Joint venture counterattack: Can Audi, in Partnership with Huawei, Take the Lead in Breaking the Deadlock in BBA's Electrification Competition?

In a market environment where the growth of the fuel vehicle market has peaked, electrification has become an unavoidable challenge for BBA (Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Audi). After several rounds of promotion and warm-up, the FAW Audi Q6L e-tron family and A5L were recently launched in Hangzhou.

On the night of the launch, several senior executives from FAW Audi responded to questions from media reporters, including from the "China Business Journal," about common concerns faced by joint venture car companies such as "converting from fuel to electric," "lagging in smart experience," "short range, and slow charging."

At present, intelligence has become the primary factor for Chinese consumers when purchasing cars. For a long time, consumers have formed two impressions: first, compared with emerging brands, new energy vehicles from traditional luxury brands are not intelligent enough; second, fuel vehicles cannot support advanced driver assistance systems. In response to the high level of market and consumer attention regarding the intelligence of the Audi Q6L e-tron, FAW-Audi’s answer is that both models are equipped with deeply customized Huawei Qiankun Intelligent Driving® technology.

"The cooperation between FAW Audi and Huawei began in 2019," Li Fenggang, Executive Deputy General Manager of FAW Audi Sales Co., Ltd., told reporters. Leng Jiangtao, Vice President of Marketing for Huawei's Vehicle BU, stated on-site, "Assisted driving will no longer be exclusive to electric vehicles and new forces. Audi is the first century-old luxury brand to be equipped with Qian Kun intelligent driving technology."

An experienced automotive industry observer analyzed to the reporter, "The Audi Q6L e-tron, enhanced with Huawei's intelligent driving technology, is quite competitive. However, whether it can successfully break through in the mid-to-large pure electric SUV market remains to be seen. Its competitors, the Li Auto i8 and NIO's Le Dao L90, have just been launched as well, posing significant pressure."

Disrupting the mid-to-large pure electric SUV market

In the era of fuel vehicles, domestic brands often played the role of "challenger," while joint-venture brands were the "defenders." In the era of electric vehicles, the two sides have begun to "swap roles."

On August 7th, the mid-to-large pure electric SUV market welcomed a new disruptor following the Li Auto i8 and Leada L90—the FAW Audi Q6L e-tron.

As the first model based on Audi's luxurious PPE all-electric platform, the FAW-Audi Q6L e-tron family is priced between 348,800 and 398,800 yuan.

The rationale behind this pricing is as follows: a senior industry insider pointed out to the reporter, "The adoption of Huawei's deeply customized QianKun Autopilot® technology, coupled with a 107kWh CATL ternary lithium battery and a full 800V high-voltage platform, provides the 'confidence' for FAW Audi Q6L e-tron's pricing."

The Q6L e-tron is equipped with Huawei's Qian Kun Zhijia® technology, which is deeply integrated with Huawei's solutions. The vehicle is equipped with a total of 2 LiDARs, 13 cameras, 5 millimeter-wave radars, and 12 ultrasonic radars, providing map-free L2-level driving assistance capabilities.

The system can not only accurately recognize the status of traffic lights and countdown information to autonomously make decisions for stopping and starting at intersections, but also intelligently determine the timing for entering turn lanes, coordinating navigation paths for efficient passage. In the face of urban congestion, the system can predict risks from vehicles cutting in and sudden pedestrian appearances in real-time. In highway scenarios, it strictly adheres to lane marking regulations throughout the on-ramp and off-ramp processes, preventing lane-changing or borrowing lanes over solid lines. This empowers all-scenario smart travel with technology.

Leng Jiangtao stated: "The teams of FAW Audi and Huawei, after more than 1,000 days and nights of joint efforts, have deeply integrated Audi's German precision engineering with Huawei's intelligent technology, allowing the century-old mechanical genes to achieve intelligent sublimation."

At the scene, Leng Jiangtao introduced that by the end of July 2025, the cumulative mileage of Huawei Qiankun’s assisted driving will reach 4.05 billion kilometers, with assisted parking used 260 million times. In July 2025, the per capita assisted driving mileage will reach 699 kilometers, which is 2 to 4 times the industry average.

FAW Audi and Huawei established a partnership as early as 2019. Why won't the collaborative products be mass-produced until August 2025? Li Fenggang explained, "We decided early on to cooperate with Chinese high-tech companies to enhance the level of intelligence. However, collaboration requires a good 'soil' to bear good fruit."

Li Fenggang specifically mentioned that according to Audi's technical standards, "it cannot be said that just because we cooperate with Huawei today, the product can be 'installed on the car' by tomorrow." Industry insiders pointed out that "the slow progress of the cooperation between the two parties may be related to Audi's parent company, the Volkswagen Group, hesitating over whether to develop key technologies in-house or cooperate externally."

Li Fenggang revealed on site, "In the future, the all-new Audi Q5L and the new fuel version of the Audi A6L will both be equipped with Huawei's Qian Kun intelligent driving technology."

Breaking the "curse" of fuel vehicles being unable to achieve intelligence

In recent years, the industry has generally believed that "electric vehicles are the only carriers of intelligence, and fuel vehicles cannot achieve true intelligence and will eventually be phased out." This once became a key focus of marketing narratives for new forces. However, with technological evolution and market feedback, this viewpoint has gradually been "disproven."

Wu Yongqiao, President of Bosch Intelligent Driving Control Systems China, stated in a media interview, "From a technical perspective, it is entirely feasible for fuel vehicles to achieve mid-to-high level intelligent driving."

The reason why fuel vehicles are considered difficult to equip with advanced intelligent driving systems is mainly because their electronic and electrical architecture generally lags behind that of electric vehicle platforms, especially in terms of computing power, redundancy design, and software-hardware collaboration.

However, the Audi Q6L e-tron based on the PPE luxury electric platform and the FAW Audi A5L based on the PPC luxury fuel platform have broken this "curse".

During an interview with the media at the 2025 Shanghai International Auto Show, Li Fenggang stated: "In the past, many fuel vehicles had a distributed electronic and electrical architecture, which limited the speed of data transmission and processing capabilities. However, Audi's PPE luxury pure electric platform shares the new E³ 1.2 electronic and electrical architecture with the PPC luxury fuel platform. It is designed to transmit data according to gigabit Ethernet standards, with computing power sufficient to meet demands."

The new E³ 1.2 electronic and electrical architecture is known to be an important foundation for Huawei's QianKun Intelligent Driving® technology to be successfully integrated into Audi fuel vehicles.

The all-new E³ 1.2 intelligent bus architecture is jointly developed by Audi and Volkswagen Group's CARIAD company. It consists of five high-performance computing platforms forming the operational core. All vehicle functions are allocated to the respective computers by domain, enabling OTA remote upgrades through mobile networks and the expansion of new features. It has high adaptability.

"The relevant software components are developed by CARIAD, while Audi is responsible for customizing and adapting applications for each model," Audi explained. "The standardized E³ 1.2 electronic architecture not only simplifies the development and production processes but also brings additional economies of scale."

Markus Duesmann, President of Audi China, stated: "Audi has initiated the largest product layout in its brand history in China. From the first pure electric model based on the PPE platform to the internal combustion engine models based on the PPC platform, we are advancing on dual fronts and working collaboratively. This fully demonstrates Audi's bold strategic choices and its unwavering long-term commitment to the Chinese market."