AITO (marque)
AITO is a Chinese electric vehicle marque owned by Chinese vehicle manufacturer Seres Group and marketed by Chongqing AITO Auto Sales Co., Ltd.. The marque was introduced in 2021 and offers electric cars with Huawei's autonomous driving systems and the HarmonyOS operating system.
AITO is the first brand under Huawei's Harmony Intelligent Mobility Alliance collaboration model, in which Huawei leads the product design and development process and supplies key components such as the powertrain, ADAS solutions, and vehicle software, to deliver a completed design for the automaker to manufacture.
The name AITO stands for "Adding Intelligence to Auto".
History
In 2 December 2021, The AITO brand was launched at the Seres Group's Liangjiang factory in Chongqing.on 23 December 2021, Huawei announced AITO's first vehicle, the AITO M5. It is based on the Seres SF5 SUV, and is the first vehicle Huawei developed with Seres Group. At the time Seres was responsible for the entire life cycle of the vehicle, including research and development, manufacturing, and after-sales service. Huawei was only involved in product definition, development, and sales channels. Starting in 2023, Huawei started handling after-sales services and deliveries alongside Seres. Both companies are engaged in joint quality control and marketing. AITO vehicles are officially distributed by Chongqing AITO Auto Sales Co., Ltd..
In March 2023, the brand was briefly rebranded from "'" to "'" before Yu Chengdong, the CEO of the Huawei Consumer BG and the chairman of Intelligent Automotive Solution, personally issued that all promotional materials related to Huawei will be removed from AITO stores on April 1.
In June 2023, the AITO's Chinese name and its trademark was transferred from a company called Beijing Ruidekaizhuo Technology and Trade Co., Ltd. to Huawei. However, the trademark transferred to Huawei at that time does not include the English trademark for "AITO" and its logo in the Class 12 of the Nice Classification, which still belongs to Seres.
In July 2024, Huawei announced the transfer of the English trademarks of AITO and the related patents it holds back to Seres Group at the cost of 2.5 billion RMB. According to Yu Chengdong, the reason for the transfer was due to Chinese regulations which stipulate that automobile brands must be owned by its manufacturer.
Operations
According to Yu Chengdong, the AITO brand is an ecosystem brand and represents a new business model. Huawei will not directly manufacture cars but is dedicated to helping car companies sell their vehicles through product design, supply chain management, quality control, software ecosystems, user experience management, brand marketing, and sales channels. Each of Huawei's partner manufacturers will specialize in a specific vehicle category and class, and each manufacturer's product lineup will be non-overlapping, all combined under Huawei's comprehensive strategy.Technology
HarmonyOS Cockpit
The HarmonyOS Cockpit is Huawei's solution for electric and autonomous cars powered by its Kirin line of a system-on-chip, augmented reality head-up displays and smart instrument cluster. Huawei opened up the APIs of HarmonyOS Cockpit to help automobile OEMs, suppliers and ecosystem partners in developing different features.Autonomous Driving System
AITO vehicles are equipped with ADS developed by Huawei. For the current ADS 2.0, it is composite of 128 LiDARs, 11 HD cameras, 3 MMW radars, and 12 ultra sonic radars and Huawei self-developed chipset.The ADS is trained on real-world driving data and can achieve Level 2+ autonomous driving. It can perform human-like judgment and operation such as accurate turning, giving way to pedestrians, recognizing and avoiding irregular obstacles, as well as detecting and avoiding animals. It can also perform automatic and valet parking.
According to Huawei, the ADS 2.0 was priced at 36,000 RMB per vehicle when sold to partner manufacturer.
Products
Current models
- AITO M9, full-size SUV
- AITO M8, full-size SUV
- AITO M7, mid-size SUV
- AITO M6, mid-size SUV
- AITO M5, compact SUV