G/4G networks and communication modules to automakers, Huawei's "C-V2X" technology is also a major achievement it has been promoting in the Internet of Things field in the past two years.

"C-V2X" stands for vehicle-to-everything (V2X), which is based on LTE-V cellular network technology. It connects the vehicle's cellular network with intelligent road infrastructure to achieve more efficient and precise travel.

This means that "perception" has been distributed from the vehicle's hardware to road infrastructure, using real-time interactive data to locate and make decisions.

It is also one of the mainstream solutions currently being implemented in the industry to achieve intelligent driving in urban areas.

Baidu is also working on this approach, as are Pony.ai, which spun off from its own team, and other domestic intelligent driving suppliers, all of which are choosing to develop and build up their resources along this route.

Xingchen, on the other hand, takes a different approach, leaning more towards "intelligent bicycles," relying on algorithm and data iteration without the need for infrastructure support.

As Xu Yi smiled, he also sensed Yu Chengdong's intention to promote Huawei's intelligent driving solution to him. Xingchen is a leading force in new energy vehicles, and purchasing Huawei's solution would have a huge driving effect.

"Mr. Yu, we believe that computing power and algorithms on the vehicle side are actually the same as human growth. Although the current algorithms cannot achieve intelligent driving in urban areas, the next generation of algorithms may be able to. The growth of chip computing power has not yet reached its limit. This is something that can be improved in the long term."

to be honest.

"Vehicle-road cooperation" is indeed a great concept. It can fill the blind spots of single vehicles. At a time when computing power and perception are scarce and LiDAR has not yet been installed in vehicles, it can take the lead in realizing regional urban intelligent driving. This is undoubtedly a great achievement!
The problem is that vehicle-road cooperation requires the large-scale deployment of various infrastructures, including roadside RSU units, edge computing nodes, and high-precision maps.

It involves coordination among multiple parties, including the government, operators, car manufacturers, and transportation departments, and involves huge investments. A detailed calculation shows that the cost of upgrading a vehicle-road cooperative system on a main urban road could reach hundreds of millions of yuan, which is enough to make one's scalp tingle.

In cities and roads where there is no infrastructure or planning... intelligent driving becomes useless again.

Ultimately, this can easily devolve into the "chicken or the egg" question.

If the roadside isn't paved, the vehicle end won't be able to use it; if the vehicle end isn't installed, the return on investment for the roadside won't be clear.

Who pays for it, how it's operated, and how a single network can be used nationwide... these have long been points of contention.

If car companies get caught up in these issues, their development will be no different from being stuck in a quagmire.

"We also invested in Hesai, and there is still a high possibility that LiDAR will be adopted in vehicles at a low cost in the future." Xu Yi said when talking about his cooperation with Li Yifan. Xingchen poached a lot of talents from Baidu and also snatched a large number of LiDAR orders.

no way.

Baidu is currently undergoing a team restructuring, busy with personnel changes and strategic adjustments, while also suing a group of departing core members. They simply don't have time to focus on LiDAR.

Subsequently, Hesai was unable to resist the dual temptations of orders and financing from Xingchen. After investing an additional 200 million yuan in the research and development and production line construction of semi-solid-state lidar, Xingchen held 28% of the equity and became the largest shareholder besides the founding team.

“Alright, if Mr. Xu changes his mind, you are welcome to visit our vehicle networking platform exhibition at any time this year,” Yu Chengdong said tactfully.

Huawei will also hold a Huaxia Ecosystem Partner Conference in March, which will feature models that have been developed through cooperation on pre-installed vehicle networking projects. The first model will be the DS7 from Peugeot Citroën, and there will also be some demonstrations of intelligent connected technologies.

As the head of the mobile phone business, he finally focused the conversation on battery procurement.

Huawei's purpose this time is to target the Polestar A battery cells, which have the highest energy density.

Their flagship models are priced at over 4,000 yuan for the entry-level version, and the Pro version can reach 5,000 to 6,000 yuan, so the profit margin is very high.

Yu Chengdong is considering equipping the Pro version and above with Polestar A batteries, and the entry-level version with Polestar B batteries.

Alternatively, the standard entry-level version could simply forgo Polestar batteries and use ATL batteries to save costs.

In previous years, their Pro version and entry-level version sold about the same.

This is thanks to his superb knife skills.

After all, you chose the standard version.

They can accept LCD waterdrop screens and 60Hz refresh rates, and they can also accept the lack of in-display fingerprint recognition, the absence of infrared functionality, and low waterproof rating.

So, I suppose I was prepared for a lower battery capacity.

On the other hand, users who can afford to spend five or six thousand yuan have a delicate OLED screen and a high-resolution 2K screen. They want the best in every aspect, and even if the price increases by two or three hundred yuan, they won't feel the difference.

Most importantly, once they get their hands on this Polestar A battery, they can brag about it some more!
A 5000mAh battery capacity, an exclusive first release—it's simply brutal!!

Compared to Apple, which still has a battery capacity of just over 3,000 mAh... that's utterly ridiculous!
(End of this chapter)