Moderator: Thank you, President Chen Yudong. The first question is about this auto show. Bosch has brought a full range of products, please tell us what is the biggest highlight of this booth?
Chen Yudong: The digital transformation of Bosch has been going on for several years. Since the functions of electrification, intelligence and interconnection of automobiles have been put forward, Bosch will continue to display related products in every booth. This time, like the Beijing Auto Show, we also involve electrified, intelligent and interconnected products.
We have done a good job in the localization of electrification, such as three-in-one electric shaft and vehicle-related products, which are all produced in China. We collected some technologies needed for electrification in the next few years, such as silicon carbide technology. In the future, Bosch will upgrade this technology, from IGBT to silicon carbide, to further enhance the competitiveness of electric vehicles. This time, a commercial vehicle fuel cell was also launched, which was exhibited in both the downstairs booth and the upstairs booth.
This information mainly reflects the further transformation that Bosch needs to make. In July, we announced that we would set up a new department, namely intelligent driving and control department. In fact, we put all the computing software and hardware in different domains in one business department, so you can also see our new business department, all the powerful traditional products, such as millimeter-wave radar. This time we launched the fifth generation, and this time we also exhibited the intelligent driving domain controller that cooperated with domestic partners. We hope this domain controller can be put into the market within a year or so. At present, according to the mass production plan of our intelligent cockpit domain controller, it is estimated that products using this domain controller will be listed in the first half of next year.
Internet This time, we also exhibited some products of the Internet Services Division, including the function of air brushing, which is a global air brushing, not just an entertainment system. At the same time, remote calibration is also demonstrated.
Moderator: I just visited our booth. These products you mentioned are all very concerned products, and some systems of traditional internal combustion engines still have some concern.
Chen Yudong: Yes, on the other hand, we also showed our different attempts on traditional internal combustion engines. We showed the solution of liquefied petroleum gas at the booth. This solution was also developed by our independent team in China and our Wuxi team, using liquefied petroleum gas to drive large commercial vehicles and buses.
On traditional engines, Bosch believes that this must be adhered to for a long time in the future, but each internal combustion engine may have some electrified products, so we also showed the 48-volt system in the exhibition area this time.
Moderator: A few days ago, Mr. Wang, an old expert in the field of new energy, suggested that he could not help burning. This is a public statement. what do you think?
Chen Yudong: I totally agree with Mr. Wang Binggang. There is no doubt that the future will be electrified, but how fast this speed is and how to make the people feel that it is a natural thing, so it cannot be across the board. I suggest that when electrified products or new energy products occupy a large enough market share, such as 70% and 80%, the internal combustion engine will be eliminated.
At present, the proportion of new energy is so low that it is a bit unreasonable for you to say which year to ban burning. Therefore, I very much agree with Mr. Wang Binggang's insights. I hope that there will be no time node for prohibiting combustion, and let market forces promote technological changes, and finally decide which year we will not produce fuel vehicles.
Moderator: Just now, you also emphasized that Bosch has been following the strategy of localization, including the localization of domain controllers just mentioned. Is this still the case?
Chen Yudong: Still like this.
We have nearly 60,000 people in China, and the sales of 1000 billion are basically localized as the final products. We seldom export from factories in China, a little, very little. This time, the on-board domain controller is launched for the intelligent cockpit. This domain controller is based on the global platform and domestic partners, serving the local development needs of China. Its main hardware and software functions are completed in China, and its future manufacturing will also be in China.
Moderator: Recently, there was a concept that Bosch adopted the strategy of "technology neutrality". How to interpret this?
Chen Yudong: Well, this is a strategy mainly involving new energy sources. Is it only 48 volt system or hybrid, hydrogen fuel or lithium battery? For Bosch, give this right to the people who buy our things.
We just make every technology to the extreme, we are neutral, and we give this choice to the OEM or the end customer. This is what we call technology neutrality, that is, we don't want to be pure electric and not internal combustion engines. We are bulls.
Moderator: At present, hydrogen energy is generally considered as the most potential direction.
Chen Yudong: The ultimate direction. It may take ten years or twenty years to form a certain scale. At present, I believe that the process towards the final plan is still very long. Whether it can be affordable and accepted by the people is a long process. You don't have to say that now is the best solution. Our "technology neutrality" means that it is only a choice, so whether it can be so cheap in the end depends on the acceptance of this market.
Moderator: There is another interesting topic these days. Huawei also came to the auto show. Some people say that Huawei may be Bosch in the future automotive field. Many people or the media also like to compare Huawei and Bosch together. What do you think of this situation?
Chen Yudong: I hope Bosch will become the future Huawei, at least in China. Our relationship with Huawei is very good, and it is a very friendly cooperative and competitive relationship. We are all familiar with their people, and quite a few of us in Bosch have jumped ship to Huawei.
In the course of 134 years, Bosch has experienced numerous brutal competitions, from technical routes to competitors and friends, so competition can promote progress. If there is no competition, no suitors will slow down, so the only thing we can do is run faster. Huawei is a proud enterprise in our country and we respect them very much. How to jointly promote the development of China's automobile industry through competition and cooperation is what we both want to see.
Moderator: There is another issue that everyone is very concerned about, that is, autonomous driving. Seeing that Bosch has pushed a lot of automatic parking technology before, how to promote automatic driving in the next step?
Chen Yudong: Bosch has always insisted that autonomous driving is the ultimate goal, but there are still many difficulties to achieve this ultimate goal. In this process, a technology has matured and we can let people use it.
Now these functions of L2+ level can be put into production, but they are not necessarily all-weather automatic driving. So, our strategy is still the same. If a function can be matured and industrialized, then a function is industrialized. However, we are in the laboratory, that is, the testing team, and we also have L4 and L5. For example, in Silicon Valley, we also put it on the market. This experiment needs large-scale industrialization, and there is still a way to go. It also needs the efforts and cooperation of the whole industry.
Parking service is a commercial economic model problem. Now we are trying to match this function with the original accessories, but the parking lot may not have supporting technology yet. But if the original car has this function, people in the parking lot will definitely install it in the future, so it is a process of cooperative game between the two sides. How can we do that? So now many are one-click parking, not parking service. In other words, once you get to that place, you can park your car and go in. This function means that people can park their cars after getting off the bus. There is no problem in the industrialization of this function, but you still need to invest a little in the large-scale industrialization of parking service, and there is no technical problem.
Moderator: In addition, when communicating with many enterprises these days, we talked about the brain drain rate of software talents. It's scarce now. We are looking for this kind of compound talents everywhere. For us, should we cultivate or introduce software talents?
Chen Yudong: We still use the advantages of our hardware to attract more software talents. For Bosch, our hardware strength is very strong and our technical platform is very strong. You can achieve many things on our platform that are not easy to achieve on the original car. Software engineers don't just compile an App user interface. What we need most is a system engineer, that is, someone who can understand the whole system and the software at the same time and guide ordinary IT engineers on how to program.
These people have strong knowledge of systems, software architecture and software programming, so they are easier to lead. So what we need most is people like system architects, because system engineers can do it without learning, because you need to have a deep understanding of the electronic and electrical architecture of automobiles.
Moderator: Is there a shortage of such talents in China?
Chen Yudong: We are all training, so we basically recruit electronic students or engineering students to pass electronic training. This time we exhibited many new products created by our system engineers and original engineers. For example, when the networking function is just started in the car, a T-box and a gateway are needed, and the gateway reaches the on-board controller. Now it is a step-by-step comprehensive integration. If you say that you are just a software engineer and don't know how to integrate, and the system engineer knows that this thing can be integrated in VCU, then he must have learned the expertise of the automobile industry and can understand the requirements of this safety and electronic and electrical architecture before he can make this. You are just a software engineer who is a pure APP, but you may not be able to do this and go so far. So for Bosch, we need a lot of software talents. We hope that our platform can provide more opportunities for software talents to realize some proprietary functions in the car.
Moderator: I remember you said in the first half of this year that we didn't stop supplying customers because of the epidemic.
Chen Yudong: Yes, it is still like this at present, but I step on the ice every day for fear of getting people into the well. Because of the safety of the supply chain, one is imported parts, because some countries have not fully opened up, and the production in some countries has not fully recovered. Suddenly something happens to a small domestic supplier, which will cause this. I'm working hard at present, I hope I won't stop.