On December 23, Huawei held a “Winter Flagship New Product Launch Conference” in Shenzhen, featuring the P50 Pocket foldable phone, as well as a series of products and related services such as the HUAWEI WATCH D/GT smartwatch, smart glasses, and the HUAWEI MateBook X Pro laptop.
Although the female audience at the scene screamed loudly for the P50 Pocket, as an expert in the automotive industry, I was more interested in the highlight of the latter half – the AITO WENJIE M5.
In fact, the AITO WENJIE M5 had already made its debut with the Siles AITO brand at the Siles Chongqing Smart Factory on December 2, but Siles had not further announced any other details apart from its appearance at that time. The product’s official release was scheduled for the 23rd of December.
Earlier, at HDC 2021 on October 22, we could clearly see the AITO WENJIE M5 as a background image in Huawei’s Executive Director and CEO of the Consumer Business Group and CEO of Intelligent Automotive Solutions BU, Richard Yu’s PPT. At that time, Mr. Yu announced, “The model equipped with the Hongmeng Intelligent Cockpit will appear on the Jinkang Siles medium-sized SUV as soon as the end of this year or the beginning of next year!”
The answer is now revealed as Richard Yu provided a more detailed introduction of the AITO WENJIE M5 than Siles did, as this model not only has numerous Huawei-enabled functions, but also from the initial product planning, to design, and to later channel marketing, it is all handled by Huawei.
At the conference, Richard Yu announced the pre-sale price of this car: the rear-wheel drive standard version is priced at 250,000 yuan; the four-wheel drive performance version is priced at 280,000 yuan; and the four-wheel drive flagship version is priced at 320,000 yuan. Pre-sales started that day and the first 10,000 customers who placed a deposit will enjoy configuration upgrades, gifts and quality assurance commitments.
The actual car was also transported to Huawei’s stores across the country that day, and test drives are set to begin on January 20, 2022. The first batch of consumers who placed orders will be able to receive the AITO WENJIE M5 at the end of February after Chinese New Year.The length, width, and height of AITO WENJIE M5 are 4,770mm, 1,930mm, and 1,625mm respectively, with a wheelbase of 2,880mm. It is defined as a midsize SUV and outperforms the Huawei Selection SF5 with a 70mm longer overall length and 5mm longer wheelbase.
During the launch event, Yu Chengdong repeatedly mentioned that “the appearance, interior, and performance of this car are built according to the requirements of million-dollar luxury cars.”
In terms of appearance, AITO WENJIE M5 adopts a split-type headlight design and a brand-new through-type taillight design, which has been praised by netizens as “bold and imposing.”
Leaving aside the subjective appearance, the AITO WENJIE M5 has a better real car texture than the Huawei Selection SF5, especially with regards to the interior. The 2-square-meter panoramic skyroof, seat massage heating and ventilation, horizontal central control screen layout, 128-color RGB, Nappa leather texture in details, button tolerance, and material quality are all significantly better than the Huawei Selection SF5.
There are even four 66W Type-C charging ports and a 40W wireless fast charger in the car. I noticed that there is a hole design under the wireless charging pad of the AITO WENJIE M5, which should be considered in connection with the air conditioning system as it gets hot when charging wirelessly.
In addition to the configuration and interior quality, Yu Chengdong also emphasized the excellent NVH performance of the AITO WENJIE M5. By using double-layer laminated sound insulation glass on windows, LASD liquid acoustic damping material on the floor, and silent tires, the interior noise can be controlled to around 56.9 dB at 80 km/h.
Electric powertrain
In terms of the electric powertrain, the AITO WENJIE M5 is equipped with the HUAWEI DriveONE electric drive and range extender platform, which consists of two motors and a range extender.
The front axle is equipped with an asynchronous AC motor, and the rear axle is equipped with a permanent magnet synchronous motor. The four-wheel-drive performance version has a peak power of 315 kW, and the four-wheel-drive flagship version has a peak power of 365 kW. The flagship version can accelerate from 0 to 100 km/h in 4.4 seconds, while the standard version with rear-wheel drive can also achieve acceleration of 4.8 seconds.
What’s interesting is that at the press conference, Yu Chengdong used the power output of the range extender to compare it to the battery, which is equivalent to a super large battery of 173 kWh. When I first saw this calculation method, I couldn’t help but want to try the actual fuel consumption per hundred kilometers of AITO AITO M5.
The 40 kWh battery pack adopts the CTP module design, and each cell adopts independent fire protection packaging technology. Fast charging can make the power from 20\% to 80\% in 45 minutes, and slow charging takes 5 hours.
The range extender has also been upgraded, using a 1.5 T Miller cycle range extender with a compression ratio of 15:1 and a thermal efficiency of 41\%, which can achieve a maximum power generation efficiency of 3.2 kW·h/L.
Together with the 59 L fuel tank, the AITO AITO M5’s range “breaks a thousand”. Yu Chengdong emphasized that AITO AITO M5 has a range of 1,102 km under WLTC standards, 1,195 km under NEDC standards, and 1,242 km under CLTC standards, which is a “true meaning of breaking a thousand ranges”.
On the home charging pile of AITO AITO M5, there is also a large Huawei logo printed on it. It supports a maximum charging power of 7 kW, supports 4G and Bluetooth connections for remote management, plug-and-charge, OTA upgrades and other functions, and most importantly, weighs less than 400 g.
Intelligent Cockpit
At HDC 2021, Gong Ti, President of Huawei Consumer Business Software Department, said that Huawei’s intelligent cockpit is an upgraded experience compared to traditional car machines and will soon be unveiled. At the conference, Huawei demonstrated a car machine image that had not been exposed before. We can see a horizontally placed rounded rectangular screen, which is very close to a tablet design.
In my previous article, “2021 Huawei Developer Conference: Huawei showed me what the future car looked like!”, I analyzed this cockpit that flashed in front of me.From the design of the UI, the wallpaper display of the main interface, atomic components, and the bottom dock bar that always stays at the bottom, we can see that Huawei has incorporated a lot of logic and usage habits from tablet and mobile devices into the intelligent cockpit of car terminals, but the differences from the earlier demo versions are not significant.
At the “Huawei Winter Flagship Launch Event,” Richard Yu demonstrated the complete functionality of the “first integration of Hongmeng cockpit” on the AITO Question Interface M5:
- “Zero-level Design Desktop” Design
Similar to the tablets and smartphones we usually use, the desktop is the resident interface, and the dock bar below can quickly activate related apps or functions.
- “Personalized Smart Dock”
The dock bar that always stays at the bottom of the desktop can arbitrarily place apps as well as related atomic service cards. It can even recommend content, safety reminders, and a series of convenient services actively based on road conditions, owner status, and vehicle condition comprehensively analyzed.
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Three-finger swipe can enter split-screen mode
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Little Y Voice Assistant
It supports up to 60 seconds of continuous conversation, visible speech recognition, and four-tone zone recognition. One sentence can assign two tasks. In my actual experience, Little Y’s completion degree and accuracy are already very high, and they can compare with the products of first-line new forces.
Huawei’s “Little Y Suggestions” on mobile devices have also been used in cars. The official website states that when entering a tunnel or when the outside air quality is poor, the vehicle will obtain relevant information through environmental perception, and then Little Y Suggestions will remind you to turn on the internal circulation. There are also refueling suggestions, navigation inquiries, and even reminders of fatigue driving through DMS cameras.
- “Seamless Circulation”
The implementation of this function requires support from HarmonyOS mobile devices. Under a Huawei account, through distributed technology, navigation, music, video, and unobstructed services can be naturally transitioned and circulating between mobile phones and car terminals.
After the launch event, I rushed to the exhibition car to experience this “first integration of Hongmeng cockpit.” This horizontally placed 15.6-inch screen with extremely narrow borders achieves a 2k resolution, 60Hz refresh rate, and HDR display.
Even in the exhibition car stage, the smoothness of this system still surprised me. The response time of the system, transition animations, and the 60Hz refresh rate, combined are even smoother than the mass-produced car terminals I have experienced. Perhaps only AMD’s V11 could rival it.Huawei emphasized the concept of “customized cabin”, which has been practiced in various ways on Android phones, such as freely matching wallpapers, fonts, and desktop widgets. Huawei has also transplanted this concept to the Hongmeng car system, allowing us to freely place apps in the dock bar and customize it by removing apps from the dock bar.
But the interesting part here is the addition of atomic components. Actually, whether on iOS or Android, users should be very familiar with these “little cards” that can change size and place freely, and even change skins and customize displays on the phone’s desktop.
I personally think that the trend of atomic components being added to cars is promising. In this scenario, consumers can find usage habits that best fit their needs through custom cabin software, and manufacturers can greatly improve the later OTA of the car machine through a large number of user customizations and feedback, making the evolution speed of the car machine faster and more towards perfection.
However, this experience was too short, and I am not a Hongmeng system user on mobile, so I did not feel the most complete experience this time.
HUAWEI SOUND Sound System
The HUAWEI SOUND sound system on the AITO AITO M5 includes 19 speaker units, offering a power output of over 1,000 W. The low-frequency part consists of one 8-inch, dual-drive voice coil, independent rear cavity subwoofer and four 6.5-inch door subwoofers.
The top-level configuration includes a headrest and a headrest sound array composed of four speakers. When navigating, only these four speakers are output, which is consistent with the XPeng P7. At the same time, these 4 speakers can also act as near-field speakers, realizing the switching between 7.1\&5.1 channel sound with better sense of surround sound.
Assisted Driving
After introducing the Hongmeng cabin, I lingered on the idea of assisted driving, after all, we’ve all been amazed by the assisted driving capabilities on HI-powered vehicle models.
After looking at the specifications of this hardware, I believe you would understand that the maximum auxiliary driving ability of the AITO WENJIE M5 is relatively low. Yu Chengdong also emphasized that “it is L2+, and you cannot take your hands off the wheel.” This is reasonable, considering the cooperation between Saic Motor Corporation Ltd. and Huawei has only been for one year, so it is not practical to build a car from scratch. Optimizing and upgrading the existing Saic Motor Corporation Ltd. products is the right way to go.
The AITO WENJIE M5 has a total of 23 sensors for perception hardware, out of which:
- 3 are millimeter-wave radar sensors
Bosch’s fifth-generation millimeter-wave radar has the longest detection range of up to 210m, with a maximum detection angle of 120 degrees, which can achieve lane cruise assistance and provide blind spot alerts for the driver.
- 1 is a forward-facing camera
It uses Bosch’s third-generation advanced driving assistance camera with a maximum detection angle of 100 degrees and a maximum resolution of 2.6 million pixels.
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12 are ultrasonic radar sensors used for 360 parking.
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4 are high-definition APA cameras used for 360 parking.
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1 is an APA controller used for detecting parking spaces and obstacles.
This multi-sensor fusion solution can achieve L2 level auxiliary driving functions such as lane cruising assistance, blind spot warning, front radar prompt, lane departure and automatic parking. However, specific performance indicators can only be evaluated once the vehicle is off the assembly line.
Conclusion
I once visited Huawei’s global flagship store on Nanjing East Road Commercial Street in Shanghai in July. Even at noon, there was still a constant stream of customers. After Saic Motor Corporation Ltd. entered Huawei’s sales channel, the monthly sales of their cars went from a two-digit figure to nearly two thousand vehicles. However, this number cannot meet Yu Chengdong’s sales target of 300,000 Huawei Smart Selection vehicles in 2022.
From Saic Motor Corporation Ltd’s Huawei Smart Selection SF5 to AITO WENJIE M5, Huawei has gradually strengthened its empowering influence on Saic Motor Corporation Ltd. Through AITO WENJIE M5, we can observe that Huawei firmly controls the product’s sales channels, functions, and even reservation channels.
However, on December 21st, Huawei reaffirmed its position of not manufacturing cars at the 2021 Huawei Intelligent Automotive Solutions Forum with the theme “Aggregating Shareable Ecology and Collaborating for the Future.”But it is clear that Huawei is already standing at the door of car making. As long as it takes one step forward, the threshold of car making can be easily crossed. I call this situation “unlimited proximity” to car making. Because Huawei is currently deeply cooperating with Changan and Arcfox HI, and under a wider range, IDVP, MDC, and Hongmeng Cockpit have already had hundreds of partners. This is enough to give Huawei considerable business opportunities, and it currently seems unnecessary to enter the car making industry.
Before the new round of competition launched by Apple, Xiaomi, JiDU, and traditional automakers’ new energy sub-brands, let us wait and see if Huawei can turn the AITO Explore M5 into a pillar of Huawei Smart Selection’s sales.
This article is a translation by ChatGPT of a Chinese report from 42HOW. If you have any questions about it, please email bd@42how.com.