From knock-off old-man's electric vehicles to industrial giant

Chapter 186 Baidu: We Must Reprimand Certain New Energy Vehicle Companies

Xingchen Motors?!
Upon hearing the name, Li Yanhong was immediately taken aback.

He had heard about it.

If we're talking about the hottest new energy brand from last year to this year, Xingchen would definitely rank first or second.

Moreover, it is a pure electric brand, a true pure electric new energy vehicle company.

It contains absolutely no internal combustion engine components.

Yet it manages to achieve monthly sales of tens of thousands of units in the current market.

Even considering the 50,000 yuan price point in the lower-tier new energy vehicle market, it's still quite impressive.

He remembered it because, according to the investigation, this car company had almost no investment in intelligent driving.

After all, these car companies started with low-end products and lack internet infrastructure and large capital backing, so acquiring top AI talent is not an easy task.

Many car companies have excellent hardware, but their software is a complete mess.

This makes it a perfect candidate for promoting the Apollo solution.

But who would have thought.

I haven't thought about how to get in touch yet.

The hoe was digging right up to his face?!

——Is this right?

Li Yanhong was very confused.

If you want to develop autonomous driving, wouldn't it be better to come and learn about our ready-made Apollo platform?
The cost is not very high.

If we rely on our own research and development, how long would that take?

How could a car company possibly compare to their talent-rich "Deep Learning Research Institute"?

……

"Mr. Li, all the arrangements for the AI ​​Developer Conference are complete, and the PPT and internal rehearsal are ready..."

That's when.

Another executive sent a message to report.

Li Yanhong interrupted his thoughts and immediately nodded in reply.

"Okay, I'll be there later."

Tomorrow is the official date of the Baidu AI Developer Conference.

The main purpose was to commercially promote the official launch of the Apollo intelligent driving platform, and many people and companies from the internet industry and AI development were invited, including some car companies.

Li Yanhong takes this matter very seriously.

Baidu today is not at its peak as it was 11 years ago.

After Google withdrew from China, its market value surpassed Tencent's, making it the number one internet company. It also had seven or eight products with over 100 million users, making it incredibly popular.

Now.

With the rise of the mobile internet, Tencent and Alibaba have heavily invested in promoting their respective apps, while Baidu has fallen behind.

By the third quarter of last year, Baidu's revenue had experienced negative growth for the first time, and its market value had fallen below $500 billion.

Then look at Tencent and Alibaba; their market capitalization has both exceeded $3000 billion.

Therefore, this round of major internal adjustments was not a spur-of-the-moment decision.

We must produce something.

We must push out both Apollo and DuerOS, our two core businesses.

He decisively cut both the medical and food delivery businesses. For example, he had already planned to sell the food delivery business as there was no point in continuing to burn money on it.

We must push artificial intelligence forward with all our might!

The next era will definitely be the era of new energy and AI!

……

soon.

Time comes the next day.

The first Baidu AI Developer Conference was officially held at the Kyoto National Convention Center.

The scene was packed with people and media.

Given Baidu's current size and the long period of preparation it has been in the works, its influence in the entire internet industry is naturally considerable.

From the internet to e-commerce to food delivery, and now the booming sharing economy, everyone wants to create the next big trend.

Ten o'clock in the morning.

The conference officially began.

A slender man wearing a T-shirt and jeans was the first to come onto the stage.

As the main person in charge of the six major business divisions, Lu Qi naturally became the target of the opening publicity.

"Welcome everyone to Baidu's first, and also the first large-scale AI developer conference in the Chinese industry."

An introduction.

The topic then shifted to intelligent driving.

The press conference was broadcast live to the public across the country and to all members of the public.

Li Yanhong was sitting in a driverless car, rushing through the traffic on Kyoto's Fifth Ring Road to the venue.

Upon arriving at the venue, Li Yanhong jogged up to the stage.

Then he began to promote the driverless car he was riding in to the public.

There are two core ideas: Baidu developed this driverless car in just three days, and any company can use the Apollo 1.0 platform to develop a vehicle with basic driving capabilities in three days.

A series of empty promises and platitudes drew applause from the audience.

The press conference was drawing to a close.

To demonstrate his approachable attitude, Li Yanhong still gave several media interviews before leaving the venue.

"Mr. Li, is the era of AI-powered autonomous driving really coming soon? How confident is Baidu in this field?" An internal reporter asked first.

Li Yanhong smiled.

"Of course, I want to say that the era of AI and autonomous driving will arrive very soon, even sooner than most people expect."

As for confidence in the industry, I think there is no doubt about it. Baidu is currently one of the earliest and largest investors in China.

Many people may have forgotten that Baidu is actually a technology company.

He emphasized this very seriously!
"It is said that Baidu's autonomous driving business unit was undergoing a major reorganization recently, with industry rumors of a large number of personnel changes and staff losses. Is this true?"

another reporter asked.

The public is clearly more interested in gossip about Baidu's "big moves" in the first half of the year, with rumors circulating that many senior executives and chief scientists have even left.

When discussing this issue...

Li Yanhong continued to smile: "The adjustment of the autonomous driving business unit is to better serve the public. Next, our L4 department will continue to conduct more cutting-edge research, while L3 will mainly serve the vast number of platform franchisees and partner car companies. This is a very reasonable arrangement."

As for the issue of staff turnover, I can only say that everyone has their own ambitions.

However, something interesting did happen recently.

That is, some emerging car companies also want to go down the road of autonomous driving, so they started poaching talent from Baidu, and they have poached quite a few of them. This is one of the reasons for talent loss. We will improve more non-compete agreements in this regard in the future.

As everyone knows, we possess the best technology and talent pool in the industry, which naturally makes us a target for others.

Li Yanhong said innocently.

"But actually, Baidu's attitude is very open. We welcome other companies and car manufacturers to join the Apollo platform if they want to develop this track."

Once you understand it, you'll realize that this actually lowers the cost.

After all, the development of autonomous driving technology is not something that can yield results in the short term, nor can it be achieved with a small amount of funding.

He put on an act of "high emotional intelligence".

Li Yanhong did not rebuke or publicly criticize this behavior. Instead, he maintained his public image with a more magnanimous attitude.

This immediately caused screams from the audience!
This is a huge bombshell.

Are some emerging electric vehicle companies aggressively poaching talent from Baidu?

"Mr. Li, would you mind revealing the name of this emerging electric vehicle company?"

"Which company's employee at Baidu is this?"

"We're so curious!!"

Several reporters asked the question in succession.

Li Yanhong declined them one by one: "As I said before, everyone has their own ambitions, so Baidu doesn't care about these things."

"Besides, it's inevitable that this matter will offend people if we talk about it. We at Baidu still want to make friends, and we welcome more car companies to come and see our Apollo platform. They will then know how convenient and complete our autonomous driving technology is!"

After answering this question, Li Yanhong declined other interviews.

The day.

The Baidu AI Developer Conference has garnered significant attention online.

Meanwhile, the interview conducted on-site was also leaked.

and.

I don't know where the news came from.

An unnamed insider has revealed some shocking information.

This car company, which is aggressively poaching employees from Baidu, was originally a company that made its fortune by manufacturing low-end electric vehicles for the elderly and had previously operated on the fringes of the law.

Now that they have made a fortune, they have become even more "unscrupulous" and "intensified their efforts," coveting Baidu's technology and talent, and poaching many people through despicable means.

Although the article did not name the car company specifically.

But look at this description.

How could so many netizens not guess?

How did they start with electric vehicles for the elderly and then quickly rise to prominence?
This is referring to Xingchen Motors!

They're practically plastering their ID cards on their faces.

This immediately sparked a heated discussion.

"This is talking about Xingchen Motors, right? Xingchen Motors is also preparing to develop autonomous driving? They're keeping a low profile on the surface, but they're making some big moves behind the scenes!!"

"It can't be wrong. Baidu is indirectly insulting people. How could such an internal leak be released without permission from above, let alone become such a hot topic? As a search engine company, do you think that's possible? They're clearly saving face. They won't insult people in front of reporters, but they'll insult them louder than anyone else behind their backs!"

"Hahaha, that's hilarious! Great digging! I'd love to see Baidu suffer. That heartless company should go bankrupt sooner rather than later!"

……

Did not expect ah.

Despite how despicable the actions of "Star Auto" are described in this article.

But the public simply didn't buy it!
Do you think they don't know whether Xingchen Motors is a good company or not?
They've already sold their electric vehicles overseas, why are you still using outdated dirt to attack them?
Baidu was the unlucky one.

The crowd erupted in cheers!
I wish I could be even more unlucky.

"Sigh, can Xingchen Motors do something practical? They were doing great before, focusing on developing battery technology and vehicle hardware. Why are they starting to get into AI and autonomous driving, these empty concepts? I don't really believe in this stuff. Even if they launch it, I'm not going to use it. The most reliable thing is always people, not machines."

Some people who follow Xingchen Automotive criticized this.

This garnered a lot of likes.

Many conservative car owners not only reject new energy vehicles, but also AI and intelligent driving technologies.

But soon someone else said the same thing.

"Dude, I think you're going a bit to extremes. Xingchen Motors has never advertised that they're going to do autonomous driving. Just that alone is much better than those cars that haven't even been built yet but keep talking about AI and autonomous driving. They probably have nothing else to brag about, so they keep talking about this stuff."

If Baidu hadn't exposed it, we really wouldn't have known about this, and we would have had no idea what Xingchen Automotive was researching internally.

Just like those previous technologies, before showcasing amazing results, have you ever seen Xingchen actively boast about it?

I think this is precisely the attitude of getting things done.

……

(End of this chapter)