Wired contacted Huawei to ask about its potential role in the subsidies. Huawei did not comment on time for publication.
One of the earliest subsidies appeared online in March, when the trade bureau of Shenzhen Longgang district-the district where Huawei’s headquarters is located-posted that local car buyers can get up to 4,000 RMB (about $ 560) for buying a car used on Huawei’s driver assistant system. The subsidies will be distributed on a first-class, first ministry base until the total budget of 14,000,000 RMB is exhausted, which means that more than 3.500 Shenzhen residents could benefit.
From May, many announcements in similar language were placed by the trade bureaus in other provinces and municipalities. In China, these trade bureaus are functioning as consumer regulators and is responsible for the distribution of government subsidies, including a massive program launched last year to encourage trade in old electronics and cars to stimulate the economy. The fact that the Huawei subsidies are announced by the trade bureaus makes them almost not of the official program for government welfare.
In some cases, as in the Henan and Anhui provinces, the subsidies were published instead by provincial automotive industries. Although technically private trading groups, the announcements were printed on official appearance and with red stamps, giving them a sense of authority.
After US trade restrictions destroyed Huawei’s global smartphone industry and essentially forced it to leave markets outside China, the technical giant tried to find itself out again. Along with creating the harmony operation system for smartphones, smart devices and cars, it is also increasingly working on major language models and autonomous driving technologies amid the AI boom.
The company promised familiarly to never make a car itself – unlike its smartphone counterpart and rival Xiaomi – but it works with a number of Chinese car businesses. Huawei’s autonomous management technology is particularly attractive to Chinese manufacturers who do not have the ability to develop self -management on their own. It is “technically brand-magnostic, which is attractive to the brands struggling to keep up with the progress in the intelligent driving space,” Tu says. “Effective, if you are desperate and you cannot sustain, you must work with Huawei in the China market.”
The subsidies have raised controversy in China because they appear to give certain brands a leg in a cruel competitive EV landscape. As the domestic market saturated, Chinese EV brands were forced to lower prices and give consumers free technical upgrades or interest-free financing options to stay over the water.
Earlier this year, Beijing indicated that car manufacturers should avoid using extreme price tactics. “The central government eventually wants to see stable, profitable businesses and not a super -fragmented industry where no one is making money,” says Ilaria Mazzocco, a senior fellow in the Center for Strategic and International Studies who carefully studied China’s industrial policy for EV’s. “For consumers, it’s fantastic now, but it’s just not sustainable in the long run.”
The pressure of the central government to offer that the price wars can incur, can lead businesses to get more creative ways to make their cars more affordable. At the same time, says Mazzocco, local governments can consider Huawei’s self-managed technology favorable because it fits another policy objective to develop high-tech manufacturing and self-sufficient AI technologies in China.
Before this year, Wired could identify only one other similar Huawei car subsidy from 2022. In that year, Shenzhen, Huawei’s hometown, distributed $ 1,400 per car to people who bought vehicles with Harmonyos. Huawei did not answer questions from Wired about whether the company also paid for those.