Li Yanhong "empathized", Jidu fell out of favor?

What Huawei is difficult to do, Baidu is also unable to do

Author丨Hanxing

Cover source丨Baidu official website

Yu Chengdong, who "doesn't like bragging and advertising", is still actively standing for the boundary platform, but Li Yanhong, who once wanted to realize Baidu's dream of building cars, gradually stopped mentioning the word jidu.

Since the Jidu Automotive Robot Ecological Conference in August 2022, Li Yanhong has made several public appearances, but Jidu has almost disappeared into his mouth. A Baidu employee told Snow Leopard Finance and Economics that since the second half of last year, he has clearly felt that the voice of discussion of Jidu within the company has become less, and "I haven't heard about Jidu for almost a year."

It's an intriguing shift.

Since the layout of unmanned driving in 2013, Baidu's car dream has been done for 10 years. When Jidu was established in March 2021, Li Yanhong praised this newborn who is backed by the two giants of Baidu and Geely: "It can be said that Jidu carries Baidu's dream of building cars. ”

The first concept car, ROBO-01, was released in 15 months, and mass production and delivery are about to be achieved in less than 3 years, and the action of Jidu is not slow. However, due to the late entry time, it is too late to compete in the new energy automobile industry.

Now, less than half a year before the hole card is opened, how can the concentration that recedes from the spotlight to the edge of the stage prove itself?

From hot to cold

Back two years ago, the concentration of "gathering Baidu's AI capabilities" was Li Yanhong's favorite.

In July 2021, Li Yanhong wore a black T-shirt with Jidu cars printed on it, appeared at Jidu headquarters for more than 120 days, and addressed all employees. At the Baidu AI Developer Conference at the end of that year, he drew a blueprint for Jidu: the first concept car was announced in the first half of 2022, and mass production and delivery will be achieved in 2023.

In the 2022 Q1 results call, Li Yanhong once again cheered for Jidu, saying that one of the most critical selling points of Jidu cars is that it will be equipped with Baidu's latest technology. "Considering Baidu's industry-leading intelligent driving technology, we are confident that we will win a place in the tram market."

Li Yanhong's praise of Jidu reached its peak at the Automotive Robot Ecology Conference in August 2022: "In terms of autonomous driving technology, Jidu will be a generation ahead of Tesla. ”

But this is also a turning point for Li Yanhong's enthusiasm for Jidu to cool down.

After the ecological conference, Li Yanhong not only stopped publicly shouting for Jidu, but also made "diversified investment" in the car construction route.

First, at the Baidu World Conference, a mass-produced autonomous driving car RT6 independently developed and positively designed by Apollo was released, and in the "Baidu Intelligent Driving Open White Paper" released at the beginning of this year, it was announced that it would be a Tier 1 supplier of car companies.

This means that on the way to Baidu's choice of landing scenarios for autonomous driving for 10 years, Jidu is no longer the only chess piece.

In the first half of this year, Li Yanhong, who claimed to be "standing at the top of the AI wave", made rare frequent appearances, but Jidu was no longer his darling, replaced by Wen Xin's words.

Absent from the Shanghai Auto Show, mired in rumors of lack of car manufacturing qualifications. The concentration of 2023 always seems to be missing the word lively.

"The first prospective car owners to pay the deposit can't wait." Jidu store sales Arwen (pseudonym) told Snow Leopard Finance and Economics that he and his colleagues have recently received many cancellation orders for the ROBO-01 lunar version.

In October last year, Jidu ROBO-01 lunar exploration version officially opened for pre-order, priced at 399,800 yuan and limited to 2,000 units. The configuration of this car is roughly the same as that of the production model, and the main premium is reflected in the owner's rights.

Receiving the unsubscription at the time of the upcoming mass production delivery, Arwen was a little surprised. Even if you cancel the subscription after the official release of the vehicle, the user can get the deposit of 5,000 yuan back in full. "The delivery of the vehicle has not been delayed, so why not wait until the detailed configuration is announced before making a decision?"

Industry analysts believe that the reason why Jidu faces the question of "lack of qualifications" is on the one hand due to the previous rumors of Geely's divestment, on the other hand, Li Yanhong's "snub" of Jidu has also aggravated the doubts of the outside world.

Geely and Baidu have previously dismissed the divestment rumors and said their holdings remain unchanged. The analysts speculated that Geely's stake had been transferred to Jidu Automobile's holding company, Jidu Automobile (Hong Kong) Co., Ltd., in order to bring in external investment under the VIE framework. Up to now, Jidu Automobile (Hong Kong) Co., Ltd. has not announced its shareholding structure.

Snow Leopard Finance and Economics asked Jidu about the holding company's equity structure, external investors, car manufacturing qualifications and other issues, and Jidu officially responded that the company focuses on the research and development of automotive intelligent products, and everything is currently normal.

Zhang Xin (pseudonym), an employee of Jidu, told Snow Leopard Finance and Economics that his absence from the auto show was not due to a lack of car manufacturing qualifications, and that his department was still catching up with the progress of participating in the auto show in early April, but "there are still some things that are not perfect, and it is the company's arrangement not to participate in the auto show."

But it is undeniable that after a short highlight moment, Jidu is becoming bleak on the big stage of Baidu AI.

Embarrassment

Can Jidu carry Baidu's dream of building a car? The answer will be revealed in the second half of the year – and the sales figures after mass production deliveries speak for themselves.

Whether Jidu can become a hit, Zhang Xin has no bottom in his heart, "I also draw a question mark", one of the reasons is that L4 high-end intelligent driving is difficult to land.

L4 high-end intelligent driving has always been the core selling point of Jidu.

Xia Yiping, CEO of Jidu, once said that the era of intelligent cars 3.0 is the era of automotive robots, and the starting point of the era change is the transfer of car driving power from humans to AI. The automotive industry in the 3.0 era will realize the transition from energy transformation to product attribute change, and its ultimate goal is to make car driving unmanned. In his opinion, "Jidu automotive robots will meet users' ultimate experience needs for smart travel, intelligent assistants and smart spaces in the era of smart cars 3.0".

But until the eve of mass production delivery, Jidu still does not see the possibility of L4 landing.

What's more, in the fierce competition environment, the intelligent first-mover advantage in Xia Yiping's mouth is constantly being diluted.

BYD Chairman Wang Chuanfu just bombarded automatic driving on the front foot "dumb, fooling nonsense", and the back foot was exposed by the media to quietly set up an autonomous driving R & D team of 5,000 people. Behind the "duplicity" of the big guy is another round of technical involution of new energy vehicle companies.

In August 2022, Xpeng Motors and Alibaba Cloud jointly established the Intelligent Computing Center, which can increase the training speed of Xpeng Motors' autonomous driving model by about 170 times. In November of the same year, NIO and Tencent Cloud signed a strategic cooperation agreement to cooperate in the fields of autonomous driving cloud, intelligent driving map, and digital ecological community. According to 36Kr, the ideal car intelligent driving and chip team is expanding rapidly and entering the dual-line recruitment model at home and abroad.

While the first-mover advantage was equalized by the opponent, the shortcomings of concentration gradually appeared.

Compared with competitors, Jidu's mass production delivery was late and missed the golden time of the industry's outbreak.

According to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, domestic new energy vehicle sales will increase by 93.4% y/y to 6.887 million units in 2022, and the growth rate will narrow to less than 50% in 2023. The track is crowded, the competition is fierce, and new energy vehicles have entered the knockout stage. At the beginning of the year, Tesla took the lead in opening a price war, and many new car-making forces were on the edge of the cliff. At this time, the concentration of the incoming game, there is not much respite.

On the other hand, compared with Huawei and Xiaomi, which are also "Internet cars", Jidu's offline sales channels are obviously inferior.

Xia Yiping once said that Jidu plans to open 100 stores in 46 cities across the country in 2023, but the scale of 100 stores is still slightly thin. According to Ping An Securities, as of the end of July 2022, Wei Xiaoli had 387, 366 and 247 sales stores, respectively, and AITO Qianjie has been sold in 554 Huawei stores nationwide during the same period.

The dilemma of choosing one or the other

In addition to the challenges that Jidu will face belatedly, there is another difficult problem facing Li Yanhong.

In the view of Liu Wei (pseudonym), an employee of Jidu, there is another reason why Li Yanhong no longer frequently stands for Jidu: in order to level a bowl of water.

He told Snow Leopard Finance and Economics that the relationship between Baidu and Jidu is more like Party A and Party B - Jidu is Party A, purchasing core technologies from Baidu; Baidu is Party B and provides services for Jidu. Although the two sides cooperate closely, they are still independent companies in terms of positioning.

After the early product promotion window passed, Li needed to balance the relationship between the two sides.

As the helm of a company with a market capitalization of nearly $50 billion, Robin Li's words and deeds have a far-reaching impact. Behind his "snub" Jidu, he is not only looking for a balance, but also stems from Baidu's dilemma in the car manufacturing route.

Robin Li once drew three paths for the commercialization of Apollo: first, to provide autonomous driving technology solutions for host manufacturers to help traditional car companies build autonomous driving capabilities; The second is to personally build a car, integrate Baidu's autonomous driving technology end-to-end, and bring the most advanced technology to the market as soon as possible; The third is shared unmanned vehicles.

These three paths are very similar to Huawei's choice. Huawei has proved with practice that in the field of new energy vehicles, it is difficult to follow the route of being both a judge and an athlete.

In 2018, Robin Li publicly stated that Baidu would not build its own cars, open its own production lines, design engines, study fluid mechanics or industrial design. Baidu only does the research and development of autonomous driving technology that it is best at, and opens it up to all enterprises that are interested, have ideas and abilities to do it.

However, in the new energy automobile industry, where the "soul theory" is deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, what Huawei is difficult to do, Baidu is also unable to do.

Baidu mentioned in its 2021 earnings report that Apollo had already cooperated with Ford,

Toyota

、

Great Wall

30 automobile brands, including BYD, reached cooperation. But these collaborations end up in only a handful of products.

Li Yanhong once predicted that in the second half of 2021, Apollo intelligent driving will usher in the peak of mass production, with a new car on the market every month, and the pre-installed mass production and carrying capacity is expected to reach 1 million units in the next 3~5 years. But this goal has not been achieved.

Baidu can only go down in person, trying to use Jidu to carry the "nowhere to place" autonomous driving technology.

Under Robin Li's vision, Jidu, as a banner of Baidu's autonomous driving, will attract more car companies to cooperate with Apollo, thereby opening up more commercial scenarios for Baidu's 10 years of autonomous driving technology accumulation.

But today, there are only a few OEMs willing to hand over their "soul" to Baidu, among which the products are the first to land

WM

Life is on the line.

When the monthly sales exceeded 10,000, Li Yanhong may have seen the possibility of success in Jidu. But when monthly sales fell below 4,000 vehicles and the Huawei Inside model hit a wall, Huawei's personal experience told Baidu that the identity of the OEM and the supplier must be one.

Jidu or Apollo, which end of Li Yanhong's balance is inclined? Perhaps he is giving the answer with real actions.