Huawei Invests $1-Billion on Autonomous and Electric Vehicles Amid US Sanctions

Embattled Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei Technologies Co. on Monday hinted at pursuing new avenues in a bid to weather wide-ranging US sanctions imposed by the Trump administration left its once-leading smartphone business in tatters, while also hindering progress in its semiconductor and 5G businesses. Therefore, Huawei plans to spend $1 billion in autonomous and electric cars, teaming up with Chinese automakers to bring to market cars that would bear its own logo.

Eric Xu, Huawei’s rotating chairman, and CEO told a gathering of industry analysts at company headquarters in the southern technology hub of Shenzhen that he doesn’t expect the Biden administration to change the rules any time soon and the company is investing in new areas like healthcare, farming, and electric cars to try and mitigate the impact of being blacklisted by the U.S.

“We believe, we’ll continue to live and work under the entity listing for a long period of time,” he said. “The overall strategy as well as the specific initiatives for Huawei are all designed and developed in a way that the company would be able to survive and develop while staying on the entity list for a long time.”

Huawei said that it plans to invest $1 billion into self-driving and electric car research and development as it looks to compete with the likes of Tesla, Apple, Nio, and Xiaomi. Xu claimed that Huawei’s self-driving technology already surpasses Tesla’s as it allows cars to cruise for more than 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) without human intervention. Tesla’s vehicles can’t do more than 800 kilometers and drivers are meant to keep their hands on the wheel for safety purposes.

Huawei will initially partner with three automakers on self-driving (autonomous) cars including BAIC Group, Chongqing Changan Automobile Co, and Guangzhou Automobile Group. The company’s logo is likely to be put on cars in the same way that Intel’s logo is put on some computers.

“Once self-driving is achieved, we’re able to disrupt all of the related industries, and we think that in the foreseeable future, namely in the next decade, the biggest opportunity and breakthrough will be from the automobile industry,” Xu added.