Electric living
After 10 years of change, intelligent and cloud interconnection on mobile phones have begun to slowly be reflected in cars. Those big guys with huge capital have also begun to shift the focus of investment to "cross-border car manufacturing". However, although they are all building cars, the way everyone enters is completely different. Some big guys focus on vehicle manufacturing, and some focus on driverless development. It can be said that eight immortals cross the sea and show their abilities.
The opening words of the corporate bigwigs when they met 10 years ago: "Hey, did you make a mobile phone?" ”
Now it's like, "Hey, did you build a car?" ”
Last week, we did some insight into Tencent's layout in the automotive industry (a review of the previous situation). Today, let's turn the perspective and look at what Alibaba, one of the bat big three, has done to cars in recent years.
Alibaba
Alibaba has been changing the way we live since the turn of the millennium. Although it started with an e-commerce business, after more than 20 years of development and wealth accumulation, Ali is currently involved in a dizzying number of fields.
The recent popularity of Internet car building is naturally indispensable to Ali's participation. At present, Ali has made a layout in three aspects: automotive intelligence, intelligent travel, and investment by Internet car companies.
Smart mobility
As early as 2010, Ali had noticed the huge development potential of the mobility market. In August of that year, Ali acquired a 60% stake in Etutong, which provided Ali with a wealth of electronic map data. In 2013, Ali acquired AutoNavi for another $1.3 billion.
The above two acquisitions directly allow Ali to have a complete set of map business. It is also based on this that Ali has the ability to load its own YunOS intelligent operating system on the car.
In order to meet the arrival of the Internet travel mode, Ali also invested in fast taxis. Although Kuaidi later merged with Didi to become a company, Ali continued to add (in 2015, Kuaidi and Didi invested 3 billion US dollars after the merger). In addition, Ali's AutoNavi also launched a travel service in 2018. It can be seen how much Ali attaches importance to smart travel.
Automotive intelligence
In 2014, Alibaba and SAIC signed a strategic cooperation agreement on "Internet Cars" in Shanghai. The two sides will focus on the development of "Internet cars" and related application services. Originally thought that Ali wanted to enter the automotive industry, it would choose automotive online trading as the main development direction. But at the beginning, Ali focused on the research and development of car interconnection systems.
Apple Carplay
In fact, looking back at that year, it is not difficult to find out why Ali made such a decision. 2014 can be called the first year of the automotive Internet, and a large number of on-board intelligent systems have turned out. Apple's Carplay, Android Au-to, Baidu and Titanium's co-launched CarNet and so on have attracted the attention of consumers. The term smart car has suddenly changed from the future to reality. And Ali, who holds the independent research and development of the YunOS intelligent system, how can it let go of such a good opportunity. Therefore, the development route of providing intelligent systems for established car companies has been logically determined.
Zebra network
But obviously, if you want to achieve the interconnection of people and cars, you can't achieve it with only one operating system. Technologies such as cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and high-precision maps all need to be integrated into automotive intelligent systems. Based on this, Ali spent 1 billion yuan with SAIC to form a Zebra network the following year.
Roewe RX5
Ali, which pays attention to efficiency, has not made consumers wait too long. In July 2016, the first nominal Internet car, the SAIC Roewe RX5, was officially launched with its zebra YunOS in-vehicle intelligent interconnection system. As soon as the model was listed, it immediately became a hit, and the sales volume exceeded 200,000 units that year.
Zebra Network reorganizes with AliOS
Originally taking advantage of this momentum, Zebra Network hopes to cooperate with other car companies to create more explosive Internet cars. However, due to the exclusive agreement with SAIC and the copyright issue of the Use of the YunOS system, Zebra Network failed to rise quickly. It was not until August 2019, when SAIC and Alibaba announced the reorganization of Zebra Networks and AliOS (in 2017, the YunOS Division was merged into the Alibaba Cloud Intelligent Business Group, and YunOS was renamed AliOS) that Zebra Networks had more and more collaborators. So far, Ali has finally come up with a perfect set of solutions in terms of car intelligence.
Investment by Internet car companies
In the face of the wave of Internet car manufacturing, Ali of course wants to insert a foot. Founded in 2014, Xiaopeng Automobile is its main investment target.
Xiaopeng Motors, UC Browser founder He Xiaopeng
Speaking of He Xiaopeng, the founder of Xiaopeng Motors, he and Ali do have many origins. He Xiaopeng founded UC Browser, which was acquired by Alibaba for $4 billion in 2014. After that, He Xiaopeng served as the president of Alibaba Mobile Business Group and the chairman of Ali Games. Although he left Ali in 2017, Ali executives still appreciate the young man.
Therefore, after He Xiaopeng founded Xiaopeng Automobile, Ali continued to increase investment. To this day, Alibaba remains the largest external shareholder of Xiaopeng Motors (19% of the shares). Of course, Ali didn't just fund it out of feelings. The current market value of Xiaopeng Automobile has reached 30 billion US dollars, and Ali's investment has made steady profits.
Zhiji L7
But Ali is not satisfied with this, and the successful investment in Xiaopeng Automobile has made Ali's desire to build a car himself more intense. Therefore, on December 25, 2020, Ali and his old friends SAIC Motor and Zhangjiang Hi-Tech registered the Zhiji automobile brand with a capital of 10 billion yuan. Among them, SAIC Motor group invested 5.4 billion yuan, holding 54% of the equity; Zhangjiang Hi-Tech and Alibaba each contributed 1.8 billion yuan, each holding 18% of the equity. In the future, Ali is very likely to follow the cooperation model with SAIC in 2016 and install the AliOS intelligent system on Zhiji's car. Therefore, the Zhiji L7, which will be listed in the near future, has a high chance of becoming Ali's first "pro-son".
Write at the end:
Alibaba's current development in the automotive field is also quite good. However, in terms of car networking products, its market share has been lagging behind Baidu and Tencent. Or the biggest reason is because of the "difficult situation" of Zebra Network in previous years, which led to Ali missing more opportunities for business cooperation. Even so, in the future, Ali's penetration of the automotive field will only become deeper and deeper, but the direction will be slightly adjusted.