How Baidu Makes Cars? Xia Yiping, CEO Of Jidu Automobile Co., Ltd., Debuted For The First Time

Dressed in "Jidu" geek black T-shirt, wearing a pair of thin frame glasses, speaking a little faster, quick thinking. Xia Yiping, the CEO of Jidu Automobile Co., Ltd., made his first public appearance in front of the media after two months in office.

In the past two months, Xia Yi has been in the focus of media attention. As an operator of Baidu car making, Xia Yiping's ideas and style, to a certain extent, represent the future of Jidu automobile.

Looking back on these two months, Xia Yiping confessed that he was extremely busy“ In the past, the main focus has been on recruitment. We have always been short of people, and we will recruit a lot of people by the end of this year. Now almost four or five people enter the job every day. " On April 23, in an interview with media including the 21st century economic report, Xia Yiping said frankly.

In addition to interview and team building, there are also the prototype definition of products and the series design of new cars... As a start-up enterprise backed by Baidu and bearing Li Yanhong's great expectations, at the same time, in the face of more and more technological car making forces this year, Jidu automobile under the leadership of Xia Yiping must run at full speed.

However, in the face of the most concerned about the outside world of Jidu car, Xia Yiping is full of confidence. In his opinion, at the just concluded Shanghai auto show, there was no product that could be benchmarked with Jidu automobile in his mind. According to its disclosure, Jidu's first new car close to mass production will be on display at next year's Beijing auto show.

As for the differences between the new cars, Xia Yiping sold the key“ It is not so much a car as an intelligent robot. " Xia Yiping told the 21st century economic report that because the future car is not only a means of travel, but also a second living space for mobile, "we hope to be a benchmark electric vehicle with the best user experience and the highest degree of intelligence".

Both Jidu auto and Apollo were born in Baidu- Visual China

Who is Xia Yiping?

On January 11 this year, baidu announced the establishment of a smart car company with Geely as its strategic partner. The auto company is independent of the parent company system and maintains independent operation.

On February 22, baidu confirmed that Xia Yiping, the former co-founder and CTO of Moby bicycle, would become CEO of the company.

According to the public information, Xia Yiping was once the head of the Asia Pacific intelligent vehicle service division of Fiat Chrysler, co-founder and chief technical officer of Moby, and owns more than 20 domestic and foreign invention, utility model and software copyright patents.

Whether he was in a car company or in an Internet technology company, Xia Yiping is very close to technology“ I was the first to do software, write code, and later did the system architecture, core architecture, and the so-called pre-sale in it Xia Yiping recalled.

In 2009, out of love for cars, Xia Yiping joined Ford“ At that time, Ford's intelligent car system sync just landed in China. I was particularly interested in it. I felt that such a system was a pioneer in the previous stage of automobile intelligence. " Therefore, Xia Yiping joined Ford as the first person in the team.

Through the localization of sync products in China, the establishment of Ford Asia Pacific car service department, the development and deployment of the core product aplink and its corresponding ecology, Xia Yiping's workplace has changed from China to North America. During his stay in the United States, Xia Yiping has begun to deepen the contents related to intelligent vehicles such as voice recognition and offline navigation.

Five years later, Xia Yiping returned to China and joined Fiat Chrysler as head of the Asia Pacific intelligent vehicle service. Since then, with the upsurge of entrepreneurship, Xia Yiping chose Mobai.

"At that time, I was responsible for the products, the company's growth and technology, and I also did a lot of system level things such as back-end identification," said Xia. "Looking back at the current smart cars, there are certain similarities in technology."

Whether it is in the past industry, management experience, or interest in smart cars, these have laid the foundation for Xia Yiping to join Jidu automobile“ At that time, Ren Xuyang (Chairman of Baidu capital) and Robin came to me and asked me if I would like to do it. I said without hesitation, "I really want to do it." "I think (this thing) is particularly interesting," Xia told reporters

How about team building?

On March 2, baidu smart car "Jidu" was officially registered. From the official announcement in January to the official registration in March, the progress of Baidu's car making continued to be updated.

"During this period of time, I mainly focused on the recruitment team. I interviewed two or three hundred people in the past month or two. I often interviewed from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. on weekends," Xia Yiping said. "Without a team, I can't do this at all, so I prefer to focus on team building early."

According to reports, at present, the core team of Jidu automobile has been basically established, including market brand, user operation, automobile engineering design, automobile engineering research and development, basic project management, etc. Now, three months after the official announcement, the team of Jidu automobile has expanded to more than 100 people.

"Starting a business is like fighting a war. In the early days, it is more like guerrillas and more goal-oriented," says Xia Yiping. According to the current rhythm of Jidu automobile, it will recruit talents according to the goals that need to be achieved in the next three months, such as brand, planning, design, system architecture development, microcontroller development, etc., who can be decoupled from vehicle development.

Since the launch of the vehicle project, Xia Yiping has paid more attention to recruiting product managers“ In the second half of each stage, there are also procurement, quality control and other links that need to be recruited. In the future, software engineers will also be needed in the back-end of the Internet of vehicles and automatic driving platform, "said Xia Yiping." in short, our recruitment is strongly guided by strategic objectives, and we will continue to recruit people by stages. "

According to Xia Yiping's prediction, by the end of this year, Jidu will expand to about 1500 people, and will maintain the scale of 2000 to 3000 by the end of next year. The number of team is closely related to the development stage of Jidu automobile.

What kind of car is Jidu?

At the same time, Xia Yiping team also launched the early definition and design of Jidu automobile.

At present, the intelligent automobile industry mostly adopts OTA (over the air)

This technology is to download the software update package from the remote cloud server through the network to update and upgrade its own system.

In this way of thinking, sensors and other hardware as "tentacles" affect the intelligent effectiveness of vehicles to a certain extent. Therefore, the two routes dispute between lidar and camera is born, and many car companies are superstitious about stacking hardware and upgrading software.

However, in Xia Yiping's view, the focus of Jidu automobile is not here“ Jidu must be a L4 car, but it's not the first time to stack the hardware and then upgrade the OTA. Instead, it's a vehicle with L4 level capability from the electronic and electrical architecture to the software and then to the hardware. "

Therefore, during the just concluded Shanghai auto show, Xia Yiping also lamented in his circle of friends that lidar is only a small part of the value of automatic driving, and Jidu car "is not the best lidar".

The reason why Ota is popular at present is that there are still "shackles" of traditional cars in the new intelligent automobile products“ The electronic and electrical architecture, chassis, etc. in the traditional automobile can not fully carry the L4 level capacity, because L4 has high requirements on computing power, perception and other aspects, and the technology of the electronic and electrical layer of the car factory without core R & D capability will fall far behind the requirements of L4. " Xia Yiping said bluntly.

The electronic and electrical architecture of Jidu automobile is completely developed by ourselves. At present, Jidu automobile is building its own SOA (open software platform), aiming to decouple the upper layer of the future electronic and electrical architecture with the vehicle.

"We have our own core team to carry out embedded software research and development. To a large extent, we are not only making a unmanned car with the best user experience from the perspective of products, but also hope to be in the lead in the underlying technology." Xia Yiping said.

This also means that the team and personnel structure of Jidu automobile company is completely different from that of traditional automobile enterprises. In addition to the people of traditional automobile enterprises, nearly half of the people in Jidu automobile are from the Internet and consumer electronics industry. In the future, on the one hand, Jidu will integrate these two kinds of talents. Meanwhile, as a company with full digital background, Jidu will build all of them on the digital process from user operation, market operation to product and after-sales.

However, under the idea and layout completely different from traditional automobile enterprises and even traditional intelligent automobile enterprises, Jidu automobile will be greatly different from existing products in terms of design concept and product itself“ Even in today's Stadium, I think (Jidu car) is the most beautiful one. " Xia Yiping said.

Xia Yiping didn't give too much technical details, but he pointed out that it is better to understand the car as an intelligent robot rather than a car.

"No matter in the interaction design or appearance, we will integrate a lot of robot design feelings," Xia Yiping pointed out. "Whether it is the underlying technology, or the design appearance, as well as the intelligent ability of vehicles, including brand DNA, they will be very different from the existing vehicles. It will be a real L4 level vehicle."

How to cooperate with Geely and Apollo?

In the process of new car R & D, the team of Jidu has been cooperating with Geely and Baidu Apollo.

For example, the first vehicle was developed based on Geely's vast open platform“ However, there is gap between the vast platform and our needs. We need to coordinate with Geely to make changes to the vast platform based on our own product requirements. " "On the one hand, Geely will help us land, on the other hand, we hope to help them have more abilities through landing," Xia said

At the same time, the cooperation with Geely will go deep into the supply chain and quality system that Geely is good at, which is why baidu chooses Geely as its partner“ It is very expensive for a start-up auto company to develop its own supply chain. We will use Geely's supply chain resources to find suitable suppliers, and even share some parts. However, we still have the dominant power. " Xia Yiping explained.

In the process of cooperation with Baidu Apollo team, the latter is more similar to the technical capability provider of Jidu automobile.

"The capabilities provided by Apollo are like Lego parts. How each car factory assembles these parts into its own pattern is what each car factory does according to its own user group and product positioning." Xia Yiping explained that, therefore, the cooperation between Apollo and other automobile enterprises will not affect the cooperation between Jidu and Apollo.

However, the cooperation of other automobile enterprises is different. As both Jidu automobile and Apollos are born in Baidu, their product ideas and goals are more consistent. In other words, even though the first Jidu car did not adopt all the technical capabilities of Apollo platform, it was also the vehicle with the deepest technical capability of Apollo.

What's the pace of new car launch?

According to Xia Yiping, Jidu auto products will launch new cars at the speed of one to one and a half years according to the "series" planning, and the first electric vehicle will be launched within three years.

As for the pricing range of the new car, Xia Yiping did not disclose, but he pointed out that the car will be aimed at younger user groups and will take into account the needs of some female users.

In the context of the rise of Internet car making forces, the positioning of young user groups is not uncommon. For example, at the end of March this year, Xiaomi company, which strongly announced its entry into the field of car manufacturing, is good at the operation of young users. Through the business model of "hardware flattening, software profitability", Xiaomi has attracted a large number of fans in the era of smart phones.

Xia Yiping said frankly that the current business model of smart cars is also changing. "In the future, whether to make money from hardware or software is something we need to think about. However, the fundamental problem lies in the core competitiveness, that is, whether the products can be produced in mass production and the cost can be controlled. "

What is the future investment?

Qixinbao information shows that Baidu and Geely hold 55:45 shares in Jidu Automobile Co., Ltd. The registered capital of the company is 2 billion yuan.

"We are not a joint venture company, and we will carry out social fund-raising in the future," Xia Yiping pointed out. "Baidu, as the leading company, will continue to support and invest in us."

According to Xia Yiping, Jidu will invest 50 billion yuan (about 7.7 billion dollars) in smart cars in the next five years. This is not a small amount of money. Previously, Xiaomi said when announcing the car production that it would invest US $10 billion in the next 10 years, with the initial investment of 10 billion yuan. Judging from the amount of capital investment of Jidu automobile disclosed by Xia Yiping, the investment scale of Xiaomi will be at least the same magnitude.

At the same time, the car making mode of Jidu automobile is different from Xiaomi and other new technological forces.

Xiaomi has publicly said that its automobile company will be a "wholly-owned form" and set up a wholly-owned subsidiary of intelligent electric vehicles, which also means that Xiaomi automobile company belongs to the extremely heavy mode. Alibaba's car making model is an ordinary "joint venture mode". At present, it has invested 1.8 billion yuan in Zhiji automobile, but its equity is only 18%, which belongs to the relatively "light assets" mode.

Baidu in the middle, choose the "form of holding", and jointly set up a joint venture with Geely, with 55% of the investment holding, forming the right to speak on the joint venture. Although in terms of absolute value of funds, Baidu has only invested 1.1 billion yuan in concentration, which is the lowest among the giants. However, as Xia Yiping said, Baidu will continue to invest itself and promote the entry of external capital. The fund ammunition of Jidu automobile is also considerable.

But for cars, funding is only the first step. According to the 21st century economic report, it is not completely sorted out. In addition to Baidu, technology companies such as Xiaomi and Alibaba have entered the Bureau. Didi is also rumored to be involved in the field of car manufacturing. In addition, there are many home appliance enterprises also spread the news of car making recently. It is an obvious fact that in 2021, car making has become a situation of many parties. How does Jidu automobile kill its own road remains to be tested by time.

(Editor: Li Qingyu)

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