AutoBeta(AutoBeta.net)05/25 Report--

On May 25, Xia Yiping, CEO of Jidu Automobile, announced the latest construction progress of Jidu's first mass production car on his personal Weibo. Xia Yiping said: "the Jidu engineering team has started mass production mold casting, and Jidu's first auto robot production car has officially moved from model design to the preparatory stage of mass production. In the process of die casting, in order to mass-produce the futuristic design in the design scheme, the Jidu engineering team has carried out a large number of technical research on the forming process, and achieved an engineering breakthrough of super stamping depth. Jidu Automobile will hold an online press conference of Jidu Roboday on June 8, when it will launch the first car robot concept car.

Data show that Jidu Automobile, founded on March 02, 2021, is a smart car company jointly established by Baidu and Geely Holdings. Based on Geely's newly developed global leading pure electric architecture, the vast SEA Intelligent Evolutionary experience Architecture, the two sides will work closely together to build smart cars in related fields of smart car manufacturing. On January 11, 2021, Baidu announced that it would enter the automobile industry as a vehicle manufacturer, and in March, Baidu and Geely holding Group formed a joint venture, which was named Jidu Automobile. In November of the same year, Baidu, Jidu and Qualcomm Technology announced the details of the first model of Jidu Automobile. As the first model of Jidu, the car will use an intelligent digital cockpit system supported by Baidu and Qualcomm, and the new car will have high-level self-driving capability.

On January 26, 2022, Jidu Motors announced the completion of nearly $400 million in round A financing, which was jointly increased by Baidu and strategic partner Geely. On May 16, Jidu Automobile officially announced that its first car robot concept car will be released on June 8. On May 24th, 36 Krypton reported that Baidu's mapping business has been spun off from Baidu CTO Wang Haifeng to Baidu IDG (Intelligent driving) business group. In the personnel system, the reporting line of Ji Yongzhi, general manager of Baidu Maps, has shifted from Li Ying, Baidu's chief information officer, to Shang Guobin, vice president in charge of Baidu's intelligent transportation division (ACE). Robin Li pays special attention to Jidu Automobile, a burgeoning car-building business, and its OKR clearly sets out the pre-order targets that Jidu Automobile will achieve this year. Jidu Automobile is regarded as the outpost of Baidu's intelligent driving technology and enjoys many convenient resource channels.

In response to the above news, Baidu responded: "Baidu Maps has a service interface for the majority of users and industry-leading high-precision mapping capabilities; radish fast running and intelligent transportation can provide more intelligent services." The business strategy adjustment of Baidu Map will give better play to the advantages of organizational resources and support the overall achievement of Baidu's strategic goals. " Another source revealed that Baidu has a specific strategic innovation team to dock with Jidu Automobile, "and some of the technical solutions of Jidu Automobile Mass production will not be promoted to the industry until a year later."

The latest development announced by Jidu Motor also means that the concept car of Jidu Automobile will be released soon, and the new car will be delivered in 2023 according to the car-building plan previously announced by Jidu Automobile. Jidu Automobile said that at present, it has started a series of physical manufacturing work, such as casting machine processing, assembly, research and commissioning, sample production, quality optimization and so on.

As an Internet company, Baidu's entry into the auto industry is not surprising. Since the birth of new forces such as Ulai, Xiaopeng and ideal in China in 2015, since 2019, the automobile industry has attracted many cross-border car manufacturers, including Baidu, Ali, Xiaomi, 360th, oppo, Apple and so on. Although these brands have no experience in the automotive industry, joining the car building plan has also caused a lot of shock in the industry. Earlier, Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun even shouted: "I decided to lead the team myself. this will be the last major entrepreneurial project in my life. I am willing to bet all the achievements I have accumulated in my life and all my reputation to fight for Xiaomi car!" "besides being an IT blogger, I also plan to be a car blogger in my spare time," Lei Jun said in a recent post on his personal Weibo. Talking about the reasons why he became a car blogger in his spare time, Lei Jun said: "because I like it!" And there are a lot of car fans among my fans, so we have a topic to talk about. " Wang Xiang, president of Xiaomi Group, said in a live broadcast on May 24 that Xiaomi already has more than 1200 employees involved in car building and will hand over its first paper in 2024. If nothing happens, the first model of Xiaomi will be mass produced in 2024. In addition, Apple's car construction is also under way after it was reported that Apple's car is targeting the high-end market of more than $100000 and will release its first electric car by the end of 2024 at the earliest.

According to the current development trend, it can not be ruled out that there will be more car-building tracks in other areas in the future, but as far as the market in recent years is concerned, although there are more and more cross-border car-building brands, however, new powerful brands such as Ula, Xiaopeng, ideal and Nezha have a stronger sense of existence in the market, and with the participation of major brands, the competition in the automobile industry will be more fierce in the future.

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