The ＂Extreme Yue＂ brand was officially released, and Geely won the ＂birth certificate＂ for making cars with Baidu.
The strategic cooperation between Geely and Baidu has made new progress. On August 14th, Geely Holding Group announced the launch of the high-end smart car robot brand "Jiyue" and announced the name of its first model.
The announcement jointly issued by the two parties disclosed that Geely and Baidu are positioned as manufacturers and enablers respectively. The former will rely on its vast structure of pure electric exclusive SEA, give full play to its competitive advantages in R&D, manufacturing and supply chain management, and be responsible for the production and manufacture of intelligent automobile robots. The latter will continue to fully empower the new brand with AI technology capabilities such as intelligent cockpit, intelligent driving and ERNIE Bot.
Different from the establishment of Jidu Automobile, the establishment of Jiyue brand announced that Geely went from behind the scenes to the front of the stage, while Baidu retreated from the front of the stage to the back of the stage. The fundamental reason is that the qualification examination for building cars has become stricter, while Jidu Automobile led by Baidu has not obtained the qualification for the production of new energy vehicles.
According to the planning of Geely and Baidu, in the future, Jidu Automobile will focus on the research and development of high-end intelligent solutions, and will leverage Geely’s qualifications and manufacturing capabilities to turn intelligent products from ideas into reality.
The reporter of Blue Whale Finance noticed that at present, the original content of official website of Jidu Automobile is no longer visible, and it is replaced by a line of words, "Your car robot is on its way."
Geely and Baidu’s cooperation model are in line with Huawei and Celeste?
As early as January 2021, Baidu announced the formation of a smart car company to enter the automobile industry as a vehicle manufacturer. In March of the same year, it and Geely jointly established Jidu Automobile Co., Ltd. (referred to as "Jidu Automobile" in the text), with Baidu indirectly holding 55% and Geely indirectly holding 45%. According to the shareholding ratio, Baidu had absolute dominance over Jidu Automobile at that time.
However, due to the increasingly strict qualification examination, Jidu Automobile has to face the dilemma of having no car to build.
In line with the development trend of new energy vehicles, in 2015, the National Development and Reform Commission, together with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, issued the production qualification of pure electric passenger cars to newly-established car-making enterprises that met the requirements, and on July 10th of the same year, the "Regulations on the Administration of Newly-built Pure Electric Passenger Cars" was implemented. According to the regulations, newly-built enterprises must first obtain the approval of investment projects from the National Development and Reform Commission, and then pass the enterprise and product assessment according to the relevant requirements of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
At that time, the license of the National Development and Reform Commission was called "big qualification" in the industry, and the approval of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology was called "small qualification". Only newly-built enterprises with two qualifications can put their products on the market.
From the implementation of the regulations to January 2018, only 16 enterprises, including Beiqi New Energy, Changjiang Automobile, Chery New Energy, Jianghuai Volkswagen and Changhe Suzuki, were approved for qualification. Since then, the door to funding has been closed, and no new qualified enterprises have been added. The new car-making forces that have risen in the future can only realize their dream of making cars through acquisition, OEM and cooperation with enterprises with production qualifications.
In January 2022, Jidu Automobile completed nearly $400 million in Series A financing, which was jointly increased by Baidu and Geely. In late June of the same year, Geely withdrew from the ranks of shareholders of Jidu Automobile, and Baidu indirectly wholly owned Jidu Automobile. On December 5th, the company name of Jidu Automobile was changed to Shanghai Mihang Automobile Co., Ltd., and the only foreign investment record of the company was that it subscribed 35% shares of Hangzhou Jiyueyue Automobile Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Jiyueyue Automobile Technology") with a capital contribution of 3.5 million yuan, and the remaining 65% shares were subscribed by Geely Investment, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Geely Holding Group.
Some insiders believe that Jiyue Automobile Technology, which was just established on August 9 this year, was built by Geely to operate the Jiyue brand. It is worth noting that as early as December 5, 2017, Geely Holding Group applied for 12 kinds of ultra-Vietnamese trademarks, and the goods/services corresponding to the trademarks covered automobiles, automobile chassis, motorcycles and tires for carrying work. On November 20, 2018, 12 categories of ultra-Vietnamese trademarks were approved for registration.
Backed by Geely, Jiyue finally solved the qualification problem. Baidu also identified the development direction of Jidu Automobile as: "Continue to focus on the definition of smart car products and AI intelligent technology innovation, and create a high-level intelligent complete solution for automobiles".
Many people in the industry believe that the cooperation model between Geely and Baidu is very similar to Huawei’s joint car companies to create new brands. At present, there are three main modes of cooperation between Huawei and car companies: one is the parts mode of selling standardized auto parts products; The second is the Huawei Inside mode (referred to as "HI mode") that provides full-stack smart car solutions; Third, deeply participate in product and vehicle design, and provide intelligent selection mode of sales network channels. At present, there is no more information about the brand of Jiyue and the cooperation form between Geely and Baidu, and what kind of sparks will collide between the two sides remains to be announced.
Zeng Yan’s new model benchmarking
On August 14th, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology released the 374th batch of "Announcement of Road Motor Vehicle Manufacturers and Products", and the ultra-yue brand pure electric multi-purpose passenger car was impressively listed.
According to the official pictures released by Jiyue, the appearance of Jiyue 01 is the same as that of the first automobile robot ROBO-01 previously released by Jidu Automobile.
On December 30, 2022, ROBO-01 was unveiled at the Guangzhou Auto Show. According to the information released by Jidu Automobile, the ROBO-01 is built on the vast framework of Geely SEA. It adopts the front all-aluminum double wishbone/rear all-aluminum H-Arm multi-link independent suspension, with a body size (length, width and height) of 4,853 mm× 1990 mm× 1611 mm and a wheelbase of 3,000 mm. It comes standard with the 8295 chip of Qualcomm’s fourth-generation Snapdragon digital cockpit platform, and the AI computing power is 30TOPS of OPS.
In addition to the above-mentioned known information, the latest application information shows that the newly unveiled Extreme Yue 01 will provide two power versions of single motor and double motor, with the maximum power of single motor of 200kW and the total power of double motor version of 400kW. The single-motor version will be equipped with a ternary lithium battery with a capacity of 100kWh from Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Limited, with a pure battery life of up to 600km.
Jidu Automobile once regarded Tesla as its main competitor, and its released ROBO-01 also formed a benchmark with Tesla Model Y in appearance and configuration. Therefore, the extreme crossing 01, which is in the same strain as ROBO-01, will face the situation of confronting Model Y head-on.
Baidu CEO Li Yanhong once said that Jidu Automobile is "ahead of Tesla generation" in intelligent driving ability, and the biggest highlight of ROBO-01 production model is also intelligent driving and intelligent network connection. Xia Yiping, CEO of Jidu, also mentioned that "the space life and interior decoration of Jidu car are definitely better than Tesla Model Y, and the core users are very coincident with Tesla."
In the face of Tesla, which adjusted its price many times during the year, and even bluntly sold cars at zero profit, it is still unknown whether Extreme Yue 01 can create sales success by virtue of Geely’s brand endorsement and Baidu’s technical empowerment. But for both partners, learning from each other’s strengths is indeed an efficient choice to stand out in the increasingly competitive market environment.