AITO (marque)

AITO is a Chinese electric vehicle marque of Chinese vehicle manufacturer Seres Group and multinational technology corporation Huawei in 2021. The marque offers electric cars with autonomous driving systems and the HarmonyOS operating system.

AITO is the first brand under Harmony Intelligent Mobility Alliance (HIMA, 鸿蒙智行) collaboration model, in which Huawei provides full-stack intelligent vehicle solutions for traditional auto manufacturers. Huawei also announced that other manufacturer partners such as Chery, BAIC Motor, and JAC Motors will apply the similar business model.

The name AITO stands for "Adding Intelligence to Auto".

History
In December 2021, Huawei announced the launch of AITO brand and unveiled its first vehicle AITO M5, the first vehicle Huawei developed with Seres Group. The hardware of the car was based on Seres SF5 SUV. At that time, the Seres is responsible for the entire life cycle of the vehicle, including the research and development, manufacturing, and after-sales service. Huawei is involved in product definition, development, and channel sales. Both companies are engaged in joint quality control and joint marketing. Later in 2023, Huawei started handling after-sales and deliveries alongside Seres. AITO vehicles are officially distributed by Seres Auto Sales Co., Ltd.

In March 2023, the brand was briefly rebranded from "" to "" before Yu Chengdong, CEO of Huawei Terminal BG and CEO of Smart Car Solution BU, personally issued that all promotional materials related to Huawei will be removed on April 1 from AITO stores.

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 "AITO" and its logo in the Class 12 of the Nice Classification (for vehicles), which still belongs to Seres.

In July 2024, Huawei announced to transfer the English trademarks of AITO and the patents it holds related Seres Group at the cost of 2.5 billion RMB. According to Yu Chendong, the Chairman of the Huawei Intelligent Automotive Solutions, the reason for the transfer was due to regulations of Chinese government, that the brand of automobile must be owned by its manufacturer.

Operation
According to Yu Chengdong, CEO of Huawei Terminal Business Group and CEO of Smart Car Solution Business Unit, that AITO brand is an eco-system brand and a new business model. Huawei will not directly manufacture cars while dedicated to helping car companies sell their vehicles through product design, supply chain management, quality control, software ecosystem, user experience management, brand marketing, and sales channels.

Each Huawei's partner manufacturer will specialize in certain vehicle category and class and each manufacturer's product lineup is non-overlapping, and will all be combined under the Huawei's comprehensive solution.

HarmonyOS Cockpit
The HarmonyOS Cockpit is Huawei's solution for electric and autonomous cars powered by its Kirin line of a system-on-chip (SoC), augmented reality head-up displays (AR-HUD) 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 (Autonomous Driving System) 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 (~5200 USD) per vehicle when sold to partner manufacturer.

Current models

 * AITO M5 (2022–present), mid-size SUV (EV/EREV)
 * AITO M7 (2022–present), mid-size SUV (EREV)
 * AITO M9 (2023–present), full-size SUV (EV/EREV)
 * AITO M8 (upcoming), mid-size SUV