Huawei has been asserting that it won't get involved in building cars, but that doesn't mean the company isn't getting more deeply involved in the sector through mergers and acquisitions.
Huawei is in talks with Chongqing Sokon to buy a controlling stake in the latter's Chongqing Jinkang New Energy Automobile, Reuters reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter.
The move would enable Huawei to produce smart cars with its own nameplate. Jinkang counts the US electric car brand Seres, formerly known as SF Motors, its main asset.
Richard Yu, head of Huawei's consumer business group, is leading the talks with Sokon, the report said, adding the telecom giant looks to finalize the deal as soon as July.
Last week, Yu announced that the company is starting to sell cars in its flagship store. And the first model is Seres SF5.
After being repeatedly sanctioned by the United States, Huawei's cell phone business has suffered, and selling cars can compensate for the decline in profits caused by the impact on sales of the cell phone business, Yu said.
Huawei has more than 5,000 high-end experience stores, far more than BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Tesla and the new car makers, Yu said.
"It's a huge advantage for us, covering every important city in China," he said.
The first model that went on sale in Huawei's channel is the Seres SF5, which entered Huawei's stores and flagship stores and were sold under the Huawei Zhixuan brand.
The Seres SF5 is a hybrid car with extended-range technology and comes in two versions, with the 4WD version priced at RMB 246,800 ($38,000) and the 2WD version priced at RMB 216,800.
First new energy car model sold by Huawei exceeds 3,000 orders in two days
In addition, the Reuters report said that Huawei is also looking to take control of Arcfox of BAIC's BluePark New Energy Technology, which recently launched its Alpha S model with the Huawei Inside system.
But BAIC prefers Huawei only as a minority shareholder in Arcfox, the report said.
(Source: CnEVPost)
On April 17, Arcfox unveiled the highly anticipated Arcfox Alpha-S model, with a starting price of 251,900 yuan ($38,600).
The model also includes a version with "Huawei Inside", which is the first time Huawei's technology has appeared on a production model.
The starting price for this version is RMB 388,900 and the premium version is priced at RMB 429,900. They are expected to be delivered in November and December this year.
The model is equipped with an intelligent advanced autonomous driving system with 400TOPs of computing power.
The body is equipped with 3 LIDAR, 6 millimeter-wave radar, 12 ultrasonic radar, 9 ADS cameras, and 4 surround-view cameras.
The lower-priced version of this enables highway autonomous driving and the highest spec version has high-level autonomous driving and valet parking capabilities in urban areas.
This capability has been demonstrated in a video that went viral on April 16.
The video shows a relatively smooth ride for the field test vehicle, which is capable of urban commuting without intervention autopilot in situations such as starting and stopping at traffic lights, making unprotected left turns, avoiding vehicles at intersections, yielding to pedestrians, and changing lanes.
