This article is from the WeChat official account:Cybercar (ID: Cyber-car)Author: Andy Xiao Ying, head image from: Visual China
Didi’s car manufacturing has made rapid progress.
Recently, a person familiar with the matter revealed to Cybercar.Didi’s car manufacturing plan may be officially announced in June this year.And strive to deliver the new car in June next year. Didi’s car-making business is code-named "Da Vinci", and the current team size is about 1,700 people, located in Shunyi, Beijing.
The first model developed by Didi may be an A-class pure electric vehicle for the mass consumer market, with a size close to that of BYD Qin and GAC Aian S, priced at about 150,000 yuan.
At the same time, Didi is also developing a second model for the online car-hailing market, the D1 Light, which is a lightweight version based on the D1 development. It is planned to be used by Hua Xiaozhu and is still produced by BYD.
Didi’s two car manufacturing projects,The model code for the online car-hailing market is D1, and the model code for the mass consumer market is C1.According to people familiar with the matter, on the surface, D1 and C1 are all led by Didi Chuxing Vice President Yang Jun, but in fact, Yang Jun is mainly responsible for D1, and the C1 project is chaired by Didi veteran employee Luo Wen, who reports directly to Didi Chuxing CEO Cheng Wei.
In addition, among the known project leaders, Liu Haijiang, vice president of Didi Chuxing and general manager of the Automotive Innovation Center, is in charge of the supply chain, and Zhang Rui, who was the general manager of Didi Hitch Division, is in charge of user operations. At present, the supplier is gradually being confirmed, and the power battery supplier may be Ningde Times or BYD.
Another person familiar with the matter said,Didi plans to acquire a car manufacturing qualification and factory.In order to fully control the R & D and production of C1. At present, the acquisition target is locked in the factory located in Ganzhou, Jiangxi Province. Insiders of the company also said that the possibility of a deal is relatively high, and there may be results at the end of the month. At present, employees are waiting for follow-up arrangements.
Resolution car
Didi has always had the idea of building a car, and it was only after the release of Didi D1 that it truly decided to build a car independently.
From the earliest cooperation with Li Auto and the establishment of the "Torrent Alliance", to the cooperation with BYD and the release of D1,Didi’s car-making strategy has undergone a shift from "cooperating with car companies" to "building cars independently".
In April 2018, Didi and 31 auto industry chain companies jointly launched the "Torrent Alliance". During this period, Cheng Wei has always declared that Didi will not build cars. Just like Huawei today, the story is about empowering car companies.
The logic behind this strategy is also very simple. As the scene operator, Didi has the right to decide what car the platform wants and what car it doesn’t want. Behind the power lies the game with car companies. Once Didi builds a car, it is equivalent to being both a referee and a player, breaking the balance with car companies. Therefore, in order to win mutual benefit and trust with car companies, in the initial stage, Didi prefers to cooperate in car building.
According to public information, a month before the establishment of the "Torrent Alliance", Didi and Li Auto finalized a strategic cooperation, and the two sides established a joint venture company to jointly build models for the mobility market.
On the same timeline, there is also undisclosed information that Didi’s car-building cooperation with BYD is also in the pipeline. According to people familiar with the matter, in 2017 and 2018, Liu Haijiang visited a number of OEMs extensively to finalize the car-building cooperation.
At that time, most car companies did not think that Didi could help much in sales, so they did not promote cooperation with Didi.
As for why BYD was able to accept Didi, there are two theories.
One theory is that in 2017, BYD was in a period of sluggish sales, with both sales and net profit falling sharply. In 2018, the competitive environment of the entire automobile market became even worse, ushering in the first negative growth of our country’s automobile market in 28 years. In this context, BYD is willing to make more attempts.
Another theory is that at that time, Didi’s control of car manufacturing costs was very strict, and other car companies were unable to achieve such costs. Only BYD could barely afford it.
Although Didi quickly reached cooperation with Li Auto and BYD before and after the "Torrent Alliance", the follow-up progress was not smooth.
First, Li Auto had another way out. In August 2019, in the C round of financing, Li Auto took money from Wang Xing, the founder of Meituan, Didi’s biggest competitor. Didi felt that the ideal was "treacherous", which caused the project to die.
At the same time, after experiencing the car market downturn in 2018, BYD’s sales have improved, and the importance of cooperation with Didi has not been so high, which has led to the slow progress of the D1 project, which is at least half a year later than expected.
In addition, Didi also realized that,In cooperation with car companies, it is difficult for Didi to have dominance and has the voice over.
From the surface, the cooperation between the two parties has a clear division of labor and is led by Didi. According to the official statement of Didi at that time, Didi is responsible for the definition and design of products, while BYD is equivalent to the role of product manager, based on hardware manufacturing, quality control and other capabilities, to control the whole process from Product Research & Development to landing.
But in fact,The scope for Didi to play at the product definition level is very limited.
Didi insiders revealed that the appearance, interior, BYD can compromise, but once it comes to the core level of hardware and system, Didi does not have the voice over. Even so far, Didi wants some key data about the car, but still can’t get it.
It may have been two less beautiful collaborations that completely dashed Didi’s illusion of cooperating with OEMs to build cars.
Sell to C-end
At first, when Cheng Wei was thinking about Didi’s entire business model,The top priority is not building cars, but autonomous driving.
According to Didi insiders, Cheng Wei has been worried about what will happen to Didi if they continue to follow the business model of online car-hailing. The final judgment is that the proportion of labor costs for online car-hailing is too high, the business model is unhealthy, and unhealthy will lead to chronic death.
In the very early days, Didi had a basic judgment that only by eliminating the labor cost can Didi’s online car-hailing model be healthy in the future. Therefore, Didi made it clear that autonomous driving is the most necessary thing, and it cannot be left to others to do it.
In 2016, Didi began research on autonomous driving.At the time it had a very romantic name for the department of the future – Voyager(Voyage explorer)…
Then, Didi began to think about another problem, how to implement autonomous driving. If joint ventures with car companies are one of Didi’s fantasies, then another of Didi’s fantasies is to sell autonomous driving systems to car companies. Under this strategy, in August 2019, Didi Chuxing announced that it would upgrade its autonomous driving department to an independent company.
Didi’s strategy is very logical. Compared with many online ride-hailing platforms,The core competitiveness of Didi is the certainty of service.Including the certainty of waiting, the certainty of arrival, and the certainty of the halfway experience. Imagine if one day the autonomous driving technology is mature, and there are more than a dozen different software and hardware systems on the Didi platform, how will Didi get through, dispatch, and ensure safety? These will be big potential problems.
Therefore,Didi must unify its autonomous driving strategy to ensure overall control and planning.Building a mature autonomous driving system to sell to car companies may have been Didi’s wishful thinking when it broke up the autonomous driving company.
However, what made Didi unexpected was that,The arrival of autonomous driving will take so long.This gives automakers enough time to develop themselves, leveling the competitive advantage of early players such as Didi and Baidu. In other words, automakers will not purchase its autonomous driving system as Didi wishes.
If we can’t achieve extensive cooperation with car companies through the B-end breakthrough, then Didi is facing a big problem, how to accumulate the scale of the vehicle? The cost of an L4 autonomous vehicle is not low, and it is unrealistic for Didi to bear the full cost by itself.
Then, there is only one path before Didi, that is, it must build a car and sell it to users.
Didi builds its own cars, which can simultaneously meet core needs such as scale, cost sharing, and continuous cash flow. If this move is correct, Didi will gain time to breathe and continue to consolidate its online car-hailing business.
This can also be confirmed by the model products created by Didi. The product pricing of C1 and D1 is in the range of 15 to 200,000 yuan, and the competition is the main model of the current special express car.
Therefore, fundamentally,Didi car is still paving the way for online car-hailing.Solve the dilemma of the online car-hailing business model.
maximum injury
Didi has revealed in the prospectus that autonomous driving and shared transportation platforms, car service networks, and electric vehicles have become the four core strategic blocks for Didi to build the future of Chuxing. At present, with the conclusion of the car construction project, Didi’s four main business sectors have made substantial progress.
Despite this, the future of Didi is not clear. According to Didi insiders, after the announcement of the delisting of US stocks, other measures related to Didi’s punishment have not yet come down. It feels like things are not over yet, and no one knows where Didi will go.
On March 11, Didi was revealed to have suspended preparations for a Hong Kong stock listing because it failed to meet regulators’ data security requirements. This cast another shadow on Didi’s development prospects.
In the short term, it is difficult for Didi to do more in the online car-hailing business. According to the statistics of the national online car-hailing regulatory information exchange platform, after the regulatory storm, Didi’s monthly market share of online car-hailing once fell by more than 20%.
An industry insider working for a leading online ride-hailing company said that the data of the regulatory platform is mainly filled in by the company itself, and there may be some moisture in the decline of 20%, but even if it decreases by 20%, Didi will rebound, and other players will still lack the ability to deal with it.
Therefore, at this stage, for Didi, it may be the most appropriate thing to recharge and create a good enough car product, so that all previous plans can become meaningful.
Didi has put more attention on building cars and autonomous driving, and Didi insiders say that the person in charge will stay in Shunyi for half of the week to supervise the battle.
Even so, in the eyes of internal employees, Didi Car still has one of the biggest flaws.It’s just that there is no high-level executive who really understands cars to control this matter.
The employee said that in the process of cooperating with BYD to build cars,Didi has not amassed enough technology and talent.Cheng Wei himself summed up the cooperation between the two parties, saying that Didi was just a student and learned the complexity of car building.
From D1 to C1, Didi has not had a senior chief engineer who understands cars. Yang Jun and Liu Haijiang are both from Lenovo, while Luo Wen and Liu Rui are internal employees of Didi. These team managers have limited knowledge of cars and it is difficult to make reasonable judgments.
In addition, although Didi’s autonomous driving started early, the team’s development has undergone several twists and turns, and the overall advancement speed is slow. Whether it can become the killer of Didi’s car building is still difficult to judge.
No matter what, Didi’s entry into the car market will stir up the entire automotive industry ecosystem. Let’s keep our expectations for the official announcement of Didi’s car project.
This article is from the WeChat official account:Cybercar (ID: Cyber-car)Author: Andy Xiao
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