Didi, who does not build cars, will also renege on its promise to build cars. A few days ago, it was reported that Didi's car manufacturing plan may be officially released to the public in June this year, and strive to deliver new cars in June next year.
It is understood that Didi's car business code name "Da Vinci", the current team size of about 1700 people, located in Shunyi, Beijing. Didi car has two directions, the first is a model for the mass consumer market, codenamed C1, while the model code for the online car market is D1, of which the new car facing the C-end is Didi's self-developed product, a pure electric compact car of about 150,000 yuan, positioning may be similar to GAC Aion S.
The other direction is for the B-end market, and a second model for the ride-hailing market, code-named D1 Light, is also being developed. This car is based on the lightweight version developed by BYD D1, which is planned to be used by Flower Pig in the future, and is still produced by BYD.
According to people familiar with the matter, although the current D1 and C1 are all led by Yang Jun, vice president of Didi Chuxing, in fact, Yang Jun is mainly responsible for D1, and the C1 project is presided over by Didi's veteran employee Luo Wen, directly reporting to Cheng Wei, CEO of Didi Chuxing.
For Didi to enter the game to build cars, everyone is not surprised. In the view of industry insiders, as the current industry's leading travel company, Didi has accumulated a large number of drivers, passengers, roads and other data in the past few years, which can provide data support for its car manufacturing, and at the same time, in the field of automotive aftermarket, Didi has also been deployed in charging piles and financial sectors.
It is worth mentioning that in terms of automatic driving, Didi has also long had a layout. Didi began research on autonomous driving in 2016, when it gave the department that represents the future a very romantic name— Voyager. With the growing importance of autonomous driving technology, in August 2019, Didi Chuxing even directly upgraded the autonomous driving department to an independent company for operation.
In November 2020, Didi Chuxing joined hands with BYD to customize a model D1 for the B-end market to operate. It can be said that after years of layout, Didi has long been involved in the upstream and downstream industrial chain of the entire intelligent car. Building a car, for Didi, is just a very simple thing.
So what is the reason why Didi, which has refused to build cars all these years, suddenly wants to enter the increasingly crowded car manufacturing field? All of this has to start from the dream of Cheng Wei, founder and CEO of Didi Chuxing.
Why did Didi build a car?
As early as the launch of D1 in 2020, Cheng Wei stressed that his ideal is to let people not need to own a car, but also have a good travel life, which is also an important reason why he spent time to develop such a customized online car D1 for sharing.
And in Cheng Wei's prediction, by 2025, shared cars are expected to spread more than 1 million vehicles on the Didi platform. This also means that in the next 5 years, Didi will put an average of 200,000 D1s on the market every year.
However, contrary to expectations, the launch of BYD D1 was not smooth. According to the data, bydir D1 deliveries last year were only 10,176 vehicles, far from Cheng Wei's expected target of 50,000 vehicles.
For such a result, the main reason is that Didi has no way to grasp the initiative of car manufacturing. Back in 2018, when Didi announced in a high-profile manner that it had formed a torrent alliance with 31 enterprises in the fields of automobile manufacturing, spare parts manufacturing, new energy, digital maps, and the Internet of Vehicles, Cheng Wei once said, "Open empowerment will be the core value of the torrent alliance." In the future, Didi will resolutely not build cars, nor will it seek to become the largest car operator in the future. ”
Of course, the logic of why Didi did not build cars at that time was also very simple. As the operator of the scene, Didi has the right to decide what car the platform wants and what car it does not want. Hidden behind the power is the game between Didi and the car company, once the car is built, it is equivalent to being both a referee and a player, breaking the balance relationship with the car company, so Cheng Wei released harsh words at that time, not only to buy people's hearts, but also a kind of self-protection.
It's just that this statement is more like self-consolation, a tacit understanding that no one will easily break. So Didi, who consoled himself that he did not build a car, began to look for an OEM. In November 2019, Didi and BYD jointly established Meili Chuxing (Hangzhou) Automobile Technology Co., Ltd. Aiqicha shows that the company's controlling party is BYD, holding 65% of the shares, and Didi holds 35% of the shares.
According to the official statement of Didi at that time, the project was led by Didi, which controlled the definition and design of the product, while BYD was responsible for OEM and controlled the whole process from product research and development to landing.
Imagination is beautiful, reality is cruel. It is understood that didi has little room to play in the D1 project. Insiders close to Didi revealed that although IN THE EXTERIOR AND INTERIOR, BYD can compromise, but once it comes to the core level of hardware and systems, Didi has no right to speak. Up to now, some key data about this car, Didi still can't get it.
And with the rapid completion of BYD's transformation, BYD, which has extremely tight production capacity, can no longer look at the D1 project of cooperation with Didi, after all, most of BYD's energy is now focused on DM-i new cars and expanding production capacity, and there is no time to take care of this somewhat chicken model.
Most importantly, with the outbreak of smart cars, car companies have long regarded autonomous driving technology as their core interest, and will not let them be transferred to outsiders. Self-research has become the only way out for most head car companies, so Cheng Wei previously thought of incubating his own autonomous driving project through the D1 project to achieve the identity of the automatic technology supplier, which is also the fundamental reason why Didi had difficulty getting the key data of D1 before.
In addition to external factors, the bottleneck of its own development is also an important reason for Didi's car manufacturing. With the continuous expansion of Didi's scale, the relationship between the company and drivers has approached the "zero-sum game", that is, the higher the platform revenue, the lower the income of the driver group.
However, the transportation capacity is still the foundation that supports Didi's online ride-hailing giant, and if it wants to retain more drivers, Didi is bound to balance the revenue position of both sides, and the most direct way is to reduce operating costs.
How to reduce operating costs? Full automatic driving is undoubtedly in line with the needs of Didi, but also Cheng Wei's dream, but at least in a short period of time, full automatic driving can not land, so building a car has become the only way for Didi.
Although Didi is a travel giant, car companies cannot rely on the B-end to survive, so Didi's entry into the car market is not limited to the B-end market, and will also face the C-end market to create a new car of about 150,000.
It is worth mentioning that at present, Didi Noodles for the B-end market of the new car D1 Light is still OEM by BYD, but based on the experience of cooperation with BYD and the problem of initiative, I think Didi as long as it solves the problem of car-making qualifications and the promotion of the first C-end product, it will finally enter the direction of full self-research and grasp the initiative of car-making.
What is the impact of Didi's car manufacturing?
In fact, although Didi has always declared that it will not build cars, in fact, the idea of building cars has been revealed in the prospectus when it was listed. According to Didi's prospectus, autonomous driving, shared mobility platforms, car service networks, and electric vehicles have become the four core strategic sectors for Didi to build a future of mobility.
Although the future of Didi is still unclear, with Didi's official entry into the car manufacturing field this time, Didi's four major business sectors have made substantial progress.
So what impact will Didi's entry into the car manufacturing field bring to the industry? The first to bear the brunt is undoubtedly the car companies that mainly face the B-end business. Although Didi has also launched a B-side product D1 through cooperation with BYD, as mentioned above, the promotion of this project is not smooth at present, so in order to maintain a huge fleet operation, Didi still needs to buy new cars like other brands.
And all this is about to break as Didi opens the car. There is no doubt that after Didi makes cars, positioning models like chauffeurs will be replaced by models produced by Didi, which means that new energy brands such as BAIC that are mainly B-end will usher in a fatal blow. If you do not change your thinking, accelerate the development of products suitable for the C-end, and may even be eliminated by the market.
Of course, this change will not happen immediately, which gives B-side car companies a chance to breathe. At present, in addition to developing products suitable for the C-end market, the transformation of "travel service operators" is also a new direction. GAC Aeon is a best example, the early GAC Aeon is also based on the B-end market, and even set up a "Ruqi Travel" operation of a large number of E-an fleet, with the outbreak of the new energy market, GAC Ae-an has also begun to launch some C-end products, and now GAC Aeon's sales in the C-end market have not been inferior to the B-end.
It is foreseeable that with Didi's entry into the car market, there will be more and more B-end car companies like GAC Aian to implement the B-end and C-end two-legged walking business model.
It is worth mentioning that with Didi officially entering the market to build cars, Didi's operating vehicles that will experiment with autonomous driving technology in the future will gradually shift to self-developed models, which means that the cooperation agreement between Didi and BAIC to jointly develop high-level automatic driving customized models and specially used for RoboTaxi (self-driving taxi) operations will be cancelled.
Just as the so-called pulling a hair and moving the whole body, the impact of Didi's car manufacturing is not only the car, but also affects the pattern of the entire upstream and downstream of the car. Further, Didi car manufacturing may even reshape the business model of the new energy market.
Summary: At present, the future of Didi is not clear, but this does not prevent Didi from entering the field of car manufacturing, and with the rapid development of smart cars, Didi, which has fallen into a bottleneck, has no way to retreat. Whether for its own development or based on the pursuit of automatic driving, Didi is only left with the road of building cars.
For Didi, it is not difficult to build a car, but its entry into the car has an impact on the entire industry, but it involves the whole body. With Didi officially entering the car market, the domestic B-end automobile market will usher in a new round of reshuffle. Who will come to the end of this battle?