As a new force in car manufacturing, why did Jiyue Automobile, which was born with a silver spoon in its mouth, fail to succeed?

New forces have devoted themselves to car manufacturing. Some have become famous in one fell swoop, while others have failed repeatedly. Among them, the most entangled one is Jiyue Automobile. As some media have said, it feels like "it's tasteless to eat, but it's a pity to throw it away."

Once upon a time, Jiyue Automobile, like many new forces, entered the market with dreams. Although the transition from Jidu to Jiyue had already caused some public opinion in the market, the gimmick of the Internet giant and Geely joining forces to build cars still made many people feel that Jiyue, born with a silver spoon in its mouth, would definitely succeed. After all, one is a "big brother" who has been deeply involved in the automobile market for many years, and the other is an Internet "giant" with leading intelligent technology. The combination of multiple parties will definitely have a huge impact on the entire market.

In order to realize its dream of making cars, Baidu also made great sacrifices in this matter. When Jiyue was still called Jidu, Baidu was the leading party in the cooperation between the two parties. At that time, Geely was Baidu's strategic partner in making cars. The shareholding ratios of the two parties were 55% for Baidu and 45% for Geely, with Baidu holding the majority.

After Jidu became Jiyue, Baidu and Geely held 35% and 56% of the shares of Jiyue Automobile Technology Co., Ltd. respectively. Obviously, Geely began to take the lead in the subsequent cooperation. At that time, such a change was just an internal adjustment from Jidu to Jiyue, but judging from the current development of Jiyue Automobile, this has undoubtedly become a major hidden danger for its subsequent mediocrity.

According to relevant data, from January to June 2024, the sales of Jiyue Automobile were 218, 147, 511, 362, 1,001 and 461 respectively. The sales in half a year added up to less than 3,000, even less than the monthly sales of first-tier new energy car companies. Even in October, Jiyue's January sales exceeded 1,000, and the cumulative sales of the entire brand in the first ten months exceeded 3,000 units, but compared with new energy car companies, it is still far behind.

You know, there are fewer and fewer opportunities in the new energy vehicle market nowadays. If a new brand cannot become popular overnight, the room for further improvement is actually very limited. In other words, in the reshuffle phase, any car company that cannot quickly gain a foothold will find it difficult to survive. Judging from the sales of Jiyue Automobile, it is already very "dangerous".

Xia Yiping, the operator of Jiyue, has also thought of a solution. As a science and engineering man, he even started live streaming for Jiyue. A simple search on the Internet will show the videos he shot to promote Jiyue.

It can be seen that Xia Yiping worked very hard, but his efforts did not change the overall situation. He once cried in front of the media and said, "Jiyue's entrepreneurial journey over the past few years has been really difficult!"

Xia Yiping is right. Jiyue Automobile has indeed had a difficult time in the past few years. But this situation may have been destined from the beginning. Back to the issue of equity ratio change just mentioned, since Baidu no longer has the dominant power, this cooperation has actually "deviated".

The premise of the cooperation between the two companies was that the intelligent fields such as autonomous driving were very popular, but Geely's first five-year plan for new energy transformation, the "Blue Geely Action" that An Conghui vowed to implement, did not go smoothly. To put it bluntly, at that time, the company did not have any products that could represent its intelligent technology level. As the last leading independent automaker in the era of traditional fuel vehicles, Geely urgently needed to find a partner with a first-mover advantage in this field to help it establish a "benchmark position" in the field of intelligence.

Baidu started early in the intelligent dimension with smart cockpit and smart driving as the core. It has been conducting autonomous driving tests since 2013 and has deeply laid out the Apollo plan. This was undoubtedly a "fruit" that Geely wanted very much at the time. Baidu wanted to build cars, and Geely lacked a partner who could support the intelligent facade. The two parties hit it off.

There was no problem in maintaining this cooperative relationship, so why did the development of Jiyue Automobile not go as smoothly as everyone expected? This is mainly because Baidu and Geely are not on the same path at all.

Geely wants a ladder that can be used for a period of time. Its ultimate goal is to develop its own new energy brand and take its own intelligent road. Baidu, on the other hand, wants to rely on Geely's manufacturing capabilities. As Baidu's boss said a few years ago, Baidu's car manufacturing will focus more on the intelligent "software" dimension and will not get involved in pure automotive research such as engine development and aerodynamic design research.

The different ideas of the two meant that when Geely Auto's own Zeekr brand grew up, it could easily break away from Baidu in terms of intelligence. In this way, the cooperation with Baidu at that time was not very meaningful. Baidu itself did not have core technologies in the fields of batteries, motors, and electronic controls, let alone overall vehicle platform architecture, chassis and other technologies. Once Geely withdrew, Baidu would be helpless. At this point, the tragedy of Zeekr's "marginalization" seemed to have buried hidden dangers.

Despite the tears in the media interviews, Xia Yiping showed full confidence in Jiyue Automobile most of the time. A few months ago, he also publicly expressed his strong dissatisfaction with the current bad phenomena in the car manufacturing industry on Weibo, "Why is it that car manufacturing has become more about plagiarism and rumors spread by Internet trolls now?"

In response to some netizens' sarcasm about Jiyue Automobile, he said, "Although we are a new brand, our monthly sales have been growing steadily recently. Last month we set a new record, and this month's order volume is far higher than ever before." "If you want to put us down, please show us your core technology and your smart driving skills. If you can't even do smart driving well, and just brag that you are better than us, it's a bit like a fast food restaurant selling pre-prepared meals mocking a fine restaurant that serves food with secret recipes passed down from generation to generation. It's really a bit abstract."

It can be seen that Xia Yiping's passion is still there. Unfortunately, passion alone cannot change the status quo of Jiyue Automobile. The key problem facing this brand now is the problem between Geely and Baidu. As Geely Automobile's transformation to new energy is becoming smoother and smoother, and Baidu's leading advantage in intelligence is becoming weaker and weaker, no one knows how much attention and support Jiyue Automobile can still get.

Of course, on the surface, Jiyue Auto still relies on the two big trees of Geely and Baidu, but the rumor of Geely's withdrawal of investment has been circulating on the Internet for a long time, and we have rarely seen Geely "stand up" for Jiyue Auto. The truth of it may not be important, but we just don't know where Jiyue Auto will go in the future.