Just a week after XIAOMI officially announced that the car would be built, a new name, DiDi Global Inc., was added to the Battle of the Gods of New Energy vehicles.

The company didn't build cars before, but it was closer to the end of the car than other players on the battlefield. So when the news came, public opinion was more natural-there was no need to speculate that the domestic ride-hailing giant was on the stage in person.

Among DiDi Global Inc. 's many new businesses in the past two years, car building may be the one that excites capital the most.After nearly five years of preparation, DiDi Global Inc. dared to show his ambition to build a car. in this process, DiDi Global Inc. experienced confusion and failure.... Now DiDi Global Inc. 's former ally has become an enemy.

Huang Mingming, a powerful capital, once told the author of Deep net that he and Li Xiang, founder of Li Auto Inc., have a consensus that when the automobile industry enters the era of electric cars, it provides an once-in-a-century opportunity for all Chinese car manufacturers to overtake on corners.

There is no doubt that there are broad prospects on this track, and countless people come forward one after another, with Jia Yueting in front of them. Then came Lei Jun and Cheng Wei.

DiDi Global Inc. built the car with the internal code "da Vinci"

The author of Deep Web learned from insiders that the current internal code name of DiDi Global Inc. 's car is "Leonardo da Vinci". Earlier, LatePost reported that Zhu Jiang, a former vice president of automobile customer development of NIO Inc., might join DiDi Global Inc., but this claim was quickly denied by DiDi Global Inc..

In addition, there are rumors that Li Tianshu, the 0001 employee of NIO Inc. Automobile (known as the father of Nomi), is about to join DiDi Global Inc. in charge of the car-building project, although people familiar with the matter said the news was also false.

However, DiDi Global Inc. has indeed amassed various internal forces in building cars. The main person in charge of the project is Yang Junzong, vice president of DiDi Global Inc. and former deputy general manager of Xiaogu car service. Yang Jun is also the chief product officer of DiDi Global Inc. and BYD's previous cooperation to build cars (D1).

In addition, DiDi Global Inc. also encourages employees to change jobs, and recommends external talents to join car-building projects, especially the technology of mainframe factories such as new car-building forces and those responsible for safe driving. "there will be high internal promotion rewards after successful recommendation."

The person familiar with the matter said that DiDi Global Inc. 's car-building project, like D1, which was previously produced in cooperation with BYD, is still facing a group of online ride-hailing drivers, but it cannot be ruled out that it will be sold directly to individual car owners in the future. however, whether the price has a competitive advantage, as well as subsidies, is not known.

If the news is true, then DiDi Global Inc. 's new car-building project is very different from the previous D1.

According to public media reports, although the D1 ride-hailing jointly launched by DiDi Global Inc. and BYD in November last year has not been disclosed, it is very likely that DiDi Global Inc. provided user data, as well as the usage habits and concepts of ride-hailing. In essence, DiDi Global Inc. put forward the demand, BYD developed and manufactured, and DiDi Global Inc. 's position is still the buyer's market, spending a lot of money to buy cars from BYD.

The author of Deep Web learned thatAt present, similar to D1, DiDi Global Inc. will still adopt the mode of independent research and development and find a contract factory for production, at least for the time being.The aim is to ensure low costs and to keep more options in the production chain. And DiDi Global Inc. car-making, its products will also have a certain distinction with traditional cars, more inclined to the travel demand of online car-hailing.

"allies" become "enemies"

But now DiDi Global Inc. does not hesitate to dig talents to build cars, whether or not he is looking for a mainframe factory to be responsible for OEM, or to build his own factory line in the future, its nature has changed fundamentally. This also means that DiDi Global Inc. should have a head-on attack with many "friendly forces" in the "torrent alliance", once the most important alliance.

In 2018, when DiDi Global Inc. announced the formation of a torrent alliance with 31 companies in the fields of automobile manufacturing, spare parts manufacturing, new energy, digital map and vehicle networking, Cheng Wei said, "Open empowerment will be the core value of the torrent alliance." In the future, DiDi Global Inc. is determined not to build cars, nor will he seek to become the largest car operator in the future. "

Industry insiders pointed out that Cheng Weibi released cruel words, presumably in order to buy people's hearts, or a kind of self-protection.

Throughout the domestic travel and car-hailing market in 2018, the protracted ride-hailing struggle has just ended, with traditional mainframe factories covetously trying to operate cross-border ride-hailing business, followed by new forces such as NIO Inc., ideal and XPeng Inc. to raise funds frequently and increase their fees quickly. So for DiDi Global Inc., it was not the best time to build a car at that time.

But in the matter of building cars, DiDi Global Inc. never stopped trying.

As early as 2016, DiDi Global Inc. has tried to focus on car owners and car services, including leasing and operation, finance, refueling, maintenance and maintenance, and the refueling business once became the key to improving the efficiency of platform subsidies in the later war with Uber-relying on cheaper oil prices and the same amount of subsidies, DiDi Global Inc. can always have an advantage over competitors.

In 2018, DiDi Global Inc. also formed a joint venture with Li Auto Inc.-Orange Electric Travel, in which DiDi Global Inc. holds 51% and the ideal 49%. He is ready to cooperate to develop a MPV model for online ride-hailing travel, but the two sides later broke up for various reasons.

Later, DiDi Global Inc. successively cooperated with BAIC, BYD and Volkswagen. From self-driving to customized online car-hailing, DiDi Global Inc. has accumulated some experience in the field of car construction, but these are all dominated by car companies.

In the past few years, DiDi Global Inc. has also continued to make efforts in autopilot.

In 2016, DiDi Global Inc. set up a self-driving team, with high-precision maps, passers-by and vehicle behavior prediction, route planning and control and other professional teams, mainly studying L4-level self-driving technology. Cheng Wei once talked about DiDi Global Inc. 's future plans: in 2025, DiDi Global Inc. will popularize 1 million D1 units and be equipped with self-driving technology; in 2030, DiDi Global Inc. 's custom car will even remove the cockpit and become fully self-driving.

Under a series of actions, DiDi Global Inc. completed the preliminary preparations and explorations for the construction of the car. "in addition to the direct announcement of the construction of the car, it has done almost all other automobile-related business." When DiDi Global Inc. and BYD jointly launched D1 last year, an internal employee of DiDi Global Inc. guessed that "as soon as early next year, DiDi Global Inc. will build his own car."

The Best Choice of Zero-sum Game

A direct reason for DiDi Global Inc. to build a car may still have something to do with its business model.

With the continuous expansion of DiDi Global Inc. 's scale, the relationship between the company and drivers has been close to a "zero-sum game". The higher the revenue of the platform, the lower the income of the driver group.

Chen Xi, former chief executive of DiDi Global Inc., said in a media question and answer that the information on the company's platform service rates and cost composition in the fourth quarter of 2018 showed that DiDi Global Inc. 's platform service rates, commonly known as "cut", were 19%. Orders with rates higher than 25 per cent and orders with less than 15 per cent each account for 20 per cent, while the remaining 60 per cent are somewhere in between. This is indeed much higher than that before DiDi Global Inc. bought Uber China in 2016, which was generally less than 10% or even 0%. In 2019, the number of online ride-hailing drivers earning income on the DiDi Global Inc. platform reached 11.66 million, about 15 million less than DiDi Global Inc. 's 26 million registered drivers.

Transport capacity is still the foundation of DiDi Global Inc., a giant ride-hailing company. If you want to retain more drivers, DiDi Global Inc. must strike a balance between the profit positions of both sides. The most direct way is to reduce operating costs.

For many years, DiDi Global Inc. has chosen to cooperate with leasing companies. Drivers rent cars directly from leasing companies. DiDi Global Inc. takes a percentage of each order, but the latter is difficult to manage and low in controllability.

Yang Jun, former deputy general manager of Xiaomu car service, said that in more than two years, the number of rental cars on Xiao Orange's car rental platform has risen from more than 90,000 to more than 500,000, and there are not a few disputes over "renting instead of purchasing". He said that the contract period in the form of "rent and purchase" is generally three years, and the loan interest rate is high, while the platform mechanism, policies and regulations will directly affect the driver's income.

Moreover, some DiDi Global Inc. insiders believe that most of the driver's income from car rental has been taken away by the rental company, which is more like DiDi Global Inc. helping the rental company "raise" the driver. So in the second half of 2019, DiDi Global Inc. gradually started to de-lease corporatization and other actions.

And the group of drivers is becoming one of DiDi Global Inc. 's biggest advantages in building cars. Perhaps in DiDi Global Inc. 's calculation, if the future driver can not cooperate directly with the rental company, he can only get the vehicle from DiDi Global Inc. 's own channel. Take the Beijing market as an example, at present, there are more than 200000 online car-hailing vehicles in the city, of which DiDi Global Inc. drivers account for a considerable proportion.

Compared with many inexperienced technology companies that build cross-border cars, and even traditional mainframe factories that need to do ride-hailing projects to obtain potential buyers and data, DiDi Global Inc. has already deposited a large amount of data on drivers, passengers, roads and so on.

Not only drivers may need to use DiDi Global Inc. 's own car, but passengers' experience after taking a taxi will also become an important yardstick of whether they will buy a car built by DiDi Global Inc. in the future. DiDi Global Inc. accurately pushes test ads for his own car for tens of millions of passengers every day.

From a revenue point of view, DiDi Global Inc. may also have done some accounting for building a car.

At present, the scrapping standard of new energy vehicles is made with full reference to the existing fuel vehicles, and there is no separate scrapping standard. Usually, when running to a certain number of years and mileage, it will be scrapped under the guidance of the state. However, DiDi Global Inc. 's online car-hailing car may reach the scrapping standard more quickly because of its high driving frequency and rapid wear and tear, but DiDi Global Inc. should have been able to recover the cost of building the car before it was scrapped, and then continue to build the car, invigorate assets and make a profit.

The Battle of the Gods in DiDi Global Inc. 's car-building

And there is no doubt that DiDi Global Inc. + car building will make the capital market more willing to pay the bill. After all, NIO Inc. 's market value once rose to more than 600 billion, which is also an exciting new story for DiDi Global Inc., who is about to be listed this year.

However, DiDi Global Inc., who built the car before and after XIAOMI, must have been compared with the former in the coming years.

Compared with DiDi Global Inc. 's car-building, XIAOMI, who has been officially announced, has been releasing strong news recently. First of all, Lei Jun announced in a high profile that he would invest 10 billion yuan to enter the car-building industry within 10 years, and invited a number of car manufacturers to visit XIAOMI last week. Coupled with the "young people's first car" stunt, his posture is desperate. Perhaps, as Lei Jun himself said, this will be his "last entrepreneurial project."

However, an industry insider who spoke on condition of anonymity pointed out: XIAOMI's uncertainty in car manufacturing is more obvious. Although XIAOMI has always regarded himself as a technology enterprise, he did not reserve relevant automobile manufacturing technology and capabilities before that. There is no enterprise focused on automobile research and development in XIAOMI's related ecological chain enterprises, and there is no layout in the offline scene with strong demand in the service, sales and other automotive industries. It can be understood as starting from zero.

And compared with DiDi Global Inc., XIAOMI's understanding of cars belongs to scientific and technological consumer goods, which will lead to the absolute difference between XIAOMI and DiDi Global Inc. in terms of product form. Moreover, DiDi Global Inc. may not, like XIAOMI, set up a wholly-owned subsidiary for the car-building project in the short term.

Some industry insiders in the automotive field have also pointed out that compared with XIAOMI, NIO Inc., ideal and XPeng Inc., the car built by DiDi Global Inc. may also be the one most similar to the traditional car. Unlike the former who pursue the sense of technology and enjoyment of personal cars, DiDi Global Inc. should be the one with the most mileage anxiety, and DiDi Global Inc. is bound to reduce the complexity of his system in order to make it easier for drivers to operate and use. In other words, XIAOMI builds cars to make users more comfortable, while DiDi Global Inc. helps users make better money.

The person's analysis: whether DiDi Global Inc. is willing to spend so much investment in building a car is still doubtful. NIO Inc. Automobile completed five rounds of financing totaling more than 4 billion US dollars last year, while Li Auto Inc. 's financing last year may also have exceeded 2 billion US dollars. Although DiDi Global Inc. is not short of money, but there is a lot of internal spending business, how much can be allocated to the extremely expensive car-building business?

However, some insiders of DiDi Global Inc. believe that many of the costs of other new forces lie in marketing expenses, "and DiDi Global Inc. obviously has more advantages in this respect, at least not having to spend so much money on acquiring users."

Where the Da Vinci, which DiDi Global Inc. built the car, will sail in the future, whether it is the Gobi sand sea or the starry sea, still needs time to verify.