On October 27, the first version of the ROBO-01, the first model of Jidu Auto , was launched and will be delivered in 2023. The company has officially faced the increasingly "repeated" competition in the mid-to-high-end pure electric vehicle market.
Jidu ROBO-01 Moon Exploration Edition is priced at 399,800 yuan, and is expected to be the highest-end version of ROBO-01. Jidu Auto will release the regular version of ROBO-01 at the Guangzhou Auto Show in November this year. According to Jidu Auto CEO 1 Xia Yiping , the price will be very competitive. EV Century expects that the price of the ordinary version will drop to 300,000 yuan at the lowest price.
Xia Yiping said in an interview that she hopes Jidu Automobile can achieve its goal of selling 10,000 vehicles per month. EV Century believes that if you only rely on ROBO-01, it is definitely a difficult task to sell 10,000 units per month. So far, none of the pure electric vehicles sold for more than 300,000 yuan has achieved this goal. With the electric vehicle equipped with more and more power batteries, assisted driving software and hardware, and various comfort configurations, coupled with factors such as the price increase of raw materials in the past two years, the prices of high-end electric vehicles are getting higher and higher, while users are becoming more and more rational. This makes it difficult to sell high-end electric vehicles with prices of more than 300,000 yuan.
In addition, Jidu Auto, as a latecomer in the era of smart electric vehicles, cannot be compared with "Wei Xiaoli" in terms of brand influence and popularity. The "auto robot" it claims to be creating is no essential difference from the smart electric vehicles on the market, and is not a so-called new species. Therefore, it is difficult to achieve sales volumes that exceed the existing models on the market.
From the analysis of price, model level and market positioning, ROBO-01 is a mid-to-high-end electric vehicle of 300,000 to 400,000 yuan. Its main competitors include Tesla Model Y (288,900 to 397,900 yuan), Xiaopeng G9 (309,900 to 469,900 yuan), Avita 11 (349,900 to 409,900 yuan), Zekr 001 (299,000 to 386,000 yuan), Feifan R7 (302,500 to 369,500 yuan), Lantu FREE (313,600 to 419,900 yuan) and other models.
Jidu Auto has locked the most direct competitor of ROBO-01 Moon Exploration Edition as the Tesla Model Y four-wheel drive high-performance version priced at 397,900 yuan. But it is expected that many users will also compare it with the Zekr 001. Because the two cars are also developed based on the SEA Haohan architecture of Geely Auto , their body size/wheelbase, power performance, battery capacity, range and other aspects are comparable. Moreover, the ROBO-01 Moon Exploration Edition is 13,800 yuan higher than the top-end version of Zekr 001.
Jidu Auto is a smart electric vehicle brand jointly established by Baidu and Geely Auto in March 2021. Baidu, as the leader, holds 55% of the shares, mainly empowering from the aspects of intelligence. Geely Auto holds 45% of the shares, providing SEA Haohan architecture and vehicle engineering technology. On June 28 this year, Jidu Auto's equity changed, and all 45% of the shares held by Geely were transferred to Baidu. However, both parties stated at the time that this was a normal adjustment made by the company based on the needs of business development, and the concentration was still jointly held by Baidu and Geely, and the shares held by both parties remained unchanged. However, as of now, the information found on platforms such as Tianyancha and Qichacha still shows that Jidu Auto is 100% owned by Baidu's Dazi County Bairuixiang Venture Capital Management Co., Ltd., so the details of Jidu Auto's equity change still need to be clarified.
Jidu Auto’s goal is to create a new species of “auto robots”. It hopes to create a unique smart electric vehicle through more innovative product design concepts and more advanced intelligent experiences, and compete with other car companies to make up for the shortcomings of its entry too late. However, judging from the design and various functions of ROBO-01, it is not essentially different from the smart electric vehicles on the market, and it is not a new species. EV Century believes that the reason why ROBO-01 failed to become a disruptive product is because there is no disruptive technological innovation at present, which can make it a "robot" rather than a "car".
However, in order to show the difference as much as possible, ROBO-01 has also made a lot of innovations, although some innovations may not necessarily conform to users' usage habits, or represent the future development trend of smart electric vehicles.
First of all, the exterior and interior design is more concise, and we strive to cancel as many physical buttons as possible. For example, the ROBO-01 Moon Exploration Edition does not have an exterior door handle, but is replaced by electric buttons on the B-pillar and C-pillar. It also does not have a gear shift knob or lever, but uses the buttons on the U-shaped steering wheel to change gears, and the center console does not have physical buttons. The U-shaped steering wheel will not obstruct the driver's field of view, although this car does not have a dashboard. Of course, the U-shaped steering wheel is not the first to Jidu Automobile, and Tesla has adopted this design.
The two "lamp jump" lidars originally hidden under the nacelle were finally integrated into the headlight group. This installation location is relatively clever and takes into account the functional needs. Although the original retractable "lamp jump" design is more ritualistic, it does not meet the relevant regulations for pedestrian protection.
users have different comments on these innovations. Some people believe that this is innovation for the sake of innovation, and some innovations have safety risks. For example, cancel the car's outer door handle, what if the vehicle cannot open the car door after a collision. And whether it is really convenient to use the U-shaped steering wheel? Without the cooperation of wire-controlled steering, it may not be as useful as the current circular steering wheel. As for the gear shifting method, it will change even more to users' usage habits.
In addition to some innovations and explorations in design, the biggest selling point of Jidu ROBO-01 Moon Exploration Edition is the intelligent experience.
In terms of intelligent assisted driving, this car has the function of point-to-point pilot assisted PPA (Point to Point Autopilot), and will have the advanced intelligent driving ability of "three domains of integration" of high-speed, city and parking during mass production and delivery. Cooperating with all scenarios and fully integrated 3D intelligent driving maps, users can have a better assisted driving experience. However, it should be pointed out that PPA requires the support of high-precision maps, and the coverage range and update frequency of high-precision maps are not satisfactory. Therefore, some car companies have begun to downplay the role of high-precision maps. The assisted driving hardware of
ROBO-01 Moon Exploration Edition is at the industry-leading level. The entire vehicle is equipped with 31 intelligent driving sensors (2 lidar , 5 mm wave radar , 12 ultrasonic radars, and 12 high-definition cameras). The autonomous driving chip is two Nvidia Orin X chips, with a computing power of 508TOPS. In terms of
software and algorithms, the concentration mainly relies on the data and experience accumulated by Baidu Apollo in the field of advanced autonomous driving through the Robotaxi project in the past few years. Baidu Apollo has more than 36 million kilometers of autonomous driving test mileage, and a large number of Robotaxi road test fleets carry out real road tests in more than 30 cities across the country. Based on users' high-end intelligent driving needs in more scenarios, Centre will reintegrate and develop and verify Apollo's capabilities to realize the user's advanced intelligent driving experience in car use scenarios. The biggest selling point in the smart cockpit is that it took the lead in using the Qualcomm 's 8295 chip, which is the first automotive-grade chip to mass produce 5nm process. The AI computing power reaches 30TOPS, and its performance is nearly 8 times higher than the 8155 chip currently used by many car companies. Qualcomm 8295's super computing power has enabled Jidu ROBO-01 to be the first to realize full localization of voice AI algorithms in the industry. The voice recognition speed on the whole side is as fast as 500ms, and the end-to-end voice response speed is within 700ms. It completely gets rid of the dependence on network signals and can realize full-domain and all-offline voice interaction.
35.6-inch 6K ultra-clear integrated screen is also a highlight. This large screen is not cut, blocked, or spliced. It has 95% NTSC high color gamut and 10000:1 ultra-high contrast, and the display effect is excellent.
In addition, it is worth noting that ROBO-01 realizes the integration of smart cabin and smart driving functions, specifically computing power sharing, perception sharing and service sharing. When the smart driving system fails, the smart cabin domain controller can take over the driving and allow the vehicle to park safely. At the same time, the smart car domain controller can also support the AI interaction of the smart cabin.
In order to attract users to place orders, Jidu Auto has launched a rich and lifelong exclusive rights for ROBO-01 Moon Exploration Edition. Especially the advanced intelligent driving package is not only free for life, but also "following people but not cars". Even if you can still enjoy free use when replacing vehicles, you will gradually realize cross-car use scenarios such as additional purchases and rentals in the future.According to Xia Yiping, the first batch of 1,000 quota for the first batch of ROBO-01 lunar exploration limited edition has been booked, so the second batch of 1,000 seats have been added. Both batches of chief experience officers will receive exclusive rights such as lifelong high-end intelligent driving, lifelong warranty, lifelong free charging, and customized digital collections.
