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Text/Liu Guangyu
Source / Garage 42 (ID: i42how)
Jidu’s first breakout marketing took place on June 8, 2022. Jidu held its first brand conference ROBODAY and officially released the brand’s first “automobile robot concept car – ROBO-01”. The ROBO-01 and the technology behind it, which should have been the focus of attention, were completely overshadowed by the limelight of this unique metaverse conference. Metaverse conference, this is indeed the first time in the automotive circle.
After the press conference, everyone was discussing why the press conference was so “pixels” and “ghost animals”. It was like a graduation work in animation at station B, and even Jidu CEO Xia Yiping’s metaverse twin image was much thinner than himself! And Xia Yiping’s reply after the press conference also replied with a self-deprecating reply, saying that it could have been done very realistically, but for the effect, it was specially pixelated, and even a relatively thin avatar was specially modeled to motivate himself to lose weight.
From the “automobile robot” product to the “metaverse conference”, as well as the CEO’s self-deprecating self-deprecation, they all told me that Jidu is a maverick player. On August 8th, I was invited to the brand new headquarters “JIDUROBOBASE” where Jidu has just settled in for a few days, and participated in the ecological partner conference held by Jidu in the “Automobile Robot Base”.
At the meeting, Xia Yiping announced a “2880” strategy: by 2028, it will have the ability to deliver 800,000 vehicles throughout the year. At the same time, it also announced that it will enter 46 cities across the country in 2023, and the first store will open in Shanghai as soon as this year.
To achieve the goal of 2880, the 525-day set degree has just been established by August 8. Why?
525 days of grades
In these more than 500 days, the rapid expansion of the team, product definition, concept car debut, etc. have been completed.
The newly completed headquarters of Jidu is located at No. 1688, Yecheng Road, Jiading District, Shanghai, which is relatively close to the city center of Jiading. The entire ROBOBASE building area is nearly 20,000 square meters. At present, the number of employees here is about 1,400, and the total can accommodate 3,000 people. At the same time, the construction of the second phase of the project will start nearby this year. According to PR’s introduction, when the school recruited the most recently, hundreds of people would join in a day. She even emphasized that Jidu’s recruitment is completely independent, without the slightest influence from Baidu and Geely.
From the moment I stepped into the concentrated ROBOBASE, I felt the purple vibe that hit me, which reminded me of the main color of the first EVA machine. The purple color of the Jidu brand is officially called “JIDUAI-Purple”. The origin of this purple color is also very interesting. It is determined by the AI. This color is a blue-violet color when liquid helium enters an ionized state in an extreme low-pressure experiment.
With the official opening of the Shanghai Center, Jidu officially completed the construction of the dual headquarters in Beijing and Shanghai. In fact, Jidu still has some staff residing in Hangzhou Bay at present, mainly responsible for the work of connecting with Geely SEA platform, while the main functions of Shanghai headquarters are product design, R&D and sales. The Beijing headquarters mainly focuses on the application development of intelligent driving, intelligent cockpit and other in-vehicle software and intelligent networked systems.
Behind Jidu are the autonomous driving leader Baidu and the transforming traditional auto giant, which brings Jidu a more friendly financing environment and excellent software and hardware capabilities, and Jidu’s expansion speed is also very fast. With the breaking of Jidu’s metaverse conference, many media outside the circle are even saying that Baidu is going to build a car. Is this really the case?
Jidu, Baidu, Geely
Jidu was originally established by Baidu, and then Geely made a strategic investment in Jidu. In my original idea, the existence of Jidu is to take over Baidu’s capability advantages in assisted driving and cockpit, and then quickly implement the product through the SEA architecture provided by Geely. According to this logic, the set degree is essentially driven by Baidu’s strategy.
And the fact is that the independence of sets is very strong. This can be reflected from CEO Xia Yiping’s own resume and PR’s emphasis on Jidu’s employee recruitment system. So what is the relationship between Jidu and Baidu and Geely?
Baidu and Geely are both integrated suppliers.
Geely’s relationship is actually easier to understand. For a brand-new brand like Jidu, it is the safest decision to find a leading traditional car company to cooperate and quickly finalize the hardware platform if it needs to launch products quickly without production qualifications. . For Jidu, Geely is not only a supplier that can provide hardware production capacity, but also can teach Jidu the experience of automobile production. For example, at this eco-partner conference, Jidu is telling everyone: We have a very good sales target, and you can make money by cooperating with me.
In fact, it can be seen from the composition of suppliers participating in the conference that most of them are suppliers of Geely SEA, which are considered to be “packaged” for the Jidu platform. And I personally have a small idea, that is, in the near future, starting from the second car of Chidu, Chidu may choose to engage in the production of the hardware part. Because as far as I know, most of the suppliers participating in the conference mainly meet the needs of Geely, and according to the needs of Jidu for the definition of the vehicle, Jidu needs to have the right to speak in the hardware part.
And Jidu can’t be regarded as “Baidu’s car”, because Jidu uses the underlying capabilities of Baidu Apollo, how to display it externally, that is, the final definition of the product, is Jidu’s own idea, they decided The final form and capability of the product that consumers actually come into contact with.
In Xia Yiping’s own words:
We used Baidu’s voice, including the atomic core technology capabilities of Maps, Smart Driving, and Robotaxi, but how to make the atomic core technology capabilities through some local adjustments of technology, for example, in autonomous driving, we call the sequence of algorithms, or The combination of the front and the back, and some technical adjustments can be made to create a product that is more suitable for promotion and oriented to the C-end. Such an experience is what we are doing.
JIDU ROBO-01
As the first car of the entire brand, the ROBO-01 mass production version aims to mass-produce 90% of the design of the concept car.
The side door design without B-pillars in appearance is difficult to retain on mass-produced cars, but there are many aerodynamic designs of the interactive light group that will be used.
The most striking thing in the interior is this huge integrated non-splicing large screen that runs through the entire cabin, and the resolution has also reached 6k. Although Baidu-enabled voice has not yet experienced the Demo version, the official publicity has added the full offline voice function, which covers more comprehensive voice scenarios.
And this retractable steering wheel should not be mass-produced, but this “half-section” steering wheel similar to Tesla Yoke may be retained, because our law does not stipulate the shape of the steering wheel, and the regulations can be passed.
After the appearance of the Yoke steering wheel, many car owners, including Xia Yiping, changed their cars and then had a practical experience. But the problem is that since the steering ratio is fixed, in the case of a U-turn, the steering wheel needs to be turned more than 90 degrees, and a steering wheel such as the Yoke is not as good as a complete steering wheel. Of course, we can solve this problem by proportionally changing the steering ratio by wire control.
Xia Yiping also revealed that Jidu will soon release a limited edition of the first mass-produced car robot model, and will also open pre-orders at the same time, and the earliest delivery time will be in the second half of 2023. The exterior design of Jidu’s second model will be unveiled at the Guangzhou Auto Show at the end of 2022, and delivery is expected to begin as early as 2024.
Regarding the price of the ROBO-01, Robin Li revealed in Baidu’s financial report in Q1 this year that Jidu’s first mass-produced product is positioned in the 200,000-level household market, and you can make a reference.
Experience the “best” assisted driving
Regarding the assisted driving of ROBO-01, whether it is Xia Yiping or Robin Li’s rhetoric, they have sated the appetite of consumers:
Xia Yiping emphasized that the first automotive robot product delivered by mass production in 2023 will have the best “door-to-door, start-to-stop” high-level autonomous driving capabilities in the same period.
Robin Li, founder, chairman and CEO of Baidu, even said: In terms of autonomous driving technology, Jidu will lead the Tesla generation!
The perception hardware of ROBO-01 is as follows:
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12 cameras: 7 8-megapixels + 4 3-megapixels + 1 2-megapixel (front trinocular consists of 2 8-megapixels and 1 2-megapixel);
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2 Hesai AT128 semi-solid lidars;
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5 millimeter wave radars;
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12 ultrasonic radars;
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2 Orin-X chips (redundant 8295).
With this set of hardware, Jidu will create the best-in-class “door-to-door, start-stop” high-level autonomous driving capability in the same period.
Regarding the layout of the lidar, in our previous Weibo, Li Xiang and Xia Yiping expressed different opinions, which are essentially the different scene requirements of the two. In terms of concentration, the two lidars need to participate in the coverage of the “travel + parking” scene, especially for the sight line that is easily blocked by the pillars when parking, and the lidar needs to have a wider angle for perception. The following is Xia Yiping’s original words:
Suppose your car is parked in a scene with pillars on both sides, and there is no FOV180° lidar to help you watch the oncoming cars a few meters away from the left and right. The real so-called self-driving parking is simply impossible, because your safety level is completely unreachable.
The hidden pop-up lidar on the front cover should not appear on the production version of ROBO-01, because the relevant patent application cycle is too long to catch up with the delivery time, so the position of the subsequent lidar will likely appear in the front. Near the headlights, the relevant solutions can refer to the location of P5.
On this hardware-aware computing platform, Qualcomm’s 8295 will also participate, which is an innovative setting of concentration. In the words of the set degree, it is to pave the way for “L4 legislation”. This is mainly to deal with the processing mechanism of Orin when it fails in extreme cases. At this time, the perception data will be transported to the cockpit chip 8295 for processing to ensure the safety and redundancy of assisted driving, while the usual cross-domain data channel will not Actively connect.
Whether to experience the “best” “door-to-door, start-to-stop” high-level autopilot capabilities, we still need to wait for the official delivery performance of ROBO-01 next year. The expectations of the car’s ability may be appropriately raised.
The set degree is indeed a bit special, which can be seen from their metaverse marketing and concept design. A staff member who resigned from Baidu and entered Jidu through normal recruitment told me that Jidu’s corporate culture is very flat and relaxed, unlike Baidu’s high barriers between various parts. important reasons.
Standing on the basis of Baidu Apollo and Geely SEA, Jidu started with a good vision. For Jidu, which has not yet delivered a car, the delivery target of 800,000 is still far away, but Jidu is now on the road.
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