Dripping Down Automatic Driving Business Or Preparing For Listing

On August 6th, the driblet announced its upgrading of its automatic driving department as an independent company, focusing on the development of automatic driving, product application and related business development.

According to the dripping point, the newly established automatic driving company will integrate the trickle platform resources and the original technology advantages, increase investment in core technology research and development, expand cooperation with the upstream and downstream industry chain, and discuss with the government and all sectors of society to promote automatic landing. According to media reports, Didi company set up automatic driving technology research and development team from 2016. At present, it has built several teams such as high-precision map, sensing, data labeling, problem diagnosis, vehicle modification, cloud control and vehicle networking, vehicle road coordination, information security and so on.

In terms of personnel appointment, CEO, a new automatic driving company, was run by Zhang Bo and CTO as executive director of the fund. Meng Xing became COO. Jia Zhaoyin and Zheng Jianqiang respectively served as the heads of the US R & D team and the R & D team of China, and the three reported to Zhang Bo. In response to the establishment of the new company, Zhang Bo said, "the new company hopes to further open up strategic cooperation with the main engine factory and industrial partners, and jointly promote the commercialization of the technology of the driverless, and truly become a product and service to everyone's life." According to Zhang Bo, Didi will gradually apply the understanding and experience of safe operation to the driverless operation.

In some industry circles, dripping this autopilot business may be learning from competitor Uber, reducing valuation pressure to better pave the way for IPO. Statistics show that the global network giant car giant Uber also stripped the autopilot business before its listing, and obtained soft silver and $1 billion investment. The new company's post investment valuation reached $7 billion 250 million. According to the prospectus published previously by Uber, the R & D expenses of its driverless vehicle department in 2018 amounted to US $475 million.

In fact, more than Uber and dripping, Google and other companies in the layout of the autopilot project, also adopted a split, the independent establishment of a subsidiary. According to public reports, Google's parent company Alphabet announced at the end of 2016 that it would split the driverless project from Google's Google X laboratory and set up a new company, Waymo. It is reported that Morgan Stanley released the report is expected to Alphabet split Waymo, the latter's valuation will be less than 70 billion U.S. dollars (about 480 billion yuan), more than traditional car companies and Tesla and so on. In this way, dripping automatic driving business is not unusual.

When the announcement was made, the new company will further expand its cooperation with the upstream and downstream industry chain. This also means that car companies who have had contact with dripping companies will cooperate with the company in the field of automatic driving. According to the media, as early as last April, didi and the 31 enterprises from different fields such as automobile manufacturing, spare parts manufacturing, digital map, vehicle networking and other fields launched a "torrent alliance" to jointly promote the development of new energy, intelligence and sharing industries. In addition, the company recently concluded a cooperation agreement with Toyota Auto Body Co in the field of intelligent travel, and received the latter's investment of $600 million.

It is worth mentioning that, in March this year, we set up a wholly owned subsidiary, Shanghai didi Wo Technology Co., Ltd., which includes the technology of automatic driving and intelligent driving technology. All in all, with the establishment of a new company, dripping auto driving business will become clearer. But I have to mention that in addition to foreign enterprises such as Uber and Waymo, the domestic car contract platform for the first motor vehicles and other vehicles is also constantly increasing the number of driverless businesses.