The road to car building of Internet technology manufacturers

After several years of development and evolution, new car-making forces such as Xiaopeng and Weilai have made obvious achievements in this new wave, and the electrification process of the entire automotive industry has also made great progress. In this context, the wave of intelligent vehicles based on electric drive has swept in like a tide.

Xiaomi and Didi, two new entrants from different fields, have also attracted huge attention from the industry. They all have their own advantages and have received widespread attention.

Didi has been planning for a long time

According to a number of platform reports, Didi is working on a new car project, led by Yang Jun, vice president of Didi and general manager of Xiao orange car service, and his car-making team has also poached from major automobile companies.

In fact, Didi cooperated with BYD in 2019 to create its own exclusive online car D1; after that, Didi and Tencent joined hands to participate in Evergrande Automobile's tens of billions of financing, from the above points of view, Didi has obviously been planning to enter the car manufacturing field for a long time. From the perspective of Didi's own situation, Didi's choice to build a car also has its own internal reasons.

First of all, Didi is the largest online ride-hailing platform in China. According to the data released by Didi in 2021, there are 11.6 million drivers on the platform, which is the number of drivers who have obtained the qualification of online ride-hailing, and basically everyone has a car. According to the 5% annual replacement rate of online ride-hailing drivers, the Didi platform will generate more than 500,000 new car demand per year, with great potential.

According to Didi's plan, in the next ten years, 10 million new energy vehicles will be released to the market, and Didi is expected to become the largest buyer platform for new energy vehicles in China.

In addition, entering the smart car market will also be of great help to Didi's overall valuation. From the perspective of the industry, smart cars are a large market with a valuation of more than one trillion yuan, for Didi, entering the smart car market is conducive to its expansion of business, and Didi has invested a lot of money in the field of unmanned driving and achieved considerable research results, coupled with the addition of new energy vehicles, which will undoubtedly greatly increase the valuation of The capital market for Didi.

Xiaomi is creeping forward

Compared with Didi's bold radicalism, Xiaomi is much more cautious in automobile manufacturing. According to Lei Jun, xiaomi has communicated with more than 200 industry insiders 85 times before officially starting to build cars, including 4 internal management discussions and 2 board meetings, after full investigation and demonstration, he finally made up his mind to build cars, which shows that Xiaomi's caution is small. Although Xiaomi's previous corporate business seems to have nothing to do with car building, Xiaomi's car manufacturing is not starting from scratch.

First, Xiaomi has great advantages in automotive technology and industry. According to statistics, Xiaomi currently has 134 auto patents, covering almost all areas of smart cars. In addition, Xiaomi Group and Lei Jun's Shunwei Capital also have a lot of shares in major companies in the automotive industry, and these resources are an important force in the process of xiaomi's car manufacturing.

Second, Xiaomi's mobile phone business ranks third in the world. When Huawei was suppressed by the United States, Xiaomi began to gain a foothold in the high-end market, which gave it the conditions to find new growth space and avoid worries when burying its head in the car.

Third, Xiaomi's capital is abundant. Lei Jun said that by the end of 2020, Xiaomi's cash reserves have reached 108 billion yuan, which is enough to support the capital consumption of Xiaomi in the early stage of car manufacturing. According to Lei Jun's plan, Xiaomi will invest 10 billion US dollars in car building in the next decade, and Xiaomi has 100 billion cash reserves, so that it has the strength of a war. Therefore, from all aspects, Xiaomi's car seems to be abrupt, but it is actually a full homework.

Deer hunting in the field of car building

Compared with traditional vehicle manufacturing companies such as the Great Wall and BYD, Didi and Xiaomi, Internet technology companies such as Didi and Xiaomi have great defects in vehicle manufacturing and industrial chain integration; in the field of automobile manufacturing, their biggest advantage is in the ecological synergy ability, and if they want to stand out in the complex industrial chain and automobile manufacturing industry, they must make good use of their ecological influence.

In addition, the new ecosystem will bring more diversified monetization methods. For example, after Didi cut into the whole vehicle manufacturing, the Didi platform has become a direct sales channel, and automobile sales will become another core business of its.

From the perspective of the entire industry, in the future, after the giants compete to build cars, ecological ability will also become the key to the final competition of the giants. After all, it is only a single capital investment or automobile manufacturing, and the inexperienced giants want to break through the fiercely competitive smart car field. In this sense, how to combine its own advantages to build a new ecology will become the core point of the future giants competing in the new energy vehicle market.