Jidu Automobile plans to invest 50 billion yuan in the next five years to produce smart cars, and the first car will be unveiled next year

On April 25, 2019, Xia Yiping, CEO of Jidu Automobile, a joint venture between Baidu and Geely, revealed that Jidu plans to invest 50 billion yuan in the production of smart cars in the next five years.

Xia Yiping said that Jidu’s first new car will be officially unveiled at the Beijing Auto Show in April 2022. This car will be a real mass-produced model that can achieve L4-level autonomous driving functions. To this end, the Electronic architecture, chassis and other components of this car are developed and designed around the realization of L4 or higher autonomous driving. Not only from the product point of view to be able to make a smart car, but also to achieve breakthroughs and leadership in the underlying technology.

Xia Yiping said that evaluating the autonomous driving capability of a car or a car factory is not about how much hardware is built up. For example, the number of cameras, lidars, and millimeter-wave radars is not a criterion for evaluating whether it is good or bad. What is important is the user’s experience of the automatic driving function in actual operation and the ability to be mass-produced.

“Jidu is doing model planning in sequence. After the first car is mass-produced, it plans to launch a car every 1 to 1.5 years. The company plans to recruit 2,500-3,000 people within two to three years, of which Including 400-500 software engineers. Jidu will use Geely’s electric vehicle platform, but also consider using chips designed by Baidu.”

Regarding the recent upsurge of many high-tech companies at home and abroad entering the automotive field, Xia Yiping said that this is a good thing for the development of new energy and smart vehicles, and can accelerate the technological improvement and product innovation of enterprises. The competition in the auto industry in the future must be ecological competition and organizational structure competition. In addition to traditional auto companies, a large part of Chidu Auto’s employees come from the Internet and consumer electronics, and the goal is to build Chidu Auto into a fully digital company.

Building a car is a heavy investment, and money means time, and even everything. Li Bin, the founder of Weilai Automobile, once said that if there is no 20 billion, don’t talk about building a car. Lei Jun, the founder, chairman and CEO of Xiaomi Group, also made a bold statement. He will spend 10 billion US dollars to build a car in 10 years, and he will also bet all the reputation accumulated in his life. And record, fight for Xiaomi.

When asked if Jidu Automobile is afraid of Xiaomi building a car, Xia Yiping said: I am not worried. In addition, Xia Yiping said: Huawei is a TOB market, I have no opinion on the TOB company, and everything is based on reality.

Talking about the Shanghai Auto Show, Xia Yiping said: The general trend this year is that everyone has released L3 and L4 cars, but they are not L3 or L4 cars when they are sold. This sentence also reveals the excessive publicity of some domestic car companies, such as Gaohe Automobile.

For the mobile phone industry, Apple has entered the game to build a car. Xia Yiping said: The addition of Apple is a good thing for the development of new energy and smart cars. It can accelerate the technological improvement and product innovation of enterprises. Apple will also pull the competition of the entire industry to another dimension, and accelerate the transformation and development of the entire industry. disuse. In the future, the competition in the auto industry must also be an ecological competition and a competition of organizational structures.