Wang Jun, who in September 2021 got appointed as the COO of Huawei’s Intelligent Automotive Solution Business Unit, expressed his views on the development of smart cars during the 17th Super Car Forum today.

Wang said that Huawei originally specialized in the telecommunications field and its 30+ years of experience with ICT technology will help it benefit greatly as it forays into the smart car industry.

He also emphasized that Huawei aims is to help other companies build good cars, because of which it has partnered with BAIC, Changan, and GAC, all of which are major players in the EV market in China.

Huawei AITO M5 EV
Huawei AITO M5

When the true potential of software-driven cars is achieved, Wang believes that true driverless cars will arrive and “change the current state of cars” forever.

This, in his view, will be realized within the next five to ten years and will eventually lead to a paradigm shift in car design. Cockpits have always favored the driver but after the realization of unmanned driving, the cockpit will be designed around the passenger (via IT Home).

Accordingly, in addition to investing heavily in intelligent driving technologies, Huawei is also investing in intelligent cockpits. The HarmonyOS ecosystem will be playing a major role in this, making it much easier for new companies to adopt smart technologies and communications to build smarter cockpits.

A good example of this already exists in the form of the recently launched Huawei AITO M5, developed jointly by Huawei and SERES. The vehicle offers a 10.4-inch curved LCD instrument cluster and a “semi-floating” 15.6-inch touchscreen infotainment system. The latter runs on HarmonyOS and supports 3D face recognition.

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