No one could have imagined that the ultra-Vietnamese car, which just shined at the 2024 Guangzhou Auto Show, has now stood at the fork of fate.
In November, it was reported that Chaoyue Automobile had problems in its operation, not only owing RMB 360,000 to brand communication suppliers, but also being exposed to negative news such as mass layoffs, wage suspension and social security suspension. In response to the above rumors, the company has issued a statement in response, saying that the company is operating normally.
An ultra-store located in Haidian District, Beijing is closed during business hours.
On December 11th, in the internal letter issued by Xia Yiping, CEO of Jiyue Automobile, the seemingly beautiful illusion was broken, and it was admitted that the company was in a difficult situation and should move towards a new stage of entrepreneurship 2.0.
It is said that it is good to enjoy the cool with the back of a big tree, but what kind of brand is the ultra-yue car backed by Baidu and Geely? What are its advantages? Where will the future go?
Where did the ultra-Vietnamese car come from?
Jiyue Automobile is a high-end automobile brand jointly built by Geely Holding Group and Baidu Holdings, which was hatched in the "Strategic Cooperation Project of Automobile Robots". Its predecessor was Jidu Automobile Co., Ltd., which was established in March 2021 with a registered capital of 2 billion yuan. Baidu and Geely own 55% and 45% of the shares respectively, and the legal representative is Xia Yiping.
In August 2023, Geely and Baidu jointly established Hangzhou Jiyue Automobile Technology Co., Ltd. (namely Jiyue Automobile). The affiliated companies of the two parties held 65% and 35% shares respectively. From the perspective of shareholding structure, Jiyue was considered as a subsidiary of Geely. At the same time, the legal representative of the new company, Dai Qing, was the legal representative and senior manager of several Geely companies. On the board of directors of Jiyue, Baidu had four board seats, including three Baidu executives and one Baidu appointed.
In addition, Baidu and Geely also set up a series of joint ventures including Jidu Automobile Co., Ltd. and Jidu Automobile (Hong Kong) Co., Ltd. for actual operation and decision-making power.
In February, 2022, the Notice of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology on Launching the Pilot Work of Commissioned Production of New Energy Vehicles put forward a clear requirement for the OEM mode, that is, both the entrusted enterprise and the entrusted enterprise must have production qualifications before OEM production. The requirement of "double qualification" means that Jidu automobile cannot directly entrust Geely to produce it.
As the leading party, Baidu can only borrow Geely’s car-making qualification and trademark "Jiyue". The joint venture company also takes Geely as the major shareholder to avoid the restrictions of the automobile industry policy and realize Baidu’s control over the car-making project by means of Geely’s manufacturing and authorized operation.
In other words, it can be understood that it is Huawei’s way of building cars, that is, Geely focuses on building cars and gives full play to its competitive advantages in R&D, manufacturing and supply chain management, while Extreme Yue focuses on the output of intelligent R&D results, and is also responsible for the market sales and business operations of vehicles. Both parties jointly support the R&D and product landing of Extreme Yue Automobile.
What are the technical advantages of Jiyue Automobile?
As a leading enterprise in the domestic AI field, Baidu has great advantages in intelligent cockpit and high-level intelligent driving. As early as 2013, Baidu began to invest in driverless projects, which was earlier than "Wei Xiaoli". In the more than 10 years of Baidu’s autonomous driving, it has successively launched the Apollon bus project, the shared unmanned vehicle project and the intelligent driving solution. However, compared with other new car-making forces, Baidu’s investment in intelligent driving seems to be only implemented in research and development, and it burns a lot of money, but it has not been realized for a long time. According to Baidu’s financial report, since the L4 business unit was formally established in 2015, Baidu’s annual R&D investment has been no less than 10 billion. In the past decade, the accumulated R&D investment has been close to 150 billion yuan.
In 2021, Li Yanhong defined three business models of Baidu’s intelligent driving business in an internal open letter: providing Apollo autopilot technology solutions for host manufacturers and helping car companies to quickly build autonomous driving capabilities; Build a car and integrate Baidu’s innovation in autonomous driving end to end; Shared unmanned vehicle service is commercialized by providing self-driving shared travel service. And the ultra-yue car is the landing of one of them.
In 2023, the first model of the original Jidu automobile was renamed as "",and entered the latest batch of automobile new products public announcement of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. In December of the same year, Jiyue announced that its second production car, which is positioned as a C-class pure electric AI smart car, was officially named ""and was launched in September 2024.
Baidu Apollo is one of the earliest intelligent driving systems in China, and its L4-level autopilot safety test mileage has exceeded 70 million kilometers. The whole system of Extreme Yue 01 comes standard with ROBO Drive intelligent driving platform based on Apollo, and adopts dual Orin chips, with a computing power of 508TOPS. The vehicle is equipped with 11 high-definition cameras, 12 ultrasonic radars and 5 millimeter-wave radars. BEV+Transformer pure visual perception algorithm and OCC Occupancy Network technology are adopted in the algorithm.
Empowered by Baidu Apollo’s advanced intelligent driving technology, Extreme Yue 01 has the function of point-to-point navigation assistance PPA, and has the advanced intelligent driving ability covering cities, highways and parking. Both the function and coverage are in line with the new forces in the first line. At the same time, the popular end-to-end technology and large models are also available in the ultra-car.
According to the evaluation of many domestic media, the intelligent driving ability of Extreme Yue Automobile belongs to the first-line level, which is equal to that of Tucki and Huawei.
In terms of product strength, Extreme Yue Automobile is manufactured based on Geely’s vast SEA architecture, which is a pure electric exclusive architecture and a fully original ecological architecture based on hardware layer, system layer and ecological layer. Many features are very advanced and powerful. Geely’s top brands, such as Lotus, Krypton, Lectra, smart, etc., are all manufactured based on the vast architecture of SEA. It can be seen that the foundation of Extreme Yue Automobile is very strong.
At the same time, Extreme Yue 01 also launched the fourth generation Snapdragon cockpit platform, Qualcomm Snapdragon 8295 chip. Baidu ERNIE Bot model is integrated into the software, which makes the intelligent cockpit of Extreme Yue 01 have strong AI ability, logical reasoning, strategic planning and content generation ability.
What will the ultra-Vietnamese car do in the future?
Backed by two giants, Baidu and Geely, it is actually a sign that the extremely good hand has gone to this step today.
First of all, it is the financial problem of Extreme Yue Automobile: at the board meeting in mid-August this year, the management of Extreme Yue reported to the board of directors the spending situation in the first half of the year and whether the new car will continue to be developed. At the same time, the board of directors also discussed a major topic-how long and how much money will it take for Extreme Yue to achieve profitability? Does Baidu still need to invest in Extreme Vietnam?
At the meeting, there was a disagreement between some senior executives and CEO in the company, that is, the company’s current management is not good, the company’s CEO’s management ability is short-board, and there are problems such as arbitrariness, which require decision support from the board of directors and shareholders’ meeting.
The authenticity of the above report has also been confirmed by Xia Yiping. Xia Yiping said in his apology: "Strategically, I didn’t do well. Financing should have been my most important duty, but I was too optimistic in the early days and did not foresee the seriousness of the funding problem. "
In addition, Xia Yiping also mentioned that there are serious faults in enterprise positioning and product marketing. He said: "My underestimation of the difficulty of building a car at the stage of brand concentration is also fatal. For example, the release node of the first model ROBO-01 lunar exploration version is a very important mistake. Originally, it was an excellent opportunity, but due to my poor judgment on regulatory risks, I not only wasted this opportunity, but also caused the company to almost die. "
In the face of the company’s dilemma, Xia Yiping also said that he forgot what the CEO should have done and did too much useless and internal work.
"I feel deeply sorry for employees, car owners, suppliers and even shareholders-original by Xia Yiping in apology book".
Secondly, the product, the first product 01 of Extreme Yue Automobile, went on the market in October 2023, and the sales volume fluctuated greatly, and the delivery volume failed to exceed four digits. It was not until May this year that the delivery volume of Extreme Yue brand exceeded 1,000. From July to October, the sales volume of Extreme Yue brand was 1,019, 2,117, 2,605 and 3,107 respectively.
Although in the past six months, the sales volume of Jiyue Automobile has increased significantly year-on-year, but this sales volume is at the bottom of the whole sales list. Faced with the problems in sales volume, it has a great relationship with its product positioning, dissemination and market competition.
48 hours after the collapse, the two major shareholders issued a joint statement saying that they would solve the social security payment of employees and the aftermath of resigned employees in the first time; Maintain the normal use, after-sales and maintenance of users’ vehicles; And promote the reasonable and legal settlement of other matters.
In the declaration, there is another paragraph that says: the ultra-yue automobile products are manufactured by Geely factory and authorized to be exclusively operated by Jidu. In fact, Baidu is in charge of the operation, but Baidu’s attitude is embarrassing.
Regarding the issues that users are concerned about, Li Tao, the head of Baidu IDG operation management, said that the ASD and map navigation services of Chaoyue will be covered by Baidu, and the service will not stop. The official account of Extreme Vietnam has also replied to the concerns of the car owners, but what is worrying is that three of the four replies indicate that they are seeking solutions, so please wait patiently for the car owners.
Is this the end of the super car? Obviously not. After all, Kyoko has not gone bankrupt and liquidated, and the negotiation and communication between employers and employees is still in progress. However, under such a farce, the ultra-Vietnamese car has obviously become a negative asset, and the owner can’t tell, Baidu is eager to get rid of it, and Geely is also in a dilemma. In the face of the future, perhaps Baidu, Geely and even the car itself are unpredictable. (Pengyue)