Great Wall Motors will be equipped with Huawei's intelligent driving system and launch the most expensive off-road vehicle model. | Exclusive from 36Kr.
Text | Angela Li
Editor | Qin Li, Xuan Yang
After the intelligent strategic cooperation between Great Wall and Huawei, the business exploration of both parties has made further progress.
36Kr Auto has learned from multiple industry insiders that Great Wall and Huawei are in close discussions on the cooperation of high-level intelligent driving. Some key products of Great Wall's Tank brand will be equipped with Huawei's intelligent driving and intelligent cockpit solutions.
On November 13 before the Guangzhou Auto Show, Great Wall and Huawei signed the "Intelligent Ecological Cooperation Agreement". The intelligent space system of Great Wall and the intelligent vehicle-mounted cloud of Huawei will be deeply integrated. Great Wall vehicles equipped with this function will be launched in overseas markets such as Brazil and Thailand.
Obviously, intelligent driving is also one of the core cooperation items between the two sides. According to the exclusive understanding of 36Kr Auto, the earliest model where Huawei's intelligent driving may be implemented is the new Tank 700 Hi4-T.
Tank 700 Hi4-T is a luxury off-road SUV model released by Tank in February this year. It is also the most expensive of the four currently available models of Tank, with a starting price of 428,000 yuan. Previously, on the cockpit of Tank 700 Hi4-T, Great Wall has already equipped with Huawei's HUAWEI HiCar system, supporting the interconnection between Huawei mobile phones and Great Wall vehicle machines.
Huawei's intelligent driving is one of Huawei's killer businesses in the automotive field, ranking in the first echelon of the intelligent driving industry. It has set off upsurges such as "Intelligent Driving Can Be Used Nationwide" in the industry, and supports the most cutting-edge intelligent driving functions such as "Parking Space to Parking Space" in the industry.
It is worth noting that previously, BYD's off-road model Fangchengbao Leopard 8 has also been equipped with Huawei's intelligent driving solution. As one of the pioneers of domestic hard-core off-road vehicles, Great Wall Tank naturally needs to draw on Huawei's technical reserves to further strengthen its product strength and consolidate its industry position.
Tank is the only off-road brand in China that can achieve a monthly sales volume of more than 20,000 units. In the first half of this year, the sales volume of the Tank brand reached 116,000 units, with a year-on-year growth of 99%. However, the relatively high-selling models are the three models of Tank 300/400/500. Tank 700 Hi4-T sold 7,673 vehicles in the first half of this year, and the sales volume needs to be further stimulated.
In response to the intelligent driving business cooperation between Great Wall and Huawei, 36Kr Auto sought verification from Great Wall Motors. The official said: No comment.
Great Wall Chairman Wei Jianjun once said that intelligent driving has always been the key strategy of Great Wall Motors, and Great Wall's research and development in the field of intelligent driving started ten years ago.
Great Wall Motors has five brands: Haval, Wey, Tank, Ora and Great Wall Pickup. According to 36Kr's understanding, except for the youth-oriented Ora and pickup brands, Great Wall's high-end brands and sales main force Haval and other brands are accelerating the application of intelligent driving. High-end models such as Tank and Wey will take the lead in implementing high-level intelligent driving, and the 100,000 - 200,000 yuan level models are accelerating the popularization of intelligent driving.
Great Wall Chasing Intelligent Driving
This year, Great Wall has significantly accelerated the pace of applying intelligent driving. The mid-to-high-end positioned Wey "Blue Mountain" has become the first intelligent driving model of Great Wall equipped with urban NOA (Pilot Assist Driving), supporting intelligent driving that can be used nationwide.
After completing the intelligent driving capability, the sales of Blue Mountain have shown a good improvement. After the new model was launched in August this year, the sales in September - October both exceeded 6,000 units, more than doubling the past performance. Recently at the Guangzhou Auto Show, the entire booth of Great Wall only exhibited one model, namely the Wey Blue Mountain Intelligent Driving Edition.
The promotion of intelligent driving on sales in the mid-to-high-end market has gradually been recognized. And as a player in the first echelon of intelligent driving technology, Huawei has naturally become an important introduced partner of Great Wall.
After （未找到准确翻译）启用华为智驾方案后，the Tank 700 Hi4-T is expected to strengthen the level of intelligent driving and widen the competitiveness with competing products.
At the same time, the application of intelligent driving in Great Wall Motors has also entered a stage of comprehensive acceleration.
Wu Huixiao, CTO of Great Wall Intelligent Driving, also revealed Great Wall Motors' intelligent driving plan in a recent media interview. She said that the Gaoshan series of Wey will launch intelligent driving products similar to Blue Mountain, "The Tank brand is also carrying out related work, and the research and development of the Haval brand has been initiated. The specific mass production time will depend on the matching of the cockpit and intelligent driving."
Wu Huixiao said that for models in the 100,000 - 150,000 yuan price range, it is not possible to achieve a very good urban NOA level, and the computing power of the chip required for the commuting mode is not that high. But high-speed NOA can definitely be done well, and it will be promoted on the Haval brand next.
In other words, in the implementation of intelligent driving, Great Wall has a clear plan internally and will fully promote it next.
Intelligent Driving + AI, A New Opportunity for Automakers to Make Efforts
Currently, automakers are seizing the high ground of intelligent self-research.
Automakers such as Geely Zeekr and Changan have established teams and capabilities for intelligent self-research.
Great Wall Motors is one of the automakers that started to focus on the research and development of intelligent driving earlier. In 2019, Haomo Zhixing, which originated from the Intelligent Driving Forward-looking Division of Great Wall Motors Technology Center, was established and became an independent intelligent driving solution provider.
It is reported that Haomo has explored a series of new customers outside Great Wall. For example, a certain main engine factory in the south is also in discussions with Haomo Zhixing on the cooperation of high-level intelligent driving; Haomo Zhixing has also won the project 定点（未找到准确翻译）of several models of Hyundai Motor, mainly for functions such as memory driving and parking, and is planned to be delivered in August next year.
At the same time, Great Wall is also continuing to increase its investment in intelligent driving.
According to 36Kr Auto's understanding, Great Wall's intelligent driving software and hardware team has reached more than 600 people and is still expanding rapidly.
The "End-to-End" technology led by Tesla has become a new research and development paradigm in the field of intelligent driving. Different from the past rule algorithms, the "End-to-End" technology leads intelligent driving to AI, and data and computing power become decisive resources.
Automakers naturally have complete data and sufficient capital reserves, and can continuously invest in computing power.
Great Wall obviously also sees the new opportunity for automakers to exert efforts in intelligent driving, and its cloud intelligent driving training computing power is also approaching the first echelon.
According to 36Kr Auto's understanding, the intelligent driving supercomputing center of Great Wall Motors - Jiuzhou Computing Power has reached 3 EFLOPS. The cloud computing power levels of Huawei and Ideal are: 7.5 EFLOPS and 5.39 EFLOPS, respectively.
2025 will be the first year when "End-to-End" intelligent driving is fully applied. The intelligent competition is about to officially begin, and the intelligent layout of automakers such as Great Wall and Changan will also enter the real testing ground.