Software comes first before hardware: What is the purpose of LeEco's super car project?

January 21 (Reporter Zhang Zhichang) As one of the most important development strategies of LeTV Group in the next five years, the LeTV super car project has become an important topic that cannot be avoided in the Internet industry and the automobile manufacturing industry since its inception.

On January 20, LeTV held a press conference with the theme of "Defining the Future". At the conference, LeTV officially disclosed for the first time the progress of the work on the super car "SEE Project" and released China's first full-terminal intelligent operating system - LeUI system.

Since LeEco CEO Jia Yueting announced the "SEE Plan" on his Weibo in December last year, the progress of LeEco's super car project has been the focus of media and industry attention. This time, LeEco's progress in the super car project is only the development and release of its car networking system LeUI, which makes people sigh: Can LeEco's super car, which has not yet been released but has been developed first, really be realized?

Early deployment to catch up with BAT

Although my country's Internet of Vehicles industry is still in its infancy, and constraints from national policies and the level of interconnection in the automobile manufacturing industry have resulted in no breakthrough development in the entire Internet of Vehicles industry, this does not prevent Internet giants from being optimistic about and entering this emerging industry.

Last year, Baidu not only released its car networking system CarNet, but also launched car networking hardware products; Tencent and Beijing NavInfo Technology Co., Ltd. launched WeDrive, an overall car Internet solution; Alibaba entered the car networking industry by acquiring AutoNavi Maps. In the international market, Apple's CarPlay and Google's Google Project Mode have also become the focus of the car networking industry.

Given the collective efforts of major domestic and foreign Internet giants in the Internet of Vehicles industry, it is not difficult to guess why LeTV, which has not yet developed super car hardware, announced its Internet of Vehicles system LeUI so early.

LeEco has repeatedly stressed that the LeEco Super Car it developed is not just a new energy electric car, but a complete Internet car ecosystem. LeEco has repeatedly taken the lead in the construction of corporate and industrial ecosystems. After launching the super car project, it has given priority to developing the Internet of Vehicles system and laying out the entire industry chain, which can be regarded as an important measure to lay a solid foundation.

More importantly, the development of the Internet of Vehicles is completing the transformation from a hardware model to an ecosystem. As an ecological enterprise, LeTV can only take control of the Internet of Vehicles and develop a super car that truly belongs to the Internet era if it customizes an operating system that is truly suitable for smart cars.

LeUI may guide the future of products

Regarding the "SEE Plan" first proposed by Jia Yueting, He Yi, CEO of the Internet of Vehicles, broke it down into: Super, Electric, and Eco-system. As the result of the first phase of the "SEE Plan", LeTV's smart car operating system - LeUI Auto version can be said to be the prototype product of a super car.

From the system applications that have been released so far, it can be seen that relying on the LeUI system, LeTV Super Car may build a new Internet car industry. This ecosystem that supports all smart terminals will also use LeTV's existing vertically integrated LeTV ecosystem of "platform + content + terminal + application" to bring users another LeTV smart hardware product - Super Car with "twice the performance and half the price".

Judging from the concept design drawings of LeTV's supercars that have been exposed many times, the supercars, whether in terms of appearance design or interior configuration, can be said to have surpassed consumers' imagination of future cars. Such advanced R&D concepts, if only imagined out of thin air, may not meet everyone's basic needs for the safety of automotive products. Therefore, LeTV's supercars must need a complete intelligent operating system to support and cooperate with them.

With the addition of the Internet of Vehicles, the entire automotive industry chain will be extended in the future. The automotive industry in the past may have been mechanical and cold, but in the future, when the Internet car era based on intelligent operating systems arrives, information, the Internet, applications, various terminals, etc. will be included in the entire automotive industry. In such an ecological industry chain, every company that enters the market must have its own sovereignty and position.

At the press conference, LeEco officially announced the establishment of LeEco Supercar (China) Co., Ltd., which is invested by LeEco Holdings, and announced the official joining of Lv Zhengyu, former general manager of Infiniti China and Asia Pacific. All of this indicates that the concept of the supercar project is becoming a reality.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.