If the current market trends are anything to go by, in the coming years, every second company might be entering the automotive industry. At least that’s what Chinese telecommunications major Huawei’s foray into automobiles predict!
Over the past few years, despite rumors suggesting otherwise, Huawei has refuted claims that it’ll be manufacturing cars.
But recently, at the Auto Shanghai 2021, the company surprised everyone by unveiling its brand new hybrid SUV, the Huawei Seres SF5. Huawei made this car in association with Seres, and from the past two months, it has been receiving orders in large numbers.
Huawei flooded with early orders
When it first unveiled the model, within two days, the company received 3,000 orders, which was more than its last year’s annual sale! Even though the company hasn’t revealed how many SF5 models it has sold in the past two months, various media reports claimed different figures.
One, for instance, stated that in the first month, Huawei sold 10,000 cars, while another estimated that it shipped 6000 vehicles in the first two weeks. Although we don’t know whether these reports are accurate, one thing that’s for sure is that the demand is a lot more than the supply.
How bright is Huawei’s future?
Richard Yu, CEO of Huawei Consumer Business Group, has set an ambitious target for the company. He hopes to ship 300,000 cars by the end of next year (2022). If Huawei achieves this target, it will leave Elon Musk’s Tesla, which sold 137,000 3s models in 2020, behind.
In the past few months, Tesla’s sales have dropped drastically due to safety concerns. The company had to build a local data center in China after going through an investigation. All these issues have shifted consumers from Tesla to Huawei.
When a reporter interviewed a store clerk at Shanghai’s Nanjing East Road Huawei outlet, he found out that within the 30 minutes, at least twenty guests had come in to find out about the Seres SF5 or book a test drive. That’s the kind of excitement this new model has garnered.
Right now, Huawei is only selling four-wheel-drive Seres models, but it has plans to launch a two-wheel-drive soon. If you go by the price of four-wheel-drive models, which are selling at 246,800 yuan (US$38,762), the day isn’t far when the tech company will stand among well-established global automakers.
Huawei’s HarmonyOS event
On June 2, 2021, the tech leg of Huawei introduced the second version of the in-house HarmonyOS.
Harmony, which has been in the market for quite some time, will now work on multiple gadgets, like phones, tablets, smartwatches, and smart TVs. Huawei soon plans to release gadgets that will support the new software too.