Wired contacted Huawei to ask about his potential role in subsidies. Huawei did not comment on the time of publication.
One of the earliest subsidies appeared online in March, when the Shenzhen Longgang District trade office – a district where the headquarters of Huawei is located –Published That local car buyers can get up to 4000 RMB (about USD 560) for buying a car that works in the Huawei driver support system. Subsidies will be transferred on the basis of the first, first served, until the total budget of 14,000,000 RMB is exhausted, which means that over 3,500 residents of Shenzhen could apply it.
From May, many ads in a similar language were then published by trading offices in other provinces and municipalities. In China, these trade offices operate as consumer regulatory bodies and are responsible for distribution of government subsidies, including A huge program launched last year Encourage trading aged electronics and cars to lend a hand stimulate the economy. The fact that Huawei subsidies are announced by commercial offices makes them almost indistinguishable from the official social care program.
In some cases, as in the provinces of Henan and Anhui, the subsidies were instead published by the provincial Association of Automotive Industry. Although these are technically private trade groups, ads were printed on official company companies and with red stamps, giving them a sense of authority.
After the American trade restrictions devastated the global business of Huawei smartphones and basically forced him to leave the markets outside China, the technological gigant tries to discover. In addition to creating the Harmony operating system for smartphones, smart devices and cars, it is increasingly working on immense language models and autonomous driving technologies as a result of the AI boom.
The company is celebrated for the fact that it has never made the car itself – like his peer and competitor of Xiaomi smartphones – but works with lots of Chinese automotive companies. Huawei autonomous driving technology is particularly attractive for Chinese producers who do not have the ability to develop themselves. It is “technically angnostics, which is attractive to brands that are fighting to maintain progress in an intelligent drive space,” he says here. “Effectively, if you are desperate and you cannot keep up, you should work with Huawei on the Chinese market.”
The subsidies aroused controversy in China because they seem to give some brands a leg in a brutally competitive EV landscape. When the domestic market is saturated, EV Chinese brands have been forced to reduce prices and provide consumers with free modernization of technology or free financing options to stay on the surface.
Beijing at the beginning of this year signaled that car manufacturers should avoid the apply of extreme price tactics. “The Central Government ultimately wants the stable, profitable companies, and not a super -crushed industry in which no one earns any money,” says Ilaria Mazzocco, an older employee of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which strictly studied the Chinese industrial policy for EVS. “For consumers it is now fantastic, but it is simply not balanced in the long term.”
Pressure from the central government to avoid refueling price wars, can cause that companies develop more artistic ways to make their cars more affordable. At the same time, Mazzocco claims that local governments can positively perceive Huawei self -propelled technology because it suits another political purpose of developing advanced technologies and self -sufficient AI technologies in China.
Before this year, Wired could identify only one similar subsidy of the Huawei car from 2022. This year Shenzhen, the hometown of Huawei, distributed $ 1,400 per car For people who bought vehicles equipped with harmony. Huawei did not answer questions about Wired about whether the company also pays for them.