2022 will still be a year of fierce fighting between new car-making forces. Recently, the new car brand "Jidu Automobile" announced the completion of nearly 400 million US dollars in series A financing, which was jointly increased by Baidu and Geely. After the financing is completed, Jidu will continue to accelerate the process of research and development and mass production, and the first automotive robot concept car will be released at this year's Beijing Auto Show, and the mass production model is scheduled to be launched in 2023.
Jidu Automobile's "backer" is a smart car company jointly established by Baidu and Geely Holdings on January 11, 2021. At that time, Baidu said that the newly formed company will face the passenger car market, allowing "Baidu to enter the automotive industry as a vehicle manufacturer and allow users to buy more extreme intelligent electric vehicles." According to the data, on March 2, 2021, Jidu Automobile Co., Ltd. was formally established with a registered capital of 2 billion yuan, 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.
According to reports, the first concept mass production car of Jidu, which is planned to be unveiled at the Beijing Auto Show, will be priced at no less than 200,000 yuan and will be equipped with Baidu Apollo autonomous driving technology and Geely SEA Haohan intelligent architecture. At the same time, the first car will be developed and produced by Geely, Jidu Automobile will carry out product positioning, and Jidu Automobile will adopt the model of self-built channels in terms of channels.
According to the data, Baidu began to carry out research and development in the field of automatic driving in 2013, and established the automatic driving business "Apollo Apollo" in 2017, and in recent years, it has cooperated with many domestic car companies to promote the development of autonomous driving technology. Baidu's financial report shows that in the first three quarters of 2021, Baidu Group achieved operating income of 91.41 billion yuan and net profit attributable to the mother of 8.511 billion yuan, and intelligent driving-related businesses may have become one of the biggest sources of benefit for Baidu.
Che Tianxia Reviews:
The new energy vehicle market is attracting many technology companies to cross-border entry, and the enthusiasm of the capital market for new energy companies is heating up. Among the current new car-making forces, car companies such as "Wei Xiaoli" of the first echelon have successfully broken through the threshold of 10,000 monthly sales and are breaking through 100,000 vehicles per year, and the situation is very good. With the strong addition of technology giants such as Baidu, Xiaomi, and Huawei, there are obviously many variables in the future new energy vehicle market.
Text/Guangzhou Daily, New Flower City Reporter: Deng Li
Photo/ Guangzhou Daily, New Flower City Reporter: Deng Li
Guangzhou Daily New Flower City Editor: Li Guangman