On March 27, in an online interview with media including surging news, Xia Yiping, CEO of Jidu automobile, said that although Jidu automobile has not started mass production, the current rise in raw material prices has also significantly increased the cost of research and development and production verification of Jidu automobile. Therefore, Jidu automobile has specially established a guarantee team.
Xia Yiping introduced, "Although we haven't mass produced and put into production yet, the shortage of chips still challenges us. Even the chips of sample a, sample B and sample C required in the production verification process can't be found in many cases. If we can't support these chips and samples for the whole product verification, our whole R & D cycle will be delayed. So we set up a guarantee team in the process of testing samples."
Xia Yiping said that in addition to the tight supply, the cost has also increased a lot. Sometimes the cost of a sample is close to dozens of times the mass production cost, which is very exaggerated. "And now many times we have to take the cash to buy the spot in the market. Every day we search for chips all over the country and even around the world. We don't even find 100 or hundreds of chips in batches, but two or three."
Xia Yiping said in the interview that at present, the R & D rhythm of Jidu automobile has not been affected. According to the plan, the first model of Jidu automobile will be mass produced in 2023. At the same time, he believes that the overall environment of the whole supply chain will be alleviated at that time. From the perspective of mass production time of centralized vehicles, the supply chain will not have a great impact on mass production.
Previously, Jidu automobile said that its first model would be unveiled at the Beijing auto show in 2022. In this interview, Xia Yiping revealed that Jidu automobile has started the research and development of the second and third models, and its second model is expected to appear at this year's Guangzhou auto show.
Jidu automobile is a joint venture established by Baidu and Geely Automobile in March 2021. Baidu and Geely have 55% and 45% shares respectively. On January 26, 2022, Jidu automobile announced that it had completed nearly $400 million of round a financing, which was jointly increased by Baidu and Geely.
As for the cooperation between Baidu and Geely, Xia Yiping said that the cooperation between Baidu and Geely is very close, "We will inherit Geely's existing capabilities on the vast platform, including the three electricity and chassis, and fully design and define the whole car and products by ourselves, so the car will be a fully integrated brand DNA and design style. Because our team was small at the beginning, the cooperation between us and Geely was a hot start at the beginning. We will use Geely's engineering ability to help our designed cars enter the market When the project is implemented, Geely's team will also help us import the production line of our first car. This is our cooperation mode. In this process, we will work very closely with the whole Geely team in the whole chain, from R & D to engineering, to production import, and even in procurement, production and marketing coordination, including IT system docking. "
At the same time, Xia Yiping also stressed that Jidu automobile is a relatively independent company, and its cooperation with Baidu and Geely belongs to business model cooperation.
In terms of sales channels, Xia Yiping said that Jidu automobile will adopt the mode of self built channels.
In addition, Xia Yiping said in the keynote speech of the 100 people's Congress forum that Jidu is the only smart car brand in the industry to bring high-level automatic driving experience to ordinary family users after integrating and developing the automatic driving technology verified by Baidu Apollo robotaxi.
