Baidu behind Weimar may be the biggest new force in the automotive industry

On September 22, WM Motor officially announced that it had received tens of billions of financing, completing the largest single round of financing for a new car-making force.

Baidu participated in this round of financing, continuing to maintain the status of WM's largest institutional shareholder, and solidifying the impression of the alliance between the four new car companies and the four technology giants, namely Baidu stands with WM, Tencent has NIO, and Alibaba and Meituan have staked respectively. Pay attention to Xiaopeng and ideals.

In fact, in the field of smart cars, the strategic layout, technical reserves and resource investment of other giants are far inferior to Baidu. Cars or travel are not its main tracks. Investment is more about seeking industrial dividends, and at most it is just a trap.

Baidu is different. Its ecology in the field of automobile travel is impressive. Especially since this year, the commercialization of the intelligent driving platform Apollo has made rapid progress and has become a new growth engine. It may even become an intelligent transportation company in the future. If you combine the progress of the Apollo ecosystem and look at the investment strategy of Weimar, Baidu is playing a big game.

Capital + technology, dual empowerment

Baidu has a long-standing interest in car manufacturing and travel, and it also had plans in its early years.

A well-known case is that Baidu made a strategic investment in Uber in 2014 and later also held a stake in Didi. In addition, Baidu also invested in NIO. Looking at it now, the nature of these two investments is more financial investment, and Baidu has not been involved in the business level of the two companies.

Baidu’s first investment in Weimar occurred in November 2017, when it led the Series B financing. At that time, Baidu had promoted its Apollo open ecosystem and announced its ambitions in the field of smart cars.

In hindsight,WM Motor's business relationship with Baidu and its Apollo ecosystem is far deeper than other "giant + car company" alliances. The two have the most in-depth cooperation, and their business steps are quite consistent. Baidu exports far more than just capital..

Let’s briefly sort out the timeline since 2019:

In January 2019, at the CES electronics show in the United States, Baidu released Apollo 3.5 and officially released Apollo Enterprise (Apollo Enterprise Edition) - a set of mass production, customization, and Safe autonomous driving and connected car solutions.

WM Motor signed a contract with Baidu at the scene to reach a long-term strategic partnership in the field of L3 and L4 autonomous driving solutions, and will provide Baidu with vehicles for autonomous driving R&D and testing.

In March 2019, the Mianyang Municipal Government of Sichuan signed a contract with WM Motor to establish the "WM & Apollo Intelligent Vehicle Joint Technology R&D Center". Baidu, as an AI autonomous driving supplier, witnessed the attendance. The government, car companies, and technology platforms worked together to launch the implementation. Autonomous driving commercialization strategy.

Weimar has also adopted a variety of business solutions from Baidu Apollo. 

In July this year, Baidu and auto parts company Flextronics jointly announced that the world's first mass-produced autonomous driving computing platform ACU, jointly developed by both parties, was officially offline. This mass-produced ACU hardware platform is the first to be used in the Apollo Valet Parking (AVP) autonomous parking product jointly developed by Baidu and WM Motor. WM Motor has also become the first domestic car company to mass-produce and implement the AVP autonomous parking solution. .

It is reported that the first batch of vehicles equipped with autonomous parking functions cooperating between the two parties will be mass-produced and rolled off the production line as early as 2021, and user experience and pre-sales will begin.

As far as WM Motor is concerned, Baidu has empowered this cutting-edge car manufacturer with its dual engines of autonomous driving technology and capital, accelerated the development of its autonomous driving functions, achieved product differentiation, and helped it gain a leading edge in the changes in the automotive industry.

In recent years, Baidu has invested in the automotive field and is no longer satisfied with just providing capital.

At the end of 2017, Baidu also invested in the Shouqi ride-hailing platform. The announcement stated that it planned to use Baidu's Apollo self-driving car platform and connect to Baidu's DuerOS platform to apply artificial intelligence to private car services.

Set an example and accelerate penetration

With capital as a link, firm strategic partners such as WM Motor are also feeding back Baidu's smart car ecosystem, accelerating the implementation of Apollo autonomous driving application scenarios.

As the only high-tech company in China that is fully autonomous and controllable in Cheluxing, and the only company that undertakes the national artificial intelligence open innovation platform for autonomous driving, Baidu has great ambitions in the field of intelligent transportation.

At present, the scale of Apollo's ecological partners has reached 210, and the breadth of cooperation has reached OEMs, Tier1, core suppliers, travel service providers, emerging companies, fund investment institutions, relevant governments and research institutions, including vehicle and spare parts manufacturers. Ford, Daimler, BMW, BAIC, FAW, Chery, BYD, King Long Bus, etc.; new car manufacturing forces such as WM, Byton, Chehejia; sensor and chip manufacturers Velodyne, Intel, Nvidia, etc.; server supply Business Microsoft, etc.

As far as the world's richest and most comprehensive autonomous driving ecosystem is concerned, Baidu now needs to accelerate the penetration of its intelligent solutions and accelerate the intelligentization process of the entire industry chain. Only in this way can the commercialization of Apollo be a matter of course.

A pragmatic strategy is to find a like-minded person and set an example.

As the number one player in smart cars, WM Motor has always been determined to popularize smart electric vehicles and is committed to innovation in the field of automotive technology. According to statistics, since the launch of delivery in September 2018, WM Motor has delivered more than 33,000 vehicles in total. Vehicles belong to the first echelon, which is exactly the partner Baidu is willing to rely on.

Investing in high-quality smart car companies like WM Motor and Baidu will not only reap its growth value, but also take the lead in demonstrating, which will help accelerate the penetration of Apollo-related solutions, thereby increasing the closeness of the entire ecosystem.

Investing in Weimar can be described as a coup, and it also helps Baidu unlock the huge space for intelligence in the automobile and transportation industries., this kind of effect does not exist in the other three major technology giants.

In the Apollo ecological layout, Baidu has also made multiple foreshadowings for the future in the form of investment and equity participation.

For example, in the field of travel, not only Shouqi ride-hailing, Baidu has invested in "Hunan Apollo Zhixing Technology Co., Ltd." in Changsha, which was established in April 2019 as a joint venture between Baidu and two local partners, with a registered capital of 1 billion, with a subscribed capital of 30 million yuan and a shareholding of 30%. The Robotaxi service is now being trialled in Changsha. Once the operation matures, it will have the opportunity to enter the local taxi market and provide experience for future replication across the country.

Since the beginning of this year, Baidu Apollo's ecological industrialization process has accelerated, and it has won many large orders for new infrastructure in various places. Its business path has become increasingly clear. It is not only following the Weimar investment, but it is entirely possible that it will increase its bets on intelligent transportation in the future. Related areas.

The new car-making forces are essentially driven by technology. Once technologies such as autonomous driving that have been invested for many years come to fruition, Baidu's presence in the entire automotive travel field will become larger and larger, and it will never be just a role hiding behind the new forces.