SHANGHAI, CHINA - 2019/09/20: Chinese multinational technology company Huawei logo seen in ... [+]
Huawei is a Chinese technology company that has had a difficult time in the U.S. recently, with the U.S. Department of Justice unseeing indictments in January saying the company stole intellectual property, obstructed justice and committed fraud. CNET put together a full timeline of the company’s recent troubles, which you can see here.
Despite Huawei’s trouble with being blacklisted in the U.S. by the Trump administration, it has reportedly been in early-stage discussions with some unnamed U.S. telecom companies about “licensing its 5G network technology to them,” according to a Huawei executive who spoke to Reuters.
Huawei is also interested in developing 5G radar technologies that automakers can use in self-driving automobiles. Huawei’s current chairman, Xu Zhijun, spoke at a conference in Beijing today and said that Huawei is working on millimeter-wave radar and laser radar for use in autonomous vehicles as part of an “ecosystem” of car-equipped sensors, Reuters reports.
This is not Huawei's first foray into autonomous technologies. In June, the company said it was working with automotive companies in Europe and China on AI for self-driving vehicles that it could bring to market as early as 2021. The companies it was working with included Audi, GAC Group, Beijing New Energy Automobile and Changan Automobile, according to the Financial Times. Huawei also launched 5G communications hardware for use in the automotive industry in April.
In February 2019, Huawei announced it was launching “a series of solutions for autonomous driving mobile networks.” That included the company’s MBB Automation Engine (MAE) and its BTS5900 series base stations that it said can “help operators achieve automation in all scenarios” and will take full advantage of the upcoming 5G network.
In February 2018, Huawei used one of its Mate 10 Pro mobile phones as the brains of a somewhat autonomous Porsche in a demonstration test at the Mobile World Congress in Spain. The prototype was more of a “fluffy showcase of the company's AI ambitions” than a big step into autonomous vehicles, Engadget said, but it was a step nonetheless.
How this might all play out with U.S.-based automakers is uncertain for now. The blacklist and questions about Huawei’s security issues remain but as the 5G licensing discussions show, the company is still interested in establishing a bigger foothold in the U.S.
