Jidu Motors, an electric vehicle joint venture between Baidu and Geely, has revealed that it plans to spend 50 billion yuan ($7.7 billion) on building smart cars over the next five years, according to foreign media reports.
Xia Yiping, chief executive of Jidu Automobile, told the media that the company plans to launch its first electric car within three years and will try to speed up the process. Jidu is also considering using Kunlun chips designed by Baidu in its upcoming models.
The first model of Jidu looks like a "robot", a robot that can communicate with you emotionally, targeting young people, Xia Yiping added. Jidu will analyze large market data and then determine the final model style. Xia Yiping, one of the co-founders of mobike, previously served as the head of Fiat Chrysler's Asia-Pacific Smart car Federation and worked in Ford's Asia-Pacific and North America for five years.
After Tesla successfully realized the commercialization of electric vehicles, many technology companies around the world are competing to develop smart cars, so Jidu Automobile arises at the historic moment. Xia Yiping revealed that Jidu plans to release a new model every other year or a year and a half after the launch of the first model, but he did not provide a specific sales target. In the next two to three years, Jidu plans to hire 2500 to 3000 people, including 400 to 3000 software engineers.
Jidu will develop cars using Geely's open source electric vehicle platform and hopes to produce cars in Hangzhou Bay in the eastern Chinese city of Ningbo, where Geely has several car factories. The company plans to sell cars directly to customers from the start, rather than through dealers.
