After a series of changes such as the heavy setback of the hitchhiking business, the robbery of the online ride-hailing market, the sharp decline in stock prices, and the sharp layoffs, Didi has regrouped and is ready to continue to stage a new story.
Recently, according to a number of media quoted informed sources reported that Didi or will announce the car-making plan code-named "Da Vinci" in the middle of this year, and strive to deliver new cars in June next year, the current car-making team size is about 1700 people, located in Shunyi, Beijing.
It is understood that Didi will build two models for the passenger car and online car markets through this car-making plan. Among them, the model for the passenger car market will be named C1, positioned at the 150,000 yuan compact pure electric car; the model for the online car is D1 Light, which is a D1 simplified version of the car, which will be produced by BYD and will be put into use on the Flower Pig Taxi Platform in the future.
Didi, who once vowed that he would not build a car, could it be that he regretted it? Will Didi make a car "really fragrant"?
Find a way out after a heavy blow
For the outside world, Didi's final decision to build a car may not be unexpected. As the industry's leading travel company, Didi has accumulated a large number of drivers, passengers, roads and other data, and has also laid out in the automotive aftermarket such as charging piles and financial sectors. At present, Didi has involved the upstream and downstream industrial chain of smart cars.
In addition, there are also views that the reason why Didi wants to promote the car-making plan is mainly due to the impact of its own business decline and a self-help.
Didi's current business scope covers travel, shared bicycles, freight, autonomous driving, financial services and other businesses. Among them, the domestic travel business, including online ride-hailing, taxis, substitute driving, hitchhiking, etc., is the largest part of Didi's existing business revenue contribution, but this business has been hit hard in 2021.
Probably no one will forget that in July 2021, Didi was forcibly removed from the "Didi Chuxing" APP by the Cyberspace Administration of China for suspected illegal collection and use of personal information. Until now, the negative impact of this incident has not been eliminated, and Didi is still unable to obtain new customers in the domestic online ride-hailing market. At the same time, when Didi encountered Waterloo, other online ride-hailing platforms such as Cao Cao Chuxing and T3 Travel took the opportunity to increase their preferential efforts and encroach on Didi's original market share through the "price war", which eventually led to the tightening of Didi's travel business market share, and the average daily order volume fell from 25 million to 20 million. It is the loss of this part of the business that directly leads to the decline in didi's profitability.
According to Didi's unaudited financial report data for the second and third quarters of 2021 disclosed at the end of 2021, Didi's net loss increased from 24.271 billion yuan in Q2 2021 to 30.375 billion yuan in Q3. Didi's total revenue in Q3 2021 was 42.675 billion yuan, down 11.48% month-on-month. Among them, the revenue of China's travel sector was 39 billion yuan, down 19% from the previous quarter.
In addition, according to past information, after Didi was listed in the United States, it once hit a high price of $18 in the intraday. However, Didi's stock price has now fallen to $4.16, and its market value has shrunk from $67.8 billion at the beginning of the listing to $19.6 billion at present, a decline of more than two-thirds.
With the increase in losses and a sharp contraction in market value, 2021 is undoubtedly a difficult and struggling year for Didi. After the development of its main business was blocked due to compliance issues, Didi urgently needed to seek other profit models. Entering the market may increase the chips for Didi's smooth transfer from the US stock market to the Hong Kong stock market.
There is also an analysis that as smart electric vehicles become the mainstream of the future, more and more automakers in the field of automatic driving layout, in the future of automotive products, the use of self-developed automatic driving systems by traditional car companies as the lifeblood in their own hands, which for the commercial application of third-party automatic driving technology and profitability has brought many uncertainties. In this context, if Didi personally makes a car, it will not only further land Didi's self-developed automatic driving technology, but also maximize the profit of the automotive software part.
Whether it is for self-help, or for the smooth transfer to Hong Kong stocks, or based on the pursuit of automatic driving, for Didi, unlimited pressure has made it have no way back, and car building may still be able to find a way.
Interested in holding hands with Guo Zhijun?
It is reported that for Didi's car-making qualifications and factory problems, it may be solved through the acquisition of Guojizhijun in Ganzhou, Jiangxi.
According to public information, Guoji Zhijun is a pure electric vehicle manufacturing company established by a number of enterprises inside and outside the United Nations in 2017, with a registered capital of 800 million yuan, the largest shareholder of Sinomach Automobile holds 40% of the shares, and the second and third largest shareholders are Shenzhen Guoji United Investment Co., Ltd. and Sinomach Capital Holdings Co., Ltd., holding 27.5% and 17% of the shares respectively.
In 2019, Guoji Zhijun officially obtained the production qualification, and then built a production base with an annual production capacity of 100,000 vehicles in the Economic and Technological Development Zone of Ganzhou City, Jiangxi Province. In April 2019, Guoji Zhijun unveiled five new pure electric vehicles covering the field of cars and SUVs at the Shanghai Auto Show, three of which were launched in October 2019. According to the data, since the launch of new products in 2019, the sales of three models under Guoji Zhijun will be 4560 vehicles in 2020, 1840 vehicles in 2021, and only 63 vehicles in the first two months of 2022. Compared with other new car-making forces that entered the market at the same time, guo jizhijun's situation is slightly awkward, which also indicates that it will be quickly marginalized.
In order to solve the current difficulties, since February this year, Sinomach Automobile has said several times on the investor interaction platform that its subsidiary Guoji Zhijun is seeking suitable strategic investors.
On March 18, in response to a question from the outside world about whether Didi Chuxing's intention to acquire Guoji Zhijun is true, Guoji Zhijun said that Guojizhijun contacted a number of enterprises in the industry to seek suitable strategic investors. For the relevant circumstances, there is no disclosure of the matter, please refer to the announcement disclosed by the company.
As a national car-making team with a background of central enterprises, Guo Jizhijun holds qualifications, production capacity, products, and does not lack capital investment and car-making teams, which is indeed a high-quality option for Didi.
However, for now, Didi will not comment on this.
The road ahead is by no means smooth
Of course, this is not the first time Thati has launched a car-making plan. As early as 2018, Didi jointly initiated the establishment of the "Torrent Alliance" with 31 automotive industry chain enterprises from automobile manufacturing, spare parts manufacturing, new energy, digital maps, and the Internet of Vehicles. According to the planning at that time, Didi played the role of providing cooperation solutions for user needs such as car rental and operation, time-sharing leasing, and automobile aftermarket. At that time, Didi may have had selfish intentions in building this alliance, because In this alliance, Didi is the only Internet company, and these 31 partners are involved in enough business to help Didi transform from an online car company to an automobile manufacturer.
In November 2020, Didi customized a model called D1 for the B-end market for operation. Jointly designed and manufactured by Didi and BYD, the D1 integrates didi's user data, driver suggestions and related data accumulated over the years, and is dedicated to the online ride-hailing market. This can be counted as the beginning of Didi's involvement in car building.
It is worth mentioning that at the launch of D1, Didi announced that it plans to spread more than 1 million shared cars on the Didi platform by 2025. This also means that in the next 5 years, Didi will put an average of 200,000 D1s on the market every year. However, contrary to expectations, D1 has not been promoted as desired, and its delivery volume in 2021 is only 10,200 vehicles, and the speed of the project and the landing effect are far less than the blueprint previously depicted by Didi. Didi, which cooperates with car companies, is difficult to control the right to speak, and the core data, core technology and core system of the vehicle are all not in their own hands, which may be the fuse of Didi's initial decision to build the car himself.
Sure enough, in April 2021, there was news that Didi began to start a car-making project, and the person in charge was Yang Jun, vice president of Didi and general manager of Xiao orange car service. He is also the Chief Product Officer of D1. At that time, news that the team had begun to dig people from the depot was also frequently reported. That is to say, from April 2021, Didi's intention to switch to the car-making track is already clear, and it is almost officially announced.
This restart of the car-making plan, Didi may have a beautiful ideal, but the reality is very bone. Even if it can successfully acquire Guo Jizhijun to solve the qualification problem, there are still many thorny problems to face.
First of all, car building has always been a money-burning thing, looking at the new forces of car manufacturing in the industry, there are billions, or even tens of billions of dollars of investment. Judging from the current financial report released by Didi, its current situation is not optimistic, and even the orange heart preferred and overseas businesses that rely on money have been forced to be suspended, and it can be imagined how embarrassing Didi is now. The storm of layoffs across the board has only been a month, and it is still unknown how much real money and silver Didi can put out to the field of car manufacturing.
Secondly, once Didi officially goes down to build a car, the previous "allies" will become opponents in a sense. At that time, didi will be greeted by the opponent's unremitting pursuit, and the fierce competition can be imagined.
Third, with reference to the current market performance of D1, the annual delivery volume is only more than 10,000 vehicles, indicating that Didi has not formed a basic scale in the market that can support its car manufacturing.
In any case, following wave after wave of car-making troops, what greeted Didi is by no means a smooth road, this time, can Didi get its wish? Only time will tell.