Can “Dian Xiao Er” make money? Editor’s note: This article is from ”
Future car Daily “(micro-channel public number ID: auto-time), Author: Ding unique.

Picture source: SAIC Lishun Official

Author| Ding Only

Edit| Weekly Tour

After entering 2021, China’s largest automaker SAIC Motor has a full schedule.

On January 13, SAIC launched the IM Zhiji brand, and launched two models of intelligent pure electric sedan and intelligent pure electric SUV at once; on February 7, the 5G intelligent electric SUV model MARVEL R under SAIC R Auto was officially launched; On March 18th, SAIC held the R brand co-creation ecological conference and released the ES33, the first high-end smart electric car based on the “R-TECH high-energy intelligent body”.

Now that it has just entered the second quarter, SAIC has planned another highlight——

On April 9, under the witness of Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, JD, Huawei, OPPO, Momenta, Horizon, iFLYTEK, Neusoft, SenseTime and other Internet and technology companies, the SOA developers of SAIC Motor The platform was officially released, and at the same time, the Beta version of Lingshu Galaxy SOA software developer platform was also officially launched on the official website.

In addition, Zu Sijie, vice president and chief engineer of SAIC, announced that By 2025, SAIC plans to invest 300 billion yuan in innovative fields such as smart electric vehicles, fully transform into a high-tech enterprise. , To accelerate the promotion of independent innovation in the field of intelligent network connection.

Source: SAIC Lishun Official

Specifically, innovation includes the three directions of intelligent networked products, intelligent networked systems, and intelligent networked ecology; it also includes software, artificial intelligence, and network information.The five core technical capabilities of information security, big data and cloud computing.

It’s not difficult to see that SAIC is doing its best this time and wants to take a big bet.

SAIC is going to be a “shop second”

The term “developer conference” used to be active in the consumer electronics field. The annual developer conference held by companies such as Google, Huawei, Baidu, etc., enriches their ecological content, and is also an excellent window for showing the outside world the latest technologies, systems, and products, and therefore attracts the attention of consumers.

Now, with the introduction of the “Developer Conference” to the automotive industry, SAIC is also planning to build an ecosystem. According to Chen Hong, the chairman of SAIC, SAIC’s role in the ecology is like a “shop second”.

Source: SAIC Lishun Official

According to the relevant person of SAIC Motor, the centralized electronic and electrical (EE) architecture of the whole vehicle is the hardware foundation of the “software-defined car”, and the service-oriented architecture (SOA, Service-Oriented Architecture) is the “software-defined car” Software foundation.

As a core method of software design, SOA has been developed in the IT and Internet fields for nearly two decades, but it is the first time it has been fully applied in vehicle products. It is much more difficult for SAIC to introduce the SOA platform into automotive products than mobile phones and computers, because it is not an easy task to get through the collaboration between tens of thousands of automotive parts and application software.

According to Zu Sijie’s introduction, as cars become more and more intelligent, connections can be achieved from the domain control to the lower sub-controllers. “In this regard, SAIC has the advantage of the industrial chain, and it can associate each of the underlying middle-tier application layers.”

However, “it’s not enough to rely on car companies alone.” He said that today, the boundaries between smart cars, the Internet, and technology companies are becoming more and more blurred, and other areas of ICT are also involved. More complicated process.

In this developer conference, SAIC Motor Co., Ltd. released the “Galaxy Full Stack Solution”. Among them, it covers the four basic technical solutions of centralized electronic architecture, SOA software platform, smart car data factory, full-stack OTA and network security solutions, as well as an intelligent scene service platform that brings the ultimate experience to users from end to end.

The appearance of the developer platform is toThe formerly relatively closed auto industry has opened up. Li Jun, CEO of SAIC Lingbu Software, said: “We are like setting up a stage for other people to act on it.”

Jun Li Source: SAIC Lexun Official

In the future, the developer platform will provide online debugging tools and a simulation environment to ensure code quality and help developers quickly realize the development of car-side application functions. In addition, through the platform back-end management system, developers can manage account permissions, application risk control and content, and realize software review and release in the application market.

According to our understanding, currently SAIC Auto has opened 680 car-end services, 980 cloud services, and 260 data services for developers, covering car control, intelligent driving, infotainment, intelligent networking, and data training. Wait for more than 20 fields.

On this basis, SAIC Lingbu has created dozens of exclusive application scenarios for smart cars, hundreds of users with a “thousands of people and thousands of faces” mode, as well as some typical automotive intelligent applications.

In addition, Zhiji L7 equipped with Zero Beam SOA architecture also debuted for the first time. According to Zhiji Automobile, the Zhiji L7 will officially meet with the public at the Shanghai Auto Show, and the pre-sale of 3000 L7 Angel Edition will start.

“The most important thing is to make money”?

The auto industry is changing, and SAIC is very busy and anxious-busy adapting to the new environment and eager to transform into a “high-tech enterprise”.

All this is closely related to SAIC’s current situation. According to the SAIC Group’s financial report, the company achieved operating income of 723.043 billion yuan in 2020, down 12.52% year-on-year; net profit was 20.431 billion yuan, down 20.2% year-on-year. In this year, SAIC also lost its top market capitalization position among independent auto companies. In addition, SAIC’s vehicle sales reached 5.60 million in 2020, a year-on-year decline of 10.22%.

This year, the group’s previous “profit cow” SAIC-Volkswagen and FAW-Volkswagen became more and more severe. In 2020, FAW-Volkswagen led the way with sales of 2,161,900 vehicles, while SAIC-Volkswagen’s sales fell to 1.5 million vehicles, a year-on-year drop of 24.79%.

SAIC, which is committed to change, places its hopes on smart electric vehicles.

Source: SAIC Lishun Official

The environment is really good. According to data from the China Automobile Association, the cumulative sales of Chinese cars in 2020 is 25.311 million, a year-on-year decrease of 1.9%. In contrast, the sales of new energy vehicles in 2020 increased by 10.9% year-on-year to 1.367 million vehicles.

But smart electric cars are not the prey of the SAIC family. In the opinion of Meng Chao, the chief architect of SAIC Lingbu, “this is a’gold rush’.” The old car-making forces have begun to take root in this market, and technology giants have also entered the game one after another. In this transformation, SAIC had to get rid of the burden of traditional OEMs and bet heavily on software.

In 2019, at the beginning of SAIC’s deployment of the software center, Li Jun said frankly that “I didn’t know what to do at the beginning.” But what is certain is that the automotive industry is changing. Li Jun said, The focus of the original car company’s thinking was to “create a hot spot” for a new car. However, two years later, when the car went on the market, it is difficult to say whether the original “hot spot” can still adapt to the times.

In addition, the scene defined by the OEM does not actually represent the real use scene, “so we have plans to open up and personalized scenes.” Now young consumers have been cultivated as a consumer by mobile phones. Habits, so introducing SOA into the automotive industry is a must.

However, doing so also faces considerable challenges. According to Shen Pei, general manager of Tencent Smart Mobility Strategy, the threshold and scale of the developer platform are equally important. “Whether the threshold is low enough and whether there are enough users” will all be addressed in front of SAIC Automotive problem.

In the final analysis, “scene is not the purpose, programming is not the purpose, the most important thing is to make money“, Zhao Fuquan, director of the Institute of Automotive Industry and Technology Strategy, Tsinghua University, raised the issue of commercialization.

And Li Jun said: “If you don’t pursue profit in the early stage, you will first give the profit to the developer.” However, in terms of business model, Lingshu is also doing some exploration. Li Jun cited a few examples, such as “selling equipment” and “renting equipment”. These similar forms of playing games are also being considered. In addition, the creative factory department of Lingshu has conducted detailed and in-depth research on young people’s consumption views, and will also try to cooperate with young people’s favorite stars in the later period.

In the view of Wang Jun, President of Huawei Smart Car Solutions BU, the more widely used the software platform, the lower the marginal cost. Scaling is also achievedThe most fundamental business logic of profitability. However, Zhao Fuquan also mentioned that there is a process for software opening and a process for market opening. This is still not a smooth road.

Please pay attention to Future Car Daily