On February 25, Beijing time, BYD has a new move in the field of automatic driving, one is to be exposed to the selection of Baidu as its intelligent driving supplier, and the other is that the lidar company Sagitar Juchuang officially announced that it has obtained investment from BYD, which ranks first in a number of strategic investors including Geely, Yutong, Lixun, Desay SV, Xiaomi, etc. In general, only the lead investment is eligible to rank first.
As early as December 2021, Sagitar Juchuang officially announced that it had reached a strategic investment agreement with BYD, and this official announcement had obtained BYD's investment, and it was very likely to lead the investment. According to the information of Che Zhijun, BYD may have spent a lot of money on Sagitar Juchuang, and plans to equip all models with lidar, if the news is true, BYD through the form of investment + business accounted for more than 10% of the shares of Sagitar.
Everything needs to be answered by Sagitar Juchuang's formal submission of IPO statements, from the information of the enterprise investigation, the shareholding of Sagitar Juchuang has changed from the previous founding team and investment institutions to the 100% shareholding of RoboSense HongKong Limited, a Hong Kong company established in July 2021, which means that Sagitar Juchuang has set up a red-chip structure, and it is not surprising that there have been rumors of its IPO in Hong Kong and even secret submission.
For BYD, everyone knows that intelligence is the biggest shortcoming in its intelligent electric connected car, and Wang Chuanfu is making up for BYD's biggest shortcomings through various means, including strategic investment in chip company Horizon in March 2021, intelligent driving joint venture with 60:40 shareholding ratio established by automatic driving startup Momenta in November 2021, and the latest investment in Sagitar Juchuang and baidu as an intelligent driving supplier.
For BYD, can this series of actions help IT quickly make up for the shortcomings of intelligence, and what kind of opportunities and challenges will it be for companies that cooperate with it? In the end, can BYD challenge Tesla with a market capitalization of more than 1 trillion yuan?
01
BYD is making every effort to make up for the shortcomings of intelligence
From the establishment of a joint venture with Momenta in November 2021 to the discovery of Baidu as an intelligent driving supplier in February 2022, and the investment in the lidar company Sagitar Juchuang, as well as a series of other actions, it shows that BYD is making up for the shortcomings of intelligence.
As mentioned earlier, the whole industry knows that BYD's biggest shortcoming in the field of intelligent networked electric vehicles is intelligence, which is also the biggest gap between BYD and Tesla. In the field of electrification, perhaps BYD has been in front of many car companies, and even has the confidence not to lose Tesla, but intelligence is the core value and core competitiveness of the era of intelligent networked electric vehicles, and all innovative business models in the automotive industry are premised on intelligence.
In terms of the most core intelligent automatic driving capabilities, BYD's strategic investment in Sagitar Juchuang means that it has chosen a lidar route that is different from Tesla's pure visual automatic driving route, which is also consistent with the mass production autonomous driving technology route of all Chinese car companies, including new forces and traditional car companies.
In order to quickly mass-produce the car with autonomous driving capabilities, BYD chose to cooperate with Momenta and Baidu, among which the cooperation with Momenta may be more in-depth, and established a joint venture for intelligent driving, and Momenta has also received investment from daimler, SAIC, GM, Bosch and other automotive giants. Baidu is one of the earliest technology companies in China to do autonomous driving, and Baidu entrepreneurs account for half of China's autonomous driving entrepreneurs.
As for the division of labor between Baidu and Momenta joint ventures, Baidu will provide BYD with mass-produced ANP intelligent driving products and man-machine co-driving maps, and the intelligent driving products of the integration of mobile parking are also the places where the soldiers of the intelligent network electric vehicle enterprises must compete now, and Xiaopeng Automobile's latest OTA has realized the intelligent parking function VPA-L cross-floor memory parking function in P5. As for the map product, it has always been a basic capability of Baidu in the automotive field and a supplier of Tesla's navigation interface UI.
With the advancement of time, BYD is expected to launch a model with intelligent driving capability within the year, at the latest in 2023, and the most likely to be equipped with a lidar technology route intelligent driving model, which is a high-end brand model launched during the year. Of course, it may also be BYD's iteration of the model within the year.
02
Challenge Tesla and sprint to a trillion market value
In 2021, BYD's new energy vehicle sales will be 594,000 units, surpassing Wuling Hongguang, Tesla China, Wei Xiaoli and other competitors, becoming a sales brother in China's new energy vehicle market. However, the gap between BYD and Tesla is also obvious and huge.
From the user's point of view, the intelligent driving, smart cockpit, and common and constantly new experiences provided by Tesla models are all things that Chinese car companies such as BYD need to learn. However, Tesla has greatly opened up the gap with other car companies from the automotive electronic and electrical architecture, the self-developed intelligent driving software and hardware, and the intelligent car operating system.
Although in terms of sales, BYD surpassed Tesla in the Chinese market, the gap between BYD and Tesla in terms of core technical capabilities is still huge. With the increase in sales of its models, BYD's energy can be from the previous survival to the current development, yes, Chinese car companies are too inward-rolled, the previous sales decline in the form of BYD Alexander, but with the increase in sales, 2022 new energy vehicle sales are expected to be 1.2 million, BYD has the energy to seek development, after overcoming the difficulty of electrification technology, the development of intelligent driving and other core competitiveness.
Since the second half of 2021, we have also seen BYD's efforts in this regard, launching a new e-platform 3.0, and the sales of the first model of the e-platform 3.0 Dolphin are also surprises, reaching the level of 10,000 monthly sales within a few months of launch. BYD's other models will also gradually transition to e-platform 3.0, which will improve the intelligence level and experience of BYD models, and through OTAs, BYD will gradually open up functions similar to Tesla Sentinel mode.
With the mass production of products from the Joint Venture Company and Momenta, as well as the mass production of by BYD's integrated ANP smart plus products and man-machine shared maps, the company will be put on the bus. BYD's models will pull into the gap with competitors such as Tesla in terms of intelligent experience.
At present, BYD's new energy vehicle monthly sales of close to 100,000, more than 100,000 monthly sales are also close at hand, more importantly, BYD holds a large number of undelivered orders, as BYD improves the intelligent experience, there will be more consumers to choose BYD's products, BYD in 2022 sales probability of a new high, as to whether it can once again sprint trillion market value, it depends on whether the market environment is cooperative. Sales are rising, which is an opportunity for all suppliers to explode.
In this way, the leader of China's new energy vehicles is expected to bring up China's intelligent driving industry chain, which can build the core competitiveness of China's automobile industry.
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