Ma Piao/Wen On September 15th, the product definition, design, brand marketing, channel retail, and service system of Wanjie were transferred to the leadership of Xilis, and Huawei terminals were transformed into participating empowerment.

For Yu Chengdong, the chairman of Huawei's BG terminal, there is an unavoidable personal dimension on this day: Wenjie is the benchmark for his deep operation. From that day on, this benchmark is no longer directly operated by him. According to sources cited by the media, the two sides had been negotiating on the cooperation model for one or two months.

Another scene from over a month ago provides a meaningful footnote: on August 5th, at Huawei's full scene new product launch event in Shenzhen, Yu Chengdong, who shouted "the best is within 10 million yuan", disappeared. At the press conference, he mistakenly stated the starting price of the MateBook Fold's extraordinary master at 24999 yuan as 2499 yuan, which was corrected and changed. Some media outlets have bluntly stated that 'he is too tired' based on this.

For a long time, Yu Chengdong has been the most open and steadfast car maker within Huawei. This point has the authoritative endorsement of the parties involved: Huawei's rotating chairman Xu Zhijun publicly stated in 2021 that Yu Chengdong was still "not convinced" and "wanted to make cars", "but he only had one vote".

In 2020, Huawei has formed an organizational resolution of "not making cars"; In 2023, this red line will be further strengthened with a five-year deadline. On September 10, 2026, Huawei Voice Community disclosed the latest explanation of the discussion minutes of Huawei Supervisory Board Chairman Guo Ping.

Guo Ping stated that the whole vehicle has significant regional and geopolitical sensitivity characteristics, especially when it comes to data, security, and privacy issues in smart cars, while the component business is always global. Personally building cars means being locked in a specific market by data compliance and geopolitical barriers, only producing components and solutions, and instead being able to enter more markets in a more flexible way.

This is more like an answer from organizational rationality to individual will: Huawei is not incapable of making cars, but rather has a natural tension between the regional, data security, and geopolitical attributes of its entire vehicle business and the global business attributes that Huawei hopes to maintain.

This rope is not tied to Yu Chengdong, but to the boundary of Huawei's automotive strategy.

Yu Chengdong has taken "empowerment" to the extreme within the red line - personally standing on the platform, defining products, marketing, and pushing Wenjie from a new brand to a scale of millions of vehicles.

Now, Huawei has formed a dual wheel pattern of "Terminal BG (Hongmeng Zhixing Wujie)+Yinwang (Qiankun Ecology)" in the automotive field: the "Wujie" takes Huawei's terminal channel, and the "Jing" series is deeply co created by the Yinwang system and car companies, with competition and cooperation in several sectors.

'Return' does not necessarily mean that Huawei thinks that Wenjie is not doing well, but it may also mean that Wenjie is mature enough.

The scarcity of resources is likely one of the important backgrounds for this mode adjustment.

At the China Automotive Blue Book Forum in June 2024, Yu Chengdong admitted that resources are limited. He said, "There are many big car companies coming to us for cooperation in intelligent car selection, but we do not have resources and manpower is very limited... Our resources are limited, so we should focus on these four model points. Huawei also leads five brands throughout the entire process, so it is obviously difficult to" deploy heavy troops "for every project.

Transferring partial control of the terminal layer may result in greater breadth of the platform layer alliance. In the past, Huawei took on more operational complexity in exchange for stronger terminal control; Now it is Silis taking back more management rights and assuming more operational risks. Huawei releases organizational resources from front-end operations in exchange for larger coverage space.

On the other hand, the growth and changes of Wenjie itself also constitute the background that cannot be ignored in this mode switch.

In the live broadcast of the "Five Realms" merger on December 9, 2025, Yu Chengdong was full of energy: it took 43 months to deliver 1 million vehicles, and the next time to complete 1 million vehicles is estimated to take "just over 10 months".

However, HarmonyOS delivered 240000 vehicles in the first half of the year, a year-on-year increase of 18.6%. In the first half of 2026, the domestic sales of new cars reached 9.921 million units, a year-on-year decrease of 21.1%. If measured according to the expected completion of the second 1 million vehicles in 10 months, it means that significant acceleration is needed in the future.

Detaching the data from Wenjie will make the comparison clearer. According to the production and sales report of Sailis, the sales volume of Wanjie in the first half of the year was about 160800 vehicles, with a year-on-year growth rate of about 5.6%; According to delivery standards, Wanjie delivered approximately 168200 vehicles in the first half of the year, a year-on-year increase of 10.2%. There are differences in different statistical approaches, but they all point to one fact: the growth rate of Wenjie is significantly lower than the overall growth rate of 18.6% of Hongmeng Zhixing.

The consecutive two month low performance is more noteworthy than the single month data itself. In July, the sales volume of Sylphy vehicles was 20480, a year-on-year decrease of 50.86%; The sales volume in August was 20652 units, a year-on-year decrease of 49.68%. Now, the Wanjie is still the largest chassis of Hongmeng Zhixing, but it is no longer the engine.

When Sailis took over the steering wheel, it faced a situation of sales pressure, rising costs, intensified competition, and a sharp decline in market value. This is a trading window that appears to be valuable for both parties.

Yu Chengdong is a typical aggressive operator in Huawei's automotive business, and the strategic positioning at the group level is an "enabler" rather than a "competitor". When resources are scarce and the group needs to standardize and replicate the model to more brands, this ultimate operation method of all-round empowerment has become a bottleneck for large-scale replication.

The strategy of a model room can create a super brand, but it may not be able to replicate to five brands at the same time, let alone directly output to the "Jing" series and a wider range of Qiankun customers.

Therefore, the return of dominant power in the industry can be seen as a landmark move for Huawei's automotive business to transition from a model room deeply operated by Yu Chengdong to an organization driven ecosystem.

Guo Ping said that for a considerable period of time, it is expected that Huawei will continue to take on the responsibility of leading and guiding development. This information is juxtaposed with the information about "graduation" in the world, which precisely marks a possible direction for the shift of focus - the platform.

The current question is, can Huawei integrate its technology, software, intelligent driving, and ecological capabilities into more car companies without directly operating a car company?

Of course, completely interpreting the relevant actions as Yu Chengdong losing power is clearly an overinterpretation. He is still the helmsman of the terminal BG, and the "four boundaries" in the "five boundaries" are still dominated by Huawei's entire process, that is, still managed by its team. Furthermore, the frame of reference for the narrative of 'disastrous defeat' is inherently unreliable. The problem lies in the acceleration of the target, not the failure of execution.

So, for Yu Chengdong, this is not just a matter of 'brushing off clothes', but a choice of path.

The benefits of terminal operation are very direct: selling a car provides an additional source of income and profit, but at the cost of having to bear the complexity of inventory, channels, marketing, service, and brand management; More importantly, the deeper the terminal operation, the more like an automobile company.

The logic of platform economy is completely different. A brand sells hundreds of thousands of cars annually, with a maximum scale; If a platform can serve dozens of car companies and hundreds of car models, the scale comes from the entire industry.

The truly important variable after September 15th is no longer just the number of vehicles sold, but the choice of partners: how many car companies continue to hand over their core intelligent capabilities to Huawei; How many brands and models does Huawei's technology platform cover; And whether these car companies will increase or decrease their dependence on Huawei technology after gaining operational autonomy.

If Wenjie continues to adopt Huawei's core technology after gaining operational autonomy, and Huawei has replicated the same set of capabilities to more car companies, then September 15th will be a true platform shift.

On the other hand, if car companies gradually reduce their dependence on Huawei's technology system once they gain operational autonomy, then "light asset platformization" may ultimately only be a reconstruction of cooperation models rather than an upgrade of business models.

Can a car company be quickly scaled up? Yu Chengdong has already given the answer; After removing terminal control, whether Huawei can gain greater industrial control will be an interesting point of view after September 15th.

(Author's Commentary)