Chinese phone-maker planning EVs

South Korea’s Hyundai Motor Group may have cut off talks with Apple to produce the long-rumoured iCar, but that apparently hasn’t stopped China’s Huawei Technologies from producing electric vehicles under its own brand name as soon as this year.

Reuters reported exclusively on Friday that Huawei, the world’s largest telecommunications equipment company, is in talks with Chinese state-owned car-makers Changan Automobile and Beijing Automotive Industry Holding (BAIC) to produce EVs for it in their auto factories.

The global newswire cited four sources as saying the first Huawei EVs could emerge by the end of this year, as part of a strategic shift following two years of US sanctions that have impacted its traditional business.

As part of its trade war with China, the US administration last year imposed a ban on US companies selling technology to the Chinese phone-maker, forcing Huawei to sell its phones without core parts of Google’s Android operating system in Australia, which became the first country to ban Huawei from its 5G network in 2018.

A Huawei spokesman told Reuters the company does not plan to design EVs or produce Huawei-branded vehicles.

“Huawei is not a car manufacturer. However, through ICT [information and communications technology], we aim to be a digital car-oriented and new-added components provider, enabling car OEMs [original equipment manufacturers] to build better vehicles.”

However, according to Reuters, Huawei has already begun designing its own EVs and approaching suppliers in China with the aim of officially launching the project as early as this year.

Like the ill-fated Apple iCar, the Huawei vehicle is expected to be both fully electric and fully autonomous, in line with the Chinese government’s push for zero-emissions, self-driving cars to improve air pollution and congestion in the world’s biggest auto market.

Sales of new energy vehicles (NEVs), including pure EVs, plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) and hydrogen fuel-cell electric vehicles (FCEVs) numbered 1.3 million in 2020 and are expected to account for 20 per cent of China’s total annual auto sales by 2025.