As a cross-border car builder born with a "golden spoon", the process of jidu's car building is obviously much smoother.
On January 26, Baidu's smart car brand Jidu officially announced that it had completed nearly $400 million in Series A financing, which was jointly increased by Baidu and Geely Holding Group.
This is the second round of financing that Jidu has received since the construction of the car. In March 2021, Jidu Automobile received more than $300 million in start-up capital at the time of its establishment.
The arrival of funds has increased the progress of car manufacturing, and since the official announcement of the car, the progress of car construction in Jidu has been very rapid.
At the Baidu Create 2021 (AI Developer Conference) held on December 27 last year, Robin Li, founder, chairman and CEO of Baidu, revealed the process of Jidu's car manufacturing - Jidu Automobile completed the modeling design plan and entered the engineering development stage on the 128th day of its establishment, completed the wind tunnel experiment of the first model of the sludge model on the 180th day, and launched THESIMUCar on the 207th day to develop intelligent driving and intelligent cockpit functions.
In terms of software and hardware, the current electronic and electrical architecture JET1.0, as well as SOA, automatic driving system, core computing power platform, and related sensors are further iterating towards mass production. In addition, the interior and exterior trim of Jidu's first automotive robot mass production vehicle, as well as the design of all parts, have gradually entered the stage of mass production mold development.
On January 18 this year, the official release of the Jidu JiDU brand, and announced some of the product design styles and brand logos of the automotive robot concept car.
Prior to this, Robin Li specifically mentioned at Baidu's third quarter 2021 financial report investor meeting that he was full of confidence in Jidu car manufacturing. From this point of view, Baidu has great expectations for jidu.
According to the plan, in 2022, Jidu's first automotive robot concept car will be released at the Beijing Auto Show in April this year; in 2023, Jidu will carry out mass production and delivery of the first car.
This means that from the establishment of the brand to the launch of the mass production car, Jidu plans to complete it in more than two years. Compared with the traditional car-making, or even the first batch of new car-making forces, it is already extremely fast.
The urgency of concentration is not without reason. With many Internet and technology manufacturers have come down to build cars, wave after wave of cross-border players have entered the game.
For example, Xiaomi, which "bets on the honor of a lifetime to fight for Xiaomi cars", Huawei, which officially announces that it does not build cars but "arranges" AITO, 360 company that invests in Nezha Automobile's "car-making dream" again, and tuanche network that enters the game and says that "it doesn't matter if the first car fails, it can be done again in 3 months".
At present, huawei and Xiaokang cooperation of the M5 has been unveiled in December last year; Xiaomi Automobile is expected to be mass-produced in the first half of 2024; 360 and Nezha Automobile to build new cars mainly for mass users, priced at nearly 100,000 yuan; Tuanche.com's first car plans to start mass production this year and be delivered in 2023.
Although Jidu CEO Xia Yiping has previously said that "Jidu cars have no competitors", but large and small ambitionists have rushed to enter the game, Baidu is facing an increasingly crowded car-making track.
The completion of the financing of nearly 400 million US dollars also means that Jidu will continue to accelerate the process of research and development and mass production. Officials also bluntly said that the increase in the new round of financing will help Jidu press the acceleration button in the process of automotive robot research and development and mass production.
According to Baidu's plan, Baidu Apollo's full-stack capability should be empowered to Jidu, and customized design and development can be carried out. Jidu will increase the introduction and training of cutting-edge talents in high-level automatic driving, smart cockpits, intelligent manufacturing and other related fields, and accelerate the construction of a system for the development and operation of users in the intelligent car market.
However, in addition to cross-border car builders, the competitive pressure of Jidu also comes from the market competition that has been formed.
At present, in the camp of new car-making forces, the first echelon of Weilai, Ideal, Xiaopeng has formed a certain sales scale and market influence, while the second echelon of Nezha, Zero Run, Weima, etc. are also stepping up the pace of car-making, especially Nezha Automobile, which has become a new force "dark horse" in 2021, and has come out of the news of seeking to raise 500 million US dollars before the listing of Hong Kong this year.
In addition, smart high-end brands such as Lantu, Eian and Avita from the tradition are also rapidly invading the market.
If compared with cross-border car builders, the set degree needs to compete for speed, then in a broader context, the set degree also needs products that can play a wave. Robin Li previously mentioned that the automotive robot developed by Jidu will have L4 level automatic driving capabilities, running through the three major product concepts of "free movement", "natural communication" and "self-growth". Conceptually, this definition is worth looking forward to, but it takes more time to verify.