On December 27, at Baidu Create 2021 (Baidu AI Developer Conference), Baidu CEO Robin Li said that the first concept car will be unveiled in the first half of 2022, and the car robot named "Jidu" will be mass-produced and delivered in 2023.
Giving the car, a traditional travel tool, to the core of the robot, Baidu can be said to have thought deeply through the software advantage to cut into this track.
layout
In 2013, Baidu began to study the technology of driverless driving, and the driverless car project began to start.
In 2016, at the World Congress Unmanned Vehicle Forum, Baidu Unmanned Vehicle obtained the world's 15th unmanned vehicle on-road test license issued by the California government.
In 2017, at the Baidu AI Developer Conference, Robin Li arrived at the scene in a Baidu self-driving car to demonstrate autonomous driving technology, and the result was that traffic violations defeated the design that should have been a stunning start.
The small setback did not crush Baidu's car-making ambitions, and knowing its own shortcomings in hardware, Baidu pulled Geely to become its strategic partner, taking Geely's "SEA Vast" architecture as the possibility of future product development, and jointly rushing to the road of car manufacturing.
push forward
On January 11, 2021, the two sides officially announced the establishment of a smart electric vehicle company, the joint venture company operates independently, is controlled by Baidu, the products are mainly for the passenger car market, the company will be deployed in the design and development, manufacturing, sales and service of smart cars in the whole industry chain.
On February 20, Baidu and Geely's joint venture electric vehicle company has confirmed the CEO and brand name, named "Jidu", and plans to launch a new smart electric vehicle product in the next three years.
On March 2, Jidu Automobile Co., Ltd. was formally established with a registered capital of 2 billion yuan and a legal person named Xia Yiping. According to the data, the company's business scope includes technical services, technology development, technical consultation, technical exchanges, technology transfer, technology promotion, auto parts and accessories manufacturing of new energy vehicles and related parts.
According to the equity penetration chart, Jidu Automobile Co., Ltd. is jointly held by Shanghai Huapu Automobile Co., Ltd. (a subsidiary of Geely Holding Group) and Dazi County Bairuixiang Venture Capital Management Co., Ltd. (a subsidiary of Baidu Netcom Technology), the former holding 45% of the shares, the latter holding 55% of the shares.
scrimmage
From the development of driverless technology in 2013 to the official announcement of the concept car in 2021, Baidu's layout in smart cars has been for seven years. From the announcement of the establishment of the company in January 2021 to the announcement of products in December, Baidu's promotion in car building shows China's speed. However, making this move is indeed a last resort, after all, you are fast and fast.
In the past year or so, relying on the popularity of the new energy vehicle market and the promotion of national favorable policies, the heat of the capital market for new energy companies has been heating up, led by Tesla, BYD, Weilai, Xiaopeng and other car companies The stock prices have been rising, driven by capital, more and more industry giants and even platforms, real estate, home appliance companies have begun to enter the automotive industry.
In November 2020, SAIC Motor, Alibaba and Shanghai Pudong New Area announced that they would jointly build a high-end intelligent car "Zhiji Car".
In November of the same year, Changan Automobile announced that it would build a new high-end intelligent car brand with Huawei and CATL. The cross-border boom also spread to other industries, Xu Jiayin, Jia Yueting, Dong Mingzhu, and Huang Hongsheng all said that they wanted to build cars.
In March 2021, the situation was even more tense, and Xiaomi also said that it was going to build a car. On October 19, Lei Jun said at the xiaomi group's annual investment meeting that xiaomi cars are expected to be officially mass-produced in the first half of 2024.
On April 17, BAIC motor and Huawei's Jihu ARCFOX car was launched, which is said to be the world's only urban commuter autonomous driving mass production car.
Break the game
You sing I on the stage, everyone wants to step on the new energy vehicle to catch a bucket of gold, can not succeed, not to say, at least to catch up with the trend.
It is said that when the brand name "Jidu" automobile first came out, it also set off a wave of discussion on the Internet, and most netizens thought that the name "Jidu Automobile" was not good enough, and they put forward their own views. To this day, Baidu is still using this name, which can only be said to have enough confidence and love for this name.
At the beginning of car manufacturing, Baidu's vision was geely out of the architecture, Baidu out of its own software, combined with the most advantageous parts of the two, to provide users with the purchase of more extreme intelligent electric vehicles.
So how extreme is this Jidu concept car? Jidu Xia Yiping once said: "Instead of calling it a car, it is better to understand it as an intelligent robot." He said that Jidu car must be an L4-level car, but it is not to pile up the hardware first and then upgrade the OTA, but from the electrical and electronic architecture to the software to the hardware, the vehicle that truly has the L4 level capability.
At this conference, Robin Li said that Jidu will have L4 level automatic driving capabilities, through the three major product concepts of "free movement", "natural communication" and "self-growth", and a revolutionary car robot with emotion and wisdom, which will bring a long-term change in travel mode.
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the American Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) Autonomous Driving Grading Standards, reaching L4 level of autonomous driving and above, car driving can already be freed from manual supervision and controlled by the car's own motion.
Judging from the existing models on the market, the WM W6 is said to be able to achieve L4 level automatic driving in specific scenarios. The HI version of Alpha S is based on the L4 level autonomous driving architecture, which can meet the smooth evolution needs of L4-L2+.
I believe that more and more brands will launch L4 level autonomous vehicles in the future, and where are the highlights of Jidu Automobile relative to its opponents? Whether it is product performance, driving experience, cost performance, brand recognition or a wider range of application scenarios, this answer can only be handed over to the market and handed over to consumers to answer.
prospect
According to the latest data from the Association of Automobile Manufacturers and CleanTechnica, globally, the sales volume of new energy vehicles from January to October 2021 was 4.8468 million units, with a global penetration rate of 7.2%. Tesla leads the world with a market share of 14%, WITHD (8.5%) and Shangtong Wuling (7.2%) ranking 2nd and 3rd respectively; the rise of Chinese brands, top 20 companies, 8 Chinese companies with a total market share of 27.8%.
Judging from the existing data, in the world, the leader of new energy is Tesla, and the head player of China's new energy vehicles is mainly represented by BYD.
New energy vehicles are the future development direction, and automatic driving is the best supporting facilities have formed a consensus around the world. The whole country is looking forward to us on the new energy vehicle track, to achieve curve overtaking, only more and more excellent domestic new energy brands for the Chinese people to choose, can we say that we have truly become a "smart manufacturing power".
The people evaluate the car
Behind the entry of Internet technology companies into the car manufacturing, it is actually the transformation of the automotive industry. Different from Google's obsession with unmanned driving technology, Baidu, through cooperation with Geely, combines technical applications and hardware foundations to achieve mass production of concept cars at the fastest time, which can be said to be full of sincerity, but there are strong enemies in front and chasing soldiers in the back. As the track becomes more and more crowded, the recruits of the Jidu automotive industry want to go out on the road of smart cars, how far they need to go, how long they need to go, only let the product speak.