Volkswagen/Geely/BYD Launches Technology Sharing Competition

There are no eternal enemies, no eternal friends, only eternal interests. Like the luxury brands Mercedes-Benz and BMW, they are beginning to evolve from rival roles to teammates. The two luxury brands are teaming up to develop electric vehicle platforms and have a joint procurement plan that has recently expanded to include advanced driver assistance systems and mobile services, foreign media said. Daimler and BMW are discussing whether to share the engineering costs of compact and mid-size vehicles designed primarily for new energy and electrification but also capable of using conventional powertrain systems, sources said. Both carmakers have acknowledged co-operation talks, including sharing the engineering costs of driverless cars. The partnership is initially expected to save at least 7 billion euros for each carmaker. Whether it is the recent turmoil of the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance, or Volkswagen and Ford in Europe and the United States, or even behind Geely's big purchases, there is a common value, that is, through the alliance, the formation of technology synergies, the formation of large-scale effects, so as to reduce costs and increase efficiency. In the whole business society, this is the most intuitive and direct presentation of win-win cooperation. As Volkswagen CEO Herbert Deiss argues, with the acceleration of intelligence and electrification, competition in the automotive industry is no longer between the engine and the transmission, and the possibility of differentiation through different powertrain systems is becoming less and less, and a new competitive landscape is beginning to emerge. For this reason, a lot of car companies have planned to form a group, especially the head of the enterprise began Establish new vehicle-machine interconnection platform and pure electric vehicle platform, and announce opening and sharing, from Alibaba zebra system to Geely GKUI system, and then to BYD DiLink smart ecosystem, the opening of vehicle interconnection has taken a step forward; From Geely's PMA to BYD's e-platform to Volkswagen Group's planned opening up of the MEB platform, technology in the automotive industry has gradually moved from an era of blockade to an era of open sharing. As a result, "Android for the auto industry" has become almost a common goal among the auto companies that have decided to open up their technology. The question is, can an automotive industry that is more sophisticated, with a longer industrial chain, more niche technology, and higher unit value and value actually produce an "Android" platform than mobile phones and technology? From opponent to hand in hand, Volkswagen CEO Eric Diss first proposed opening Volkswagen's newest MEB platform to third-party vendors on Volkswagen's eve at the Geneva auto show in March. The startup, e.GO Mobile, will be Volkswagen's world's first external partner and will produce other electric models than Volkswagen's models based on the MEB platform. Volkswagen, the world's largest auto group, did raise eyebrows about the anomaly. MEB platform is a new generation of modular platform for pure electric vehicles built by Volkswagen Group, which integrates all of Volkswagen's electric technology. The future Volkswagen, Audi, Porsche and other brands will be based on this platform, which can be said to be the "heirloom" of Volkswagen for decades to come. Similarly, except that the beginning of the article Mercedes-Benz and BMW, the two giants in the Chinese car market, plan to share platforms. In January, Ford and Volkswagen also signed a memorandum of understanding to explore possibilities for collaboration in the areas of autonomous driving, smart mobile travel and electric vehicles. Ford is also likely to use Volkswagen's MEB platform in the future, industry forecasters predict. Indeed, Diss is not the first car company to propose open platforms and technologies. Toyota, the world's largest maker of hybrid cars, now sells more than 10 million vehicles worldwide on its hybrid system. But in September, it emerged that Toyota was ready to share details of its Prius hybrid engine technology with Chinese auto makers in an effort to catch up with competitors in the world's largest auto market, and Geely is now the first to negotiate a share of the hybrid technology with Toyota. In a blog post, Tesla CEO Rick Musk, the world's leading electric car maker, announced that all patents on Tesla's electric vehicles would be opened without reservation to cope with climate change. Musk also said Tesla would not file patent lawsuits against anyone who used its technology in good faith. Domestically, independent automobile companies have long recognized the importance of technological openness in the automotive industry. For example, Alibaba and SAIC have launched zebra systems that have long been open to all brands, and have been installed in Roewe, Mingjue, Skoda, Peugeot, Citroen, Quanzhi, Ford and other brands. Geely's GKUI Smart Vehicle System has also been announced open to all car companies and industries, outside applications can enter the system, other car company brands also Can carry GKUI, look forward to doing bigger and stronger together. In addition, on the electrified architecture platform, Geely, the head of its own brand, and BYD, the head of its own new energy sector, have also taken the lead in opening and sharing olive branches. Li Shufu, chairman of Geely Holding Group, revealed for the first time at the 2017 Global Forum on Future Travel that Geely is working with Volvo and other big car companies around the world to develop an open PMA pure electric module architecture. Li Shufu said that after the successful study of this structure, it will be open to all automobile factories in the world, and anyone who wants to use it can do so. "We want to be Google's Android. Android is open and free, and our platform and all our data is free." Another independent brand, BYD, also has plans to open up its e-vehicle platform. The core of e-platform is "live" three-in-one electric drive system, three-in-one high-voltage charging and distribution system, integrated body controller, intelligent rotary screen with "DiLink" system, and five power battery systems with long life and stable performance, all of which can be opened up. At present, Changan Automobile has gradually adopted the technology of BYD e platform to create new energy products. There is no doubt that behind all this co-operation and openness lies scale. The technological battle behind openness Volkswagen has made its most precious and advanced MEB platform public, and Diss has also revealed the main reason behind it, "hoping to further realize economies of scale through openness and sharing, reduce the production cost of electric vehicles, and let more people Enjoy electric travel. " Li Shufu also discloses when publicizing PMA platform, open is to lighten everybody's research and development burden, shorten research and development cycle, reduce everybody's purchase cost, raise user's use efficiency and use cost. "We are willing to open up, willing to share with everyone, this is conducive to scale, benefit generation, but also conducive to China's automotive industry in the next five years to achieve a stronger competitive advantage. Li Shufu admits frankly, the scale this thing is not to say "scale and scale", the all sorts of difficulties that scale also can bring, challenge and its malpractice, need more cooperation on scale. After acquiring a 9.7 per cent stake in Daimler last April, Mr Li said the future business model should be restructured to share more of each other's technology in order to achieve acceptable returns in the future. "If traditional carmakers continue to stand still, they will eventually become a target for a handful of auto giants," he said. "Success in the future will come only from companies that are willing to share their technology publicly." In fact, in the global automotive industry, the realization of greater scale has been the basis of thinking of the major automotive enterprises. The alliance between Nissan and Renault in the late 1990s was based on the fact that cost-sharing could cut costs significantly, but it took more than a decade of development to really make both sides profitable, saving billions of euros a year, enough to show the appeal of scale to global giants. If the alliance of a few car companies is an economy of scale, then exposing technology and platforms is an expansion of scale to nothing Limit. At the time of electrification, faced with the bottleneck or peak of future technology and even many uncertainties, every automobile company is reluctant to stand on its own feet and bear the enormous risks in the development. Just like Musk's proposal to open up all of Tesla's EV patents, Tesla hopes to drive the entire EV industry forward and make the whole pie bigger. By making technology open and shared bigger and stronger--a model somewhat like the ARM model in the semiconductor industry--ARM licenses architecture to different IT companies, thereby expanding ARM's share and establishing industry dominance. Like the mobile phone industry, Android has become the world's largest operating system by market share in just four years, accounting for more than 85% of the mobile phone market, thanks to its free access to Android. But ideals are plentiful and reality is skinny, and like Android, which auto giants aspire to be, the contest is much more complicated than one might think. In the simple world of mobile phones, Samsung's own systems, Microsoft's WP, Nokia's Symbian and BlackBerry are also fading in the flood of Android and iOS. In fact, the core issue behind open sharing is to let your own technology standards evolve into industry standards, just as Volkswagen Disc has unreservedly stated that it "wants the MEB platform to become the industry standard for electric vehicles." In addition, when Toyota opened up its hybrid, it expected everyone to use its hybrid system to make it an industry standard. Who doesn't Want to define an industry standard? Just as Accord defined the mid-to high-end car market in China, the answer is obvious. They mainly open the shared electric vehicle platform and build the electric vehicle alliance in order to integrate the various resources available in the electric vehicle industry and create a research and development trend of the entire industrial chain. Whether Geely's PMA or BYD's e-platform or Volkswagen's MEB architecture, their openness and sharing are looking for and expanding their circle of friends, no doubt want to become the automotive industry's Android, seize the commanding heights of the next automotive era. The problem is that the so-called opening up is not completely open. Competition in the automotive industry is still inseparable from competition in core technologies. Who is willing to take out his own exclusive black technology to Share?