AutoBeta(AutoBeta.net)02/19 Report--

As more and more technology companies enter the car manufacturing industry, it means that the industry will become more competitive, and accelerating strategic layout will be the plan of more companies. Recently, Baidu revealed that the new joint venture with Geely has completed its initial layout.

According to a recent conference call on Baidu CEO Robin Li's financial report for the fourth quarter of 2020, the electric car joint venture with Geely has recently completed the establishment of a new brand and CEO, and the overall project is progressing very well.

Although Robin Li has not announced the CEO and brand names of the new company, he believes that brand names and CEO candidates will emerge soon after that. Because according to Li, "for the products of a new electric car company, it takes about three years from the establishment of the project to the launch, and the timetable of the joint venture between Baidu and Geely is about the same."

In other words, since the company announced its cooperation with Geely, Baidu car-building has been put on the agenda more and more quickly, and the car-building schedule has been established. After all, these confirmations are only in one month, reflecting Baidu's attitude of building cars.

On January 11 this year, Baidu officially announced that it would enter the automobile industry as a vehicle manufacturer. According to reports, the newly formed Baidu Automobile Company will face the passenger car market. Baidu will enter the automobile industry as a vehicle manufacturer, allowing users to buy more extreme smart electric vehicles. Baidu said it would operate independently of the parent company system. Geely is its partner, and future new cars will be produced at Geely's factories, meaning Baidu will have a majority stake and absolute voting rights in the new company.

According to Yang Xueliang, vice president of Geely Holdings Group, "it can be understood that we are manufacturing for Baidu to a certain extent, but this contract manufacturing is definitely not simply manufacturing. We have our own structure, engineering capability, testing capability and supply chain, and more importantly, production and quality control, which is a supporting concept of engineering technology." That is, the dual support of technology and production capacity. At the same time, according to Geely Holdings, the partnership will be based on SEA, the world's leading pure electric architecture newly developed by Geely.

Plans for Baidu to enter the carmaking industry first emerged in December, when Baidu already had a number of potential partners, including Geely Motor, GAC GROUP and FAW, to negotiate the possibility of a cooperation. or form a majority-owned joint venture, but no agreement has been reached. But at that time, both Baidu and Geely said they would not comment on the rumors.

Although Baidu is an Internet company, Baidu started research and development in the field of self-driving as early as 2013, set up Apollo Apollo in 2017, and worked with a number of domestic car companies to promote self-driving tests.

According to Baidu's latest financial results, Baidu's core non-marketing revenue last year was 12.4 billion yuan, an increase of 28% over the same period last year, of which non-advertising revenue reached 4.2 billion yuan in the fourth quarter, an increase of 52% over the same period last year. Smart driving-related business has become one of Baidu's biggest sources of benefits.

In this regard, there are industry analysts, in view of Baidu's market position in the smart car field for many years, Baidu began to bet on smart cars under the transformation of the traditional automobile era, or even directly off the market, which will further promote market value growth in the future. In addition, it is worth mentioning that Baidu has won a total of 199 self-driving test licenses in China, which has taken the lead.

With the general trend of the new four modernizations of the industry, more and more enterprises are stationed in the car manufacturing industry, whether it is "rich" real estate enterprises, or "technology" technology companies, have joined the new energy vehicles, which also reflects the demand for new energy vehicles in the future. Data show that new energy vehicles in some first-tier cities increased 10-20 times year-on-year in January this year.

At present, the two most important directions of the new energy vehicle industry are electrification and intelligence, and Baidu's Apollo program undoubtedly held the intelligence of cars in their hands a long time ago. With the acceleration of Baidu's car-building process, it is believed that more Baidu unmanned cars will appear on the street.

Welcome to subscribe to the WeChat public account "Automotive Industry Focus" to get the first-hand insider information on the automotive industry and talk about things in the automotive circle. Welcome to break the news! WeChat ID autoWechat