Han Sanchu: The mass payment intellectual property fee will be obtained from the newly created car company's CEA architecture.

Recently, Han Sanchu, Executive Vice President of Volkswagen Group and CEO of CARIAD China, revealed, "We have obtained the overall electronic and electrical architecture, hardware design of domain controllers, related underlying software, and cloud implementation core knowledge package from XPeng Motors through payment of intellectual property fees for 'white box' transfer." The collaboration between Volkswagen Group and XPeng Motors began in 2023. At that time, Volkswagen announced an investment of approximately $700 million in XPeng, acquiring about 4.99% equity, and the two parties agreed to jointly develop Volkswagen-branded pure electric models for the Chinese market. In July 2024, Volkswagen Group's Volkswagen Automotive Technology Co., Ltd., software company CARIAD China, and XPeng officially launched the CEA project to jointly create a new generation electronic and electrical architecture tailored to Chinese needs. "This model aims to enable the Volkswagen China team to quickly absorb technology and independently iterate, accelerating the implementation of the new architecture," Han Sanchu explained. "The first model, the 'Yu Zhong 07,' was able to be delivered in a relatively short time, and its CEA 1.0 architecture was able to go from 0 to 1 within 18 months, thanks to this. However, the white box scope we mentioned does not include XPeng's core intelligent driving, cabin application platform, and other software parts that reflect brand differentiation." The China Business News reporter learned that in China, Volkswagen Group's core new energy whole vehicle platform in the future will be CMP and CSP. Some models of Volkswagen and Audi brands will use it, but only one set of local electronic and electrical architecture will empower these whole vehicle platforms: CEA. CEA will be configured differently according to the architecture and dimension outside the "brain" of different brand models, just like different styles of room decoration. Not only the electronic and electrical architecture, but also the interior and exterior of the vehicle can be differentiated. It's a bit like a phone, with similar core functions but differentiated through hardware and design.