There's nary a bigger success than taking a company that can't consistently turn a profit and fooling the capital markets to assign it a $400 billion valuation. So, naturally, we understand why other company are seeking out ways to be like Tesla.

One of those companies is telecom giant Huawei. Xu Zhijun, a rotating chairman of Huawei is on record in 2019 as saying: "If you look at the stock price of Tesla, you will know where the future of automobiles lies."

His comment was foreshadowing as to where Huawei's future business efforts may be directed, according to Nikkei. In April 2019, the company set up a "smart car solutions" segment of its auto business. Their auto business currently has 5 segments: smart driving, smart cockpit platform, intelligent network, smart electric and cloud services.

They are like many other who have "drank the Kool-Aid" and think that Tesla is the next big thing in AI and the auto industry - and they know they can compete. "Anything that Tesla can do, we can do," Xu said. 

Huawei reportedly wants to become a "one-stop supplier of all software and hardware for smart cars and seeks a dominant say in the industry," Nikkei says. There will only be two or three such major players globally, the report predicts.

Huawei has been recruiting talent from companies like Bosch and, in August, modified its business registration by adding "research, production and sales of auto parts and smart driving systems" to public records. In September, it released its Harmony 2.0 OS that it installed in its smart cockpit platform.