By Leo Wong - Jan 14, 2022

On its 23 December Winter Flagship Launch Event, besides officially announcing its premium foldable, the Huawei P50 Pocket, Huawei also took the opportunity to launch its first-ever HarmonyOS powered electric hybrid car, the Huawei AITO M5.

According to a Chinese business media outlet, the 21st Century Business Herald, Huawei held a press media conference on January 9 at 2 pm CST at its Shenzhen Headquarters to discuss matters related to its growing smart electric car business. The conference was headed by Richard Yu, the executive director and double CEO of Huawei’s consumer business group and the intelligent automotive unit.

“At Huawei, we want our car manufacturing partners to become the industry’s most profitable car manufacturing company. We are saying this here and today to let the future know whether history has been accomplished by Huawei, a smartphone manufacturer.” Yu exclaimed.

Huawei collaborated with the famous car manufacturer, Seres, to launch its premium hybrid electric smart car series, AITO, with the first model being the AITO M5. The production and assembly of the car are handled by Seres, whereas Huawei’s role in the collaboration is in the car’s exterior design, interior comfort as well as in the marketing of the product. Richard Yu emphasized again that Huawei is not a car manufacturer, but the company wants to lend its expertise in marketing and trendsetting design to a rapidly growing car manufacturer like Seres.

The public is curious as to why Huawei wanted to venture into selling cars, and in the meeting with the press. Richard Yu said Huawei had 3 major reasons to launch into the car market.

First, after the US sanctions, Huawei’s 5G chipset stock was gradually dwindling, leading to lower revenue from its smartphone business. Richard Yu mentioned that by diversifying Huawei’s product catalog to include cars, its retail business could survive in China, as the profit margins per unit for cars are generally higher than its premium smartphones.

Second, the economic landscape has changed after the pandemic. Customers nowadays use online retailers as their all-in-one center for all their purchasing needs, and if an unknown car manufacturer just came into the scene without building its audience, it will be a challenging task to be accomplished. With Huawei’s retail and sales network across the country, car manufacturers can save on the expensive concept store rentals, human resources as well as product marketing for their cars because Huawei is an established brand in China, and can be the one in charge of these after-sales services.

Third, collaborating with car manufacturers also helps to accelerate the adoption of a fully Huawei smart IoT ecosystem, ensuring convenience for Huawei users in China. Richard Yu mentions the HarmonyOS powered AITO M5 as an example. With HarmonyOS, one can forget the worries of losing their car keys, and unlock their keys anytime with just a tap on their phone; one can connect and sync their phone’s navigation with the car’s navigation system; one can even activate seamless hands-free mode on the car with video calls and voice calls because both are synced to same Huawei account. Richard Yu emphasized again that this is the advantage of HarmonyOS.

“With the appeal of the Huawei AITO M5 smart cars and paired with its countywide sales network, Huawei will be able to sell 300,000 smart cars in 2022.” Richard Yu boldly claims.

“With at least 1000 stores across the country, if each store sells 30 units of smart cars monthly, we can sell at least 30 thousand cars in a month. In about 10 months, Huawei will be able to reach its annual target if the pace keeps up. The car manufacturer would also receive revenues of over 100 billion RMB (~ 15.72 billion USD), and Huawei would have achieved its promise of building the most profitable car manufacturer in the Chinese market.”

https://www.gizmochina.com/2022/01/14/huawei-claims-it-can-sell-300000-smart-cars-in-2022-exec-shares-the-story-behind-the-scenes/