In October, the high-end intelligent car robot brand Jiyue will officially launch its first car robot "Jiyue 01", with a pre-sale price starting from 259,900 yuan, and it is positioned as a medium and large SUV.

Previously, on September 19, the Geely 01 was mass-produced and rolled off the assembly line at Geely Hangzhou Bay Smart Factory, and pre-orders were opened at the same time, offering a 10-fold deposit expansion. Within 24 hours of pre-orders, the official announcement said that it had received over 15,000 orders. It is reported that Geely is accelerating its market layout and has opened over 40 stores in more than 20 cities across the country.

"Jiyue" is a new brand jointly created by Geely and Baidu. On August 14, the two parties officially announced the new brand and announced the upgrade of strategic cooperation. Baidu has changed its role from a complete vehicle manufacturer to a solution provider, and Geely has taken control of Jiyue. Although the roles have changed, the support of Baidu's AI technology remains unchanged. Taking advantage of this opportunity, can Jiyue seize a place in the second half of the new energy vehicle track?

Baidu still provides technical support despite giving way due to qualification issues

You may be unfamiliar with "Jiyue", a new brand that has been established for less than three months. However, its predecessor "Jidu" is well-known to everyone.

At the beginning of 2021, Baidu and Geely, which announced their plan to build cars, jointly invested to establish Jidu Auto. Although the first concept car was released in June 2022, it eventually became history due to qualification issues.

On August 14, 2023, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced the "Announcement on Road Motor Vehicle Production Enterprises and Products" (374th batch), among which Geely Auto's new product series "Jiyue" was listed. There are 3 models in total, all named pure electric multi-purpose passenger vehicles, indicating that it has obtained production qualifications and can enter mass production and market sales.

At the same time, Geely officially announced that Jiyue is a new brand jointly created by it and Baidu, and the strategic cooperation between the two parties has been upgraded. Tianyancha shows that the main body of Jiyue is Hangzhou Jiyue Automobile Technology Co., Ltd., which was established on August 9 this year. Zhang Quan, senior vice president and CFO of Geely Holding Group, serves as executive director, and Xia Yiping, CEO of Jidu, serves as general manager. The registered capital is 10 million. Geely holds 65% of the shares through its subsidiaries, and Baidu holds 35% of the shares through its subsidiaries.

It is worth noting that when Jidu Auto was founded, Baidu held 55% of the shares and Geely held 45%. Currently, Jiyue is responsible for external affairs, leading the brand's business management, market layout and other work, Geely is responsible for automobile production, and Jidu, as the provider of Baidu's AI technology, is mainly responsible for product definition and technology research and development.

This means that Baidu has changed its role from a vehicle manufacturer to a solution provider, and Geely has taken control of the Jiyue initiative. The fundamental reason for this change is the qualification issue. At the beginning of 2022, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the "Notice on the Pilot Project of Entrusted Production of New Energy Vehicles", which shows that both the entrusting party and the entrusted party under the new energy vehicle OEM model need to have production qualifications to OEM production, that is, "double qualifications". Jidu does not have production qualifications, so it cannot directly entrust Geely to produce on its behalf.

Baidu has changed from a dominant party to a technology provider, following the old path of Huawei.

Huawei is deeply involved in the Wenjie brand. From January to August this year, the sales volume of the AITO Wenjie series reached 35,000 units, which is a decline compared with last year. With the gradual launch of smart models jointly developed by Huawei and other auto brands, and the preparations of Jiyue and Xiaomi Auto, the second half of the intelligentization is bound to see new changes.

Compared with other technology giants, Baidu entered the field of car manufacturing earlier, and its technological accumulation in the field of AI is obvious to all. The Jiyue 01 launched in cooperation with Geely this time has inherent hardware and software advantages. As the earliest technology giant to deeply cultivate the field of autonomous driving, Baidu Apollo's high-level autonomous driving capabilities have been widely verified on Robotaxi demonstrations in many places, and the competitiveness of Jiyue 01 should not be underestimated.

Taking over Baidu's autonomous driving technology, large models are being "installed"

Baidu has been developing driverless cars since 2013, and has completed continuous iterations from the first generation to the sixth generation. Each iteration reduces the cost of driverless cars by half and increases their capabilities tenfold. The technical core of driverless cars is the "Baidu Car Brain", which includes four modules: high-precision maps, positioning, perception, and intelligent decision-making and control.

It is understood that the high-precision maps collected and produced by Baidu record complete three-dimensional road information and can realize vehicle positioning with centimeter-level accuracy. At the same time, Baidu's driverless car relies on traffic scene object recognition technology and environmental perception technology to achieve high-precision vehicle detection and recognition, tracking, distance and speed estimation, road segmentation, and lane line detection, providing a basis for intelligent decision-making for autonomous driving.

Baidu Apollo autonomous driving has been developed for nine years and is also used in Jiyue 01. The car robot has software and hardware systems that support high-level autonomous driving capabilities. Whether in parking lots, cities or highways, the car's autonomous driving has grown from being able to cope with specific scenarios to being able to cope with more complex scenarios. Jiyue 01's Apollo high-level autonomous driving full set of capabilities and safety systems have been widely verified on Robotaxi, with a total test mileage of more than 32 million kilometers, giving it a deep foundation in intelligent driving technology.

It is reported that the Jiyue 01 is equipped with 2 laser radars, 2 NVIDIA Orin X intelligent driving chips with a computing power of 508TOPS, 5 millimeter-wave radars, 12 ultrasonic radars, 12 autonomous driving high-definition cameras, 1 driver infrared perception camera and 2 high-precision positioning units.

In addition, Baidu Group provides AI technical capabilities such as smart cockpit and Wenxin Yiyan for the new car. It is the first to be equipped with Qualcomm's 4th generation Snapdragon automotive digital cockpit platform 8295 chip, and for the first time fully enables dual NPU, providing AI computing power foundation for large models to be "on board". Based on super computing power, the 35.6-inch 6K ultra-clear integrated large screen interaction will be smoother, and it is the first to achieve full localization of voice AI algorithms, and the global and offline voice recognition speed is as fast as 500ms, and it supports functions such as driver-free wake-up and simultaneous chat in four audio zones.

According to the official introduction, the Jiyue 01 has multi-modal human-computer interaction capabilities, accurately identifies user commands, responds to user needs in real time, deeply understands user emotions, and actively communicates with users in multi-modal ways through language, vision, touch and other interactive methods. This car has many first-time capabilities, such as the central control screen supports two-player battle games, can also be linked to the air conditioner to simulate the wind effect, support voice dialogue outside the car, voice door opening, etc.

By learning from the driving environment, the car robot's ability to cope with multiple scenarios has evolved, making it better able to adapt to the environment; by learning from the drivers and passengers, the AI's ability to adapt to diverse habits has evolved, making it better able to understand users.

According to previous media reports, Xia Yiping, CEO of Jidu Auto, said that the current Shanghai R&D team has more than 2,000 people stationed in the two autonomous driving pilot areas of Jiading and Jinqiao, forming a virtuous cycle of "development and road testing". Suppliers of upstream and downstream industries of smart cars, such as laser radar and autonomous driving control units, are gathered around Shanghai, where the entire smart car industry chain can be found, making technology implementation and supply chain integration very simple.

It can be seen that in terms of autonomous driving, intelligent experience, supply chain, etc., the current performance of Jiyue 01 is still good, and it can even be said to be in a leading position. So, how does such a highly intelligent car robot perform in terms of performance and price?

The range is up to 720 kilometers and the price is medium

How does the Jiyue 01, which is fully equipped with intelligent functions, look like?

Judging from the previously exposed prototypes, the exterior design of the Jiyue 01 is relatively simple. The robotic front face design integrates interactive AI pixel headlights. The vehicle is 4853mm long, 1990mm wide, and 1611mm high. The wheelbase is 3000mm, and the axle length ratio conforms to the "golden ratio" ratio of 0.618. The space can reach 2161L when the rear seats are folded down.

At the same time, the new car will be equipped with high-performance aerodynamic wheels and 255/55R19 and 255/45R21 tires. The rear of the Jiyue 01 will be equipped with a high-performance active lifting rear wing, which can be manual or automatic. According to different driving conditions, AI adaptive adjustment makes the body more in line with fluid mechanics theory to obtain excellent aerodynamic performance and achieve maximum mileage.

On September 28, at the 2023 Tianjin Auto Show, the Jiyue booth design used the car robot brand visual color "AI Purple" as the main color, echoing the "AI car robot" Jiyue 01 on the booth. In addition, four body colors were displayed: Starry Orange, Star Gray, Starry White, and Nebula Black, with a strong sense of technology in the appearance design.

In terms of performance and control, the Jiyue 01 adopts the front all-aluminum double wishbone/rear all-aluminum H-Arm multi-link independent suspension, which is standard for high-end cars. It is equipped with a permanent magnet synchronous motor with a maximum power of 400kW, a zero-to-hundred acceleration of 3.8s, and a CLTC maximum cruising range of 720 kilometers. It is equipped with CDC real-time damping adjustable shock absorbers with millisecond-level response, Brembo high-performance sports calipers and excellent chassis tuning.

It is understood that the Jiyue 01, with its robotic aesthetic design, has won three design awards, namely the German Red Dot, iF and Japanese GOOD DESIGN, becoming the first domestic model to win the "Triple Crown" of the world's top design awards.

The pre-sale price of Jiyue 01 starts at 259,900 yuan, which is more affordable than the Xiaopeng G9 and NIO EC6. The price range of NIO EC6 is 358,000-416,000 yuan, while that of Xiaopeng G9 is 263,900-359,900 yuan. The price range of Jiyue 01 is close to that of Wenjie M7, which is 249,800-329,800 yuan. One of them has Baidu background, and the other has Huawei background, so the possibility of competition is greater.

It is reported that the new M7 was launched on September 12, with a total of 5 models. The cumulative orders within 24 hours of its launch exceeded 15,000 units, and 2,700 new orders were placed on September 17. Among them, Huawei's ADS 2.0 intelligent driving is more attractive to young consumers. Through the perception of multi-sensor fusion, ADS 2.0 can effectively identify special obstacles such as overturned vehicles and fallen rocks, and slow down and stop them.

Overall, with the support of Baidu's autonomous driving technology and powerful AI capabilities, the Jiyue 01 has accumulated a lot of attention in the "Jidu" stage. From the perspective of price and appearance, it has a high cost-effectiveness and optimistic sales prospects. However, the recently launched Wenjie M7 and the Avita 11 equipped with Huawei's ADS 2.0 intelligent driving still have considerable challenges. Consumers are likely to compare the Jiyue 01 with it after it is launched, especially Huawei mobile phone users who may consider their trust in the brand.

Therefore, the sales volume of Jiyue 01 will still depend on the experience of the first batch of users to create a word-of-mouth effect, which is more likely to influence the choice of some loyal Huawei users. This will also become a bigger challenge facing Jiyue 01.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.