After the extreme thunderstorm, the four new car manufacturers that fell into bankruptcy or business difficulties became Weima, Gaohe, Nezha, and Jiyue.
Among them, two are heavily invested by Baidu, namely Weima and Jiyue.
If we include NIO's early investment, Baidu has failed to achieve its investment goals in the field of new energy vehicles as many as three times. According to incomplete statistics, the total investment amount is not less than 10 billion yuan.
Is this a coincidence?
In fact, the public's perception of Baidu's car manufacturing does not match its investment scale of over 10 billion yuan. This is not difficult to understand, because compared with Yu Chengdong of Huawei and Lei Jun of Xiaomi, Robin Lee's exposure to new energy vehicle platforms over the years is really low-key.
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In 2017, NIO completed a new round of financing of $600 million, led by Baidu Capital and Tencent. After this round of financing, Baidu became one of NIO's important shareholders.
After all, Weilai is the child of another family. Baidu's attitude at this time is just pure capital investment, so Robin Lee can't find the reason and actual action for Weilai's platform.
In 2019, NIO experienced a financial crisis and its stock price fell to $1.19 per share, approaching the $1 delisting threshold. Baidu also chose to sell NIO stocks this year, failing to provide support during NIO's difficult times.
It is interesting that on September 10th of this year, Li Bin, the chairman of NIO, attended the launch event of Jiyue 07 and posted a video publicly supporting Jiyue on social media.
Baidu's investment in WM Motor has also gone through multiple rounds. Since 2017, Baidu has invested in Weima for three times. Robin Lee holds about 10.22% shares of Weima Auto through his company, and Baidu has indirectly become the fourth largest shareholder of Weima Auto. In 2020, WM Motor completed a Series D financing of RMB 10 billion, with Baidu continuing to participate.
Baidu and WM Motor have also established the "WM&Apollo Intelligent Automotive Joint Technology Research and Development Center". In January 2021, WM Motor's new model W6, equipped with Baidu AVP autonomous parking solution, was unveiled, becoming the first consumer grade vehicle in China at that time to have "automatic parking" function.
However, WM Motor's operations have continued to deteriorate since 2022, and it eventually filed for bankruptcy reorganization in 2023. Baidu's investment failed to achieve the expected return.
What did Robin Lee do for Weima Motor? From the public materials, there is no trace that Robin Lee once commented and recommended Weima Motors.
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In contrast, Robin Lee's number of car appearances has been counted as "proactive".
In July 2021, Robin Lee, wearing a black T-shirt printed with Jidu Auto (the predecessor of Jiyue), appeared at the Jidu Headquarters, which had been established for only 120 days, and addressed all employees, saying that "Jidu carries Baidu's dream of making cars".
At the end of 2021, at the Baidu AI developer conference, Robin Lee again mentioned concentration and proposed a roadmap: the first concept car will be released in the first half of 2022, and mass production and delivery will be achieved in 2023.
At the 2022 Baidu Q1 performance conference, Robin Lee once again cheered up Jidu Auto, saying that it would be equipped with Baidu's latest automatic driving technology, and that "we are confident of winning a place in the tram market".
In April 2024, Robin Lee entered the Jiyue live broadcast room as the Jiyue platform, and announced the latest preferential policies with CEO Xia Yiping.
On September 10, 2024, Robin Lee, chairman and CEO of Ningde Times Zeng Yuqun, and founder, chairman and CEO of Weilai Li Bin, as special guests, jointly appeared at the Jiyue 07 listing conference.
At the beginning of the press conference, a group photo of the three of them went viral in the media group. However, it was not Robin Lee, who had sat down for two hours as a major shareholder, but Zeng Yuqun, chairman of Ningde Times, a battery supplier of Jiyue 07, who became the owner of New Car No. 1 at the press conference.
Even though CEO Xia Yiping invited him many times, Robin Lee did not make a speech on the stage in the end. He did not say a word during the meeting, and his performance was even worse than that of Li Bin - Li Bin sent a video on the same day, which was very popular in social media.
An anonymous person who has worked at Mobike, Meituan, and Jiyue also compared Meituan founder Wang Xing.
Wang Xing once invested 1.15 billion US dollars in Ideal Automobile. In his impression, "Wang Xing never hesitates to express his recognition and admiration for the Ideal Automobile brand in any occasion," and even employees who once wanted to report to Wang Xing would mostly replace their cars with Ideal, "because Wang Xing talks about Ideal every day.
According to the Securities Times, after the release of the Ideal L6 car on April 18th this year, Wang Xing said on his social media account, "Let me put it this way, I think among all the models launched by Ideal so far, the L6 is highly likely to be the one that Ideal's own employees buy the most. I believe many ideal employees are also aware of this in the process of designing and producing this car
03
However, Baidu has never officially acknowledged the concept of "making cars". In Baidu's strategy, it has always played the role of a technology service provider based on the Apollo intelligent driving system.
Similar to Baidu is Huawei.
Huawei Intelligent Automotive Solutions BU (Vehicle BU) was established in May 2019, positioned as an incremental component supplier for intelligent connected vehicles. In March 2023, Huawei internally issued a "no car manufacturing resolution", reportedly personally signed by Ren Zhengfei, with a validity period of five years.
However, this does not prevent Yu Chengdong from using various methods to instill the impression in the public's minds that "Wenjie is Huawei Auto".
In April 2021, Yu Chengdong attended the Cyberspace Ecological Release Conference and posted a Weibo call for the Huawei Smart Selection SF5, emphasizing the cooperation between Huawei and Cyberspace. In December of the same year, Yu Chengdong personally released the Sailis Wenjie M5 in a high-profile manner.
In January 2022, Yu Chengdong strongly supported the new model of "Huawei Sailis" and expressed his intention to expand and strengthen the car manufacturers that have deep cooperation with Huawei. On March 9th, the delivery of the Wanjie M5 began. Yu Chengdong boasted on Weibo about the Wanjie M5, stating that Huawei and Serys have a very deep cooperation.
On September 6, 2022, the WENJIE M5 EV was launched, and Yu Chengdong stood up for the WENJIE M5 EV at the Huawei Mate 50 series and all scenario new product autumn launch event.
On July 30, 2024, the 400000 Wanjie vehicles were rolled off the assembly line. Yu Chengdong stood on the platform for Wanjie at the ceremony and said, "Our cooperation with Sailis is the strongest example of cross-border integration in the new era. This is just the beginning, and the exciting things are still ahead
Yu Chengdong has repeatedly used absolute terms such as "strongest" and "best" in public and social media to describe the performance and market position of Wanjie Motors.
When introducing the Wenjie M7 and M9, Yu Chengdong boldly claimed that their market performance surpassed traditional luxury brands, with the Wenjie M7 achieving the top sales of over 300000 models in the Chinese market and the Wenjie M9 achieving the top sales of over 500000 models, surpassing BBA.
The world's most user-friendly intelligent parking "- This is Yu Chengdong's introduction to the intelligent parking function of the Wenjie M7.
"Without modesty, Huawei's ADS3.0 intelligent driving system is the strongest auto drive system in the world after comprehensive evaluation in all aspects." - This is Yu Chengdong's talk about Huawei's intelligent driving technology.
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In order to fully invest in the car, besides Yu Chengdong, there is probably only Lei Jun in the big factory.
During the three-year period from the announcement of car manufacturing to the launch of Xiaomi SU7, Lei Jun visited automobile giants such as Great Wall Motors, SAIC Motor, BYD, and Geely, and also learned from representatives of new car making forces such as He Xiaopeng, Li Bin, and Li Xiang. He personally test drove over 170 cars in the three years. After the launch of Xiaomi SU7, Lei Jun often conducted live broadcasts and filmed short videos to introduce Xiaomi cars to users.
In March 2021, Xiaomi released a car manufacturing announcement, and Lei Jun announced that he would invest $10 billion in "all in" car manufacturing over the next 10 years.
In December 2023, Lei Jun posted four Weibo posts to promote Xiaomi's automotive technology launch event. At the Xiaomi Auto Technology Conference on December 28th, Lei Jun personally unveiled the advertising slogan of Xiaomi Auto: "The unity of people and cars, my heart is surging
On February 22, 2024, Lei Jun shared the latest progress of Xiaomi's car manufacturing at the Xiaomi "Human Car Home Full Ecology" launch event.
On March 12, 2024, Lei Jun officially announced on Weibo that the Xiaomi SU7 will hold a launch event on March 28.
On March 19, 2024, Lei Jun attended the unveiling ceremony of Xiaomi's super factory to showcase Xiaomi's production capacity.
On March 28, 2024, Xiaomi SU7 was officially released, with Lei Jun hosting the entire event.
On April 3, 2024, at the delivery ceremony of Xiaomi's first batch of customers, Lei Jun personally attended and took a photo with the car owners.
On April 18, 2024, Lei Jun started a live stream to chat with netizens about the recent sales of SU7.
On July 19, 2024, Lei Jun shared the ins and outs of Xiaomi's car manufacturing and the stories of the past three years in his annual speech, and released the prototype of Xiaomi SU7 Ultra.
No wonder some netizens commented that compared to Lei Jun's "All in Car Manufacturing", Baidu can only be considered as "All in" on the surface.
05
Why doesn't Baidu dare to go all out to make cars? By examining the cautious attitude of Baidu and Robin Lee in the process of investing in new energy vehicles, we can analyze from multiple dimensions to understand the attitude of Robin Lee and Baidu.
According to the financial report for the third quarter of 2024, Baidu's total revenue was 33.6 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 3%, but its core net profit was 7.54 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 17%. This indicates that Baidu's core business revenue has maintained stable growth, especially in its online marketing business and non online marketing business (mainly driven by AI cloud business), both of which have achieved growth. Especially driven by the Wenxin big model, the revenue growth of AI cloud business has been significant, contributing to the overall revenue and profit of the company.
This indicates that Baidu's core business has always been focused on search engines and artificial intelligence technology. Although the new energy vehicle market has enormous potential, the high-risk and high investment characteristics of this field may not fully align with Baidu's main business and long-term strategic planning.
From an investment perspective, Baidu's investment in the field of new energy vehicles has encountered consecutive setbacks, with huge investments failing to bring expected returns and even facing financial losses. This undoubtedly makes Baidu more cautious in future investment decisions.
Finally, Baidu's strategic positioning in the field of new energy vehicles is as a technology service provider, rather than a direct automobile manufacturer. This is particularly evident in its continuous investment and promotion of the Apollo intelligent driving platform. Baidu is more inclined to utilize its technological advantages to provide intelligent solutions for the automotive industry, rather than directly participating in the competition of car manufacturing.
Robin Lee really seldom builds platforms for Baidu, which is closely related to his personal style and Baidu's corporate culture. Different from the high-profile propaganda of Yu Chengdong and Lei Jun, Robin Lee has always preferred to promote projects behind the scenes rather than carry out large-scale marketing at the front.
Therefore, Baidu and Robin Lee's cautious attitude in the process of investing in new energy vehicles may be due to their adherence to the company's core business, assessment of investment risks, consideration of strategic positioning and response to the market environment. Baidu may not have fundamentally agreed that new energy vehicles will become its cash flow "thigh". In the future, it may be difficult for us to see new energy vehicles made by Baidu again.