If Qi Travel has received strategic investment, why do car companies lay out the travel market?

In recent years, there has been a fierce battle in the travel market. In addition to third-party ride-hailing platforms such as Didi and Shouqi, traditional car companies that take Ruqi Chuxing as an example have also become the main force stirring up the travel market.

Recently, Ruqi Travel, a subsidiary of GAC Group, has received strategic investment from L4-level autonomous driving technology company Wenyuan Zhixing, and reached a strategic cooperation to jointly promote the design and development, front-loading mass production and commercial operation of Robotaxi (self-driving taxi).

Car companies lay out the travel market

With the rapid development of China's Internet economy, the travel modes of the people have also become diverse, and the online ride-hailing platform has also grown rapidly with the scale of users.

According to the data compiled by the Prospective Industry Research Institute, as of 2020, the scale of online ride-hailing users in China will reach 365 million. At the same time, the scale of China's online ride-hailing market has reached 249.91 billion yuan in 2020. According to the forecast given by PwC, China's shared travel market will reach 564 billion US dollars in 2030, with an average annual growth rate of up to 32%, and the market prospect is huge.

In the face of such market dividends, car companies will naturally not miss it. In the fourth quarter of this year alone, the travel market has reported the layout and financing of a number of car companies.

At the beginning of December 2021, people close to Geely Holding Group said that Geely Group will launch an online ride-hailing aggregation platform "Happy Ten Million Homes", mainly for self-operated compliance capacity, and will also be open to third-party relatively high-quality compliance capacity providers, and the project headquarters is located in Chongqing. It is worth noting that this is already the fourth travel sub-brand of Geely Group after Cao Cao Travel, Polite Travel and Yao Travel.

In addition, in October 2021, T3 Travel, which was initiated by FAW Group, Dongfeng Motor and Changan Automobile, announced the completion of a Series A financing of 7.7 billion yuan. Ruqi Travel, a subsidiary of GAC Group, also reported in November that it was promoting financing of about 1 billion yuan.

In the view of industry insiders, on the one hand, the layout of the travel platform of car companies can maximize the contact with customers, understand the use habits of customers, road data, etc., thereby improving the production and manufacturing of automobiles, which is also conducive to the improvement of driverless technology; on the other hand, car companies can revitalize assets by transporting vehicles on the travel platform to increase automobile sales.

Previously, Geely Automobile had launched about 42,000 Emgrand EV series new energy vehicles to Cao Cao Chuxing. FAW Group, Dongfeng Motor and Changan Automobile also said when T3 Travel was officially launched in 2018 that they planned to release 300,000 vehicles in three years and more than one million vehicles in six years.

Chen Litong, a senior partner at Beijing Dacheng (Shanghai) Law Firm, said: "Automobile companies no longer position themselves as automakers, but more as a service provider, and the cars produced are for shared travel services, which is the trend of the entire automotive industry. ”

Promote the landing of autonomous driving

While vigorously promoting the development of the travel industry, car companies are also further laying out for the commercial landing of autonomous driving. However, the scope of autonomous driving technology is relatively wide, and it is difficult for car companies to support huge research and development work. Therefore, many Internet companies have also begun to participate in the research and development and landing of Robotaxi. For example, the cooperation between GAC Group, Ruqi Travel and Wenyuan Zhixing means that the main engine factory and the travel platform and the autonomous driving company work together to achieve the integration of data, resources and technology.

Han Feng, COO of Ruqi Travel, said: "The travel industry is shifting from efficiency and accessibility as the primary travel needs to high-quality travel services. Coupled with national initiatives such as green emission reduction, the travel industry needs a supply-side reform. Robotaxi has become the best carrier for the future travel era, such as Qi Chuxing, as a mobile travel platform party, hoping to quickly promote the development of Robotaxi's technology and the popularization of commercialization. ”

BAIC BJEV has also laid out its layout in this field. In June this year, Jihu Automobile, a subsidiary of BAIC Group, and Baidu Apollo jointly released the Apollo Moon of unmanned shared vehicles. Beiqi Blue Valley also recently said on the interactive platform that the Robotaxi model developed in cooperation with Baidu has completed the preliminary technical development and official mass production.

In addition, SAIC Motor also recently announced that the first L4 level autonomous driving operation platform of the car company, Xiangdao Robotaxi, officially launched operation. It is understood that the first batch of 20 Xiangdao Robotaxis were launched in Jiading, Shanghai, and it is planned to increase to 40 vehicles within the year. It also plans to land in Shenzhen in 2022 and achieve an operating scale of 200 vehicles.

In addition to traditional car companies, didi, a giant in the travel industry, has also laid out in the field of automatic driving. It is understood that in June 2020, Didi and BAIC Group reached a cooperation, the two sides will jointly develop automatic driving customized models, exclusively for Robotaxi operation; in December of the same year, Didi announced that it will work with BYD to build a customized version of the online car to promote the landing of automatic driving technology; in April 2021, Didi and Volvo signed an agreement, Volvo will provide Didi with XC90 models that provide support for steering and brake redundancy systems, and in terms of algorithm research and development and module data collection for automatic driving, Didi will be responsible In May, Didi and GAC Aeon reached a strategic cooperation, the two sides will explore joint ventures and cooperation models in the field of intelligent vehicles, combined with Didi's advantages in the research and development of automatic driving software and hardware technology, and GAC Aeon's leading autonomous vehicle platform and vehicle design and manufacturing capabilities to develop an unmanned model that can be put into large-scale applications.

From this point of view, in the future, Robotaxi will also become the focus of the development of car companies. CICC estimates that by 2030, the robotaxi global market space will exceed $2 trillion. According to the McKinsey research report, China will be the world's largest autonomous driving market, with total sales of autonomous vehicles reaching $230 billion by 2030 and orders for autonomous driving-based mobility services reaching $260 billion.

With the landing of Robotaxi, the travel market will also open a new round of great changes, and technology, data and resources will become the main direction of competition between car companies.

Responsible Editor: Li Yan'an Editor-in-Chief: Yu Jianping