Add another player to the car-building track.
Editor’s note: This article is from the micro-channel public number “leopard change” (ID: baobiannews), Author: Lee Gone with the Wind, editor: Cox posted with permission.
“Core Tips”
It is not surprising that Didi has joined the car-building army. After all, car-building is a key part of travel, and Didi’s extensive layout in the upstream and downstream of travel can form a complete closed-loop travel without building a car. .
Didi is also here.
On April 6, some media reported that Didi had started a car-building project. The person in charge of the project is Yang Jun, the vice president of Didi and the general manager of Xiaoju Car Service. He also has another identity-the chief product officer of D1.
In order to build the team, Didi has already started to dig people.
According to media reports, Zhu Jiang, who was once the vice president of user development of NIO, may be one of Didi’s “prey”. He has worked in BMW Brilliance, Lexus, NIO, Ford China and other companies. Very rich.
However, Zhu Jiang then refuted the rumors to the media: “The dark horse will be listed next week. Don’t spread rumors to disturb the minds of our military! This news is too fake.” At present, Zhu Jiang is in charge of the electric vehicle business at Ford (China). And its first pure electric Mustang Mach-E will be launched soon.
Although the rumors are true and false, the news of car building has become more and more popular. Until today, Didi has not come out to refute the rumors.
Why does Didi, which holds a trillion-dollar travel market, want to get involved in new energy vehicles?
What can making cars bring to Didi?
2021 is considered to be the last entry window for the new energy vehicle track.
Before Didi decided to build a car, Baidu and Xiaomi had announced the establishment of a car project. In addition to the major Internet companies, Foxconn, Evergrande, and Baoneng have also set foot in new energy vehicles early, and their cross-border car building actions are comparable. A round of new energy vehicle entrepreneurship boom.
Among many cross-border Internet companies, Didi is undoubtedly the “closest” to the car. As a leading company in the travel industry, Didi’s travel genes are inherently closely connected with the car itself.
In the view of Jiang Han, a senior researcher at Pangu Think Tank, Didi’s car manufacturing is not surprising: “After all, Didi is an important company in the travel industry. Its main business revolves around China’s travel industry. Choosing to build a car is also an expected thing, which is related to its own industrial attributes.”
At the level of business expansion, Didi’s car building is a logical matter.
In the past two years, whether it is takeaway, bicycle, delivery, group buying, car service, and overseas business, Didi has been doing well. On the one hand, building a car can greatly expand Didi’s business line and spread the entire plate; on the other hand,On the one hand, car manufacturing can also form synergy with the online car-hailing business.
In addition to internal coordination, the huge benefits released by policies and the market have also accelerated Didi’s decision to build cars on the market.
China plans to achieve the goal of “carbon neutrality” by 2060, and when the country is formulating a “carbon neutral” path, one of the important ways is to replace fuel vehicles with electric vehicles. Complete the replacement of electric vehicles to traditional fuel vehicles.
According to the forecast of iResearch, my country’s new energy vehicle sales are expected to reach 5.3 million by 2025. By then, the number of new energy vehicles will be around 20 million, and China’s new energy vehicle sales in 2020 will be 1,271,900, which means In the next five years, there is still room for imagination of 4 million vehicles in China’s new energy vehicle market.
Of course, Didi is not willing to be absent from this car-making feast. In November 2020, the release of D1 actually revealed Didi’s idea of building a car.
This is a customized online car jointly created by Didi and BYD. The department that Didi directly participates in the cooperation is the Xiaoju car suit led by Yang Jun. At the specific design level, including vehicle engineering package, interior and exterior trim modeling, vehicle configuration, seat prototype, ergonomic layout, and vehicle networking software architecture, Didi has participated.
At present, this customized online car-hailing has been launched in Changsha, Xiamen, Ningbo and other cities one after another, and its sales in the first quarter of 2021 have exceeded 5,000 units. In the next step, D1 will soon start operations in first-tier cities such as Guangzhou and Shenzhen.
In the test water of D1, Didi is equipped with a smart car system in the car. Passengers can remotely control the car’s temperature, seat heating and other functions through the APP. Didi’s own cars can optimize the driver’s experience, not only bring consistency of service and more unified and effective management and control, but also help to continuously improve Didi’s market competitiveness and deepen the moat.
Cheng Wei once revealed that Didi’s customized online car-hailing will continue to be updated and iterated. The goal is to popularize more than 1 million customized online car-hailing platforms on the Didi platform by 2025, and remove the cockpit by 2030 to achieve unmanned drive.
Furthermore, Didi has already invested heavily in autonomous driving. Holding your own electric car brand can bring great value to data collection and technology iteration, and in turn, the maturity of autonomous driving can further promote the experience of online car-hailing.
For Didi, the benefits of building a car in person are far greater than buying an electric car from a partner company.
Create a closed loop of travel
The new energy vehicle market is hot. Tesla, Weilai, Xiaopeng, and Ideal, which are running in the first echelon, have soared urban values.
For Didi, the potential of new energy vehicles is certainly one of the reasons why it is attracted to build cars, but more importantly, it is not only compatible withThe synergy of the original business is the last piece of the puzzle to fill the closed loop of the business.
Online car-hailing, freight, takeaway, car service… all these tools are inseparable from cars. The problem is that on the Didi platform, most of the current capacity is still provided by third parties, and for the vehicle itself, Didi’s control is not high. This not only brings high costs, but also makes it difficult for Didi to form a closed loop in the aftermarket business such as finance, insurance, and gas, and it is difficult for the value of the platform to be fully utilized.
After the car is built, Didi can not only provide online car-hailing, but also face the broader passenger car market. When selling online car-hailing, Didi can reduce delivery links and cut unnecessary transaction costs, thereby reducing the cost of online car-hailing, which is a good thing for drivers and passengers.
Didi’s business attempts outside of online car-hailing also have a new grasp.
In 2016, Didi established an autonomous driving technology research and development department, dedicated to building the world’s leading L4 autonomous driving technology. In August 2019, Didi announced that it would upgrade its autonomous driving department to an independent company, focusing on autonomous driving research and development, product applications and related business development. It has now obtained the first batch of intelligent networked vehicle demonstration application licenses issued by Shanghai.
The accumulation of autonomous driving technology can be applied and improved on Didi’s own vehicles, instead of relying on cooperative car companies to obtain technical application feedback.
Didi Brain, Didi Cloud, and Didi Artificial Intelligence Lab are the same as autonomous driving. After Didi built cars, they have new application entities. Multiple businesses feedback each other in car building and promote technology trends. mature.
Not only that, if you can hold the car in your own hands, Didi’s many car after-car businesses waiting to be fed will undoubtedly usher in a leap-forward development, rather than just a traffic business. For example, Xiaoju Energy started its layout in 2015. In just five years, its GMV in 2020 will exceed 30 billion yuan.
After Didi builds cars, Xiaoju Energy can also rely on the sales of Didi Auto to further expand its business and extend the service chain.
At present, Didi is positioning itself as a leading one-stop mobile travel and local life service platform, and travel and life services are largely based on cars. After adding up the car puzzle, Didi Di’s car services, logistics, and even financial services can all be connected in series to form a complete travel closed loop.
Foundry or self-built factory?
For Didi, the benefits of building a car are many, but how to build a car?
The vehicle manufacturing path is the first problem that Didi has to solve. At present, the specific form and path of Didi’s vehicle manufacturing have not been disclosed.
With the localization of Tesla parts and the supply chain dividends brought about by the rise of new domestic forces, the model of car manufacturing has now undergone great changes, and the choices left to Didi are relatively clear.
Weimar is a typical self-manufacturing model, with a focus on design and production. It not only has heavy assets, but also relies on the company’s vehicle manufacturing experience. This may have something to do with the background of Shen Hui’s traditional car company.
Nio is the representative of the foundry model. This route has lighter assets and more companies undertake design and R&D tasks.
Cooperating with traditional car companies is also the normal mode of car manufacturing nowadays. This model can give play to the advantages of both parties in software and hardware, and build a team in a relatively short period of time. Baidu and Geely, Ali and SAIC, Apple and Kia have all chosen this path.
After Weilai, Xiaopeng, and Ideal, the new domestic car-making forces once again ushered in a blowout. If you want to quickly launch products during the window period of the first three new forces’ products, it is for new players to join the game. , Whether it is for financial or technical considerations, cooperation with traditional car companies is a more direct method.
Furthermore, if you want to build your own factory, it will take a lot of time and cost to get the qualifications and build the factory. One example is that Xiaopeng announced in May 2017 that it would build its own factory in Zhaoqing, but it did not get the production qualification until May 2020.
For players who get on the car at this node, what is in front of them is an already quite mature industrial chain and a huge market that is rapidly increasing in volume. If you want to get into the car quickly, you have to focus on traditional car companies, and Didi has a close relationship with traditional car companies.
In 2018, Didi initiated the establishment of a “torrent alliance” with 31 auto industry chain companies, and reached an agreement with vehicle and supply chain giants including CATL, BYD, etc., in an attempt to build a “full auto industry chain” Upstream and downstream platforms”. In addition, with the cooperation experience of D1 and BYD, Didi is more familiar with the road than other cross-border companies and car companies.
At present, it is hard to say whether Didi’s partner is BYD.
Some people believe that the reason why Didi wants to “start anew” is to have the right to speak in the supply chain. Didi is most likely to unite, most likely a car company that is currently not so good in the field of new energy. Firstly, both parties can learn from their own strengths in software and hardware, and secondly, they can avoid internal competition in product travel.
To sum up, Didi wants to quickly realize mass production, acquiring or cooperating with a car company is a more feasible route.
The road to mass production is not easy
The new energy industry chain has become more mature driven by new car-making forces such as Tesla and Weilai. Didi’s supply chain environment is much better than Weilai, Xiaopeng, and Ideal, but Specific to every link from zero to mass production, there are still many challenges waiting for Didi to resolve one by one.
Time is undoubtedly the most important thing. According to the product plan of the new car-building forces, before 2025, the pace of pushing a car a year is basically, and the product density is not high, which means that new entrants are building cars. , Need to be in this gap period,Mass-produced its first car.
Take a reference example, Weilai’s first mass-produced model es8 took 3 years to go on the market, and the ideal first product experienced 4 years and 5 months of difficult production and did not go on sale until the end of 2019.
The time left for Didi is just over 3 years. Didi needs to use the product gap to flush out and realize mass production. Before mass production, Didi needs to go through the challenges of capital, capacity ramp-up, offline experience store completion and other challenges encountered by new car-making forces.
Next is the question of product positioning. When it comes to the product level, brands such as Tesla, Xiaopeng, and Ideal have firmly occupied the price range of 100,000 to 300,000 yuan. The latest entry of Xiaomi, Lei Jun also revealed in a live broadcast not long ago that the future price range of Xiaomi cars may also be between 100,000 and 300,000 yuan.
Going down, the Wuling Hongguang mini, with the highest price of 38,800 yuan, set a new sales record for the seventh consecutive month, with sales exceeding 200,000 units within 200 days of its launch; going up, NIO, who is determined to take the luxury car route, 2020 Since the beginning of the year, its sales have repeatedly set records.
If you include the new energy brands launched by traditional car companies, such as Lantu, Jihu, Polestar, Zhiji, etc., the various price ranges will be more crowded.
As a national travel platform, Didi’s price range may be more popular, so it is likely to be in the range of 100,000 to 300,000 yuan. Waiting for Didi is a competitive arena.
In addition to time and product positioning, how to build the car team is also something that Didi needs to consider.
Currently, auto companies have gathered together. Not only are there car-making projects from giants such as Baidu and Xiaomi. Former GAC Weilai CEO Liao Bing also founded Freedom Auto not long ago, and Bitauto has just announced that it will build a car… It is foreseeable that , There may be more follow-up players to disrupt the game in the future, which will create a large number of automotive talent vacancies.
A talent battle is inevitable. Only by finding the right person can Didi build a car more smoothly.
To build cars at this time, Didi still needs to consider the crisis of chip supply. Starting on March 29, Weilai’s Jianghuai plant in Hefei has ceased production for 5 consecutive days. Moving forward, Volkswagen, Ford, Honda, GM, Daimler and many other leading car companies have also had the experience of discontinuing production due to lack of cores.
Didi has been in the field of travel for many years, and it has more advantages in industrial chain resources and understanding of automobiles, but it still has to go through the pits that its predecessors have gone through and face capital,Talent, technology, supply and other issues are constantly emerging.
What exactly will Didi’s new energy vehicles look like? Time will tell us the answer.