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According to "Interface News," citing people familiar with the matter, the organizers of the Shanghai Auto Show rejected the exhibition request because they did not have the qualification to build cars, while relevant departments required that the automobile enterprises participating in the exhibition must have the qualification to build cars. It is reported that the exhibition area originally applied for by Jidu Automobile is located in Hall 6.1H of the National Convention and Exhibition Center (Shanghai), close to Polar Krypton Automobile and Xiaopeng Automobile. After Jidu Automobile was confirmed to be absent, Polar Krypton Automobile received this exhibition area.

Car production qualification has always been a difficult problem for automobile companies. If automobile enterprises want to launch new cars, they must apply to relevant institutions first, and only allow production after approval.

As early as 2017, relevant state departments began to tighten the application and examination of new energy vehicle production qualification, but at the same time, they also clarified the legal status of contract production. Therefore, a large number of new forces with neither production qualification nor market base began to cooperate with traditional automobile enterprises to produce, among which Wei Lai chose Jianghuai OEM, Xiaopeng initially also through seahorse OEM, bypassing the qualification barrier to achieve the purpose of mass production and listing.

However, OEM production is also a large expenditure, and it takes a huge amount of money to pay for it every year. As a result, more and more new forces began to abandon the OEM production route and indirectly obtain production qualifications by acquiring automobile manufacturing companies that were on the verge of bankruptcy or bankruptcy. In 2018, Ideal Automobile acquired 100% equity of Lifan Automobile to obtain production qualification. In 2019, Reading Automobile acquired Sichuan Automobile Mustang and obtained production qualification. In the same year, Aichi Automobile took a stake in Jiangling Holdings, became the largest shareholder and obtained production qualification. Xiaopeng Automobile first realized mass production of the whole vehicle through Haima Automobile OEM, then obtained production and manufacturing authority through acquisition of Guangdong Fudi Automobile, and finally separated from Haima Automobile...

In December 2022, NIUTRON, a new force for self-driving cars, released a letter to NV users, which was suspended, and the industry attributed the reason to lack of production qualification. At the end of the same month, Jidu Automobile participated in the 2022 Guangzhou International Auto Show and ROBO-01 appeared.

From the bad end of new vehicle-building projects such as Ranger and Sailin Automobile to the continuous operation difficulties of Weima, Tianji and Aichi in the past one or two years, relevant departments are determined to strengthen the management of production qualification of new vehicles, gradually eliminate backward and problematic enterprises, and ensure the quality of new energy automobile industry. However, it is also difficult for Jidu Automobile to obtain production qualification after relevant departments of the state tighten the qualification of new energy vehicle building.

Baidu dream car! "In January 2021, Baidu and Geely Holdings announced cooperation to build vehicles;" In March 2021, Jidu Automobile Co., Ltd. was established with registered capital of RMB 2 billion Yuan, and Xia Yiping served as CEO of the company;"In January 2022, Jidu Automobile announced that it had completed Series A financing of nearly USD 400 million, which was jointly increased by Baidu and Geely;" In December 2022, Jidu ROBO-01 appeared, built based on Geely SEA vast architecture, positioned as medium and large SUV.

Although Baidu is an Internet company, it started research and development in the field of autonomous driving as early as 2013, established Apollo, an autonomous driving business, in 2017, and cooperated with many domestic automobile enterprises to promote autonomous driving tests. However, due to regulations, L4 autonomous driving technology cannot be carried on ordinary products. Li once said,"In terms of autonomous driving technology, the concentration will lead Tesla generation and become the benchmark for smart cars leading the generation."

Baidu and Huawei are both well-known Internet technology companies in China, but the two companies have very different attitudes towards building cars. At the end of March, Huawei once again issued an announcement on automotive business decisions reaffirming that "Huawei does not build cars" and stressed that Huawei/HUAWEI cannot be used in vehicle publicity and appearance. Baidu, which announced cooperation with Geely Holdings as early as 2021, still hopes to build Jidu Automobile into a benchmark project to prove Baidu's technical capability, but under the background of industry tightening, Baidu faces many problems in building cars.

The charm of the business world is that competition between enterprises is not carried out according to theory. Even if the window period is getting shorter and shorter, there are always unexpected forces to break the inherent pattern. Of course, the first to eat crabs, may not eat the most crabs.

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