Embattled Chinese telecoms giant Huawei intends to develop a luxury electric SUV in conjunction with car manufacturing partner Seres, reports the South China Morning Post. The SUV will be the initial model under the premium smart electric vehicle (EV) brand AITO, which was launched by Seres on Thursday. It will come fitted with Huawei’s Harmony OS cockpit system.
“Banking on the information and communication technology [ICT] we have accumulated over the past 30 years, we will do our utmost to build an AITO-branded mid-sized luxury SUV,” Richard Yu Chengdong, the CEO of Huawei’s Intelligent Vehicle Solutions division and head of its consumer business group, said in a video posted on Seres’s account on the Twitter-like Weibo social-media platform.
The venture could potentially present a new growth engine for Huawei, whose networking equipment and smartphones businesses have been sanctioned by the United States. The AITO SUV, which Seres said it interprets as “adding intelligence to auto”, will also come loaded with Huawei smart technologies such as a 4D imaging radar, an autonomous driving platform, intelligent thermal management, lidar and 5G connectivity.
