As a star company in the field of autonomous driving and robotaxi, GM's Cruise did not survive the winter of 2023 after all.
After a series of accidents, California** announced the temporary revocation of Cruise's operating license, and its driverless business was suspended. Since then, Cruise has announced layoffs and recalls of Robotaxi vehicles, and the company's founder and CEO, Kyle Vogt, has also resigned.
A clear road map can be seen for a high-level automated driving or a fully automated driver, but the full logic is not yet visible for fully autonomous driving, and I even think that it may be necessary to find another way. When seeing the situation of Cruise and talking about the development of intelligent driving, He Xiaopeng, founder and CEO of Xpeng Motors, wrote such a paragraph.
As a travel technology company focusing on big data and the Internet of Things, Zhang Daiguang, the founder and chairman of Zhixing Box, told Yiou Automobile that in a short period of time, unmanned driving under the condition of bicycle intelligence may not be able to achieve commercialization in the field of travel. However, if the value of the data behind travel can be fully explored, it can still empower the industry.
Since the rise of Didi's self-operated model and the success of AutoNavi's aggregation model in the mobility market, the dividends of technology and data seem to have been tapped by ride-hailing companies. Since the beginning of this year, Shanghai, Sanya, Changsha and other places have issued announcements to suspend the acceptance of online reservation of taxi transportation certificate related business. It seems that whether it is the vertical mining of data traffic or the horizontal expansion of the market scale, online car-hailing seems to have reached the "ceiling". In the future, how can we further explore value?
Caption: In recent years, the number of ride-hailing drivers has grown rapidly.
The solution given by Zhang Zhiguang and Zhixing Box is to closely combine the whole vehicle, intelligent cockpit and data operation, and change the traditional mode of charging only by mileage in the travel market by introducing more services, "The data of the car side, the driver side, the passenger side, the road end and the platform side are seamlessly connected, so as to have the opportunity to create a new value in the market and generate new money-making effects." ”
Look for the "blue ocean" in the "red ocean".
On December 22, at the China Online Ride-hailing Industry Summit, the customized online ride-hailing model Haima EX00, cooperated by Zhixing Box and Haima Motor, was unveiled at the conference. Zhang said that the first batch of Haima EX00 will be delivered in the second half of 2024, and B-end orders will be officially accepted from now on.
Such a combination and customized ride-hailing products look very much like a replica of the cooperation between Didi and BYD. But Zhang Zhiguang does not agree with this, because in his opinion, Zhixing Box is not a simple travel platform, nor is it a traditional car company, but a travel technology company focusing on big data and the Internet of Things.
It is reported that Zhixing Box hopes to use Haima EX00 as a terminal node to create an online car-hailing operation model of "customized car + big data + back-end operation", which is also what Zhang Zhiguang said will closely combine "vehicle, intelligent cockpit and data operation".
In order to achieve this goal, Zhixing Box first made a major adjustment to the interior space, dividing the driver and passengers through the "1+1+3" L-shaped seat layout. The right side of the vehicle adopts an electric side sliding door and a B-pillarless design, which is convenient for passengers to get on and off the bus, and also takes into account the special needs of carrying large items such as wheelchairs and strollers.
On the basis of the L-shaped layout, Zhixing Box has introduced a self-developed intelligent commercial cockpit - box space. The cockpit system not only includes zero-gravity seats and large on-board screens, but also is equipped with unmanned retail vending machines and content platforms in the car. Zhang Xiaguang hopes that the box space can provide customized services according to user portraits and needs, and create a smart cockpit with thousands of people.
In order to achieve this, it is necessary to add data operations to the whole vehicle customization and intelligent cockpit. According to Zhang Zhiguang's vision, in the process of passengers, the customized car can push the life services around the destination for passengers, and the L-shaped layout in the car can also be adjusted into a variety of modes such as office or entertainment according to the needs of passengers. ”
Through the "thousands of people and thousands of faces" model of "vehicle customization + intelligent cockpit + data operation", the car can indeed be further mined into the traffic entrance, but the problem also arises, if the customized vehicles built for the travel market want to achieve "thousands of people and thousands of faces", they must face a more complex bill of materials and higher costs.
In the private consumer market, there have been new forces that want to create highly personalized models for car owners as much as possible. However, faced with a complex bill of materials, the company had to abandon the above model. Customized vehicles in the mobility market tend to be more standardized, as a simpler bill of materials naturally reduces costs.
In the face of the above problems, Zhang Zhiguang told Yiou Automobile that Haima EX00 will not change the body mold, in order to achieve "thousands of people and thousands of faces", mainly change the vending machine area in the car, large screen content and front luggage area, as well as body spraying, so the cost of materials is not complicated, and the cost can be controlled.
It's not easy to fire three arrows at once.
The combination of travel and local life has a precedent in the Internet giants. In March this year, Alibaba officially merged Ele.me's in-store business into AutoNavi. This also means that AutoNavi Map will become a unified entrance to all of Alibaba's local life-to-store businesses.
Now, as long as you open AutoNavi Map, in addition to the clear map, traffic route query and travel services such as taxi and cycling, the "Nearby" in the main interface can easily query the surrounding life services. Once you've entered your destination, you'll be able to easily navigate around dining, entertainment, and shopping.
In fact, the merger of AutoNavi and Ele.me in business has long been foreshadowed. Daniel Zhang, former CEO of Alibaba, has said that he hopes to form a synergy between the "home delivery" business centered on Ele.me and the "destination" business centered on AutoNavi.
However, Ali and AutoNavi have never been directly involved in the vehicle business, which is significantly different from Didi. Didi not only teamed up with BYD to create a customized online car-hailing service, but even went directly to build a car. Until August this year, Didi and Xpeng Motors announced a strategic cooperation, and Didi's plan to build cars independently also came to an end.
So, can Zhang Zhiguang and Zhixing Box promote the three-arrow model of "customized car + big data + back-end operation" at the same time?
In Zhang Zhiguang's view, although Zhixing Box has laid out three tracks at the same time, it has done subtraction in each track and focused on the unique demand scenarios of the B-side. He took the intelligent cockpit as an example, when defining the product, Zhixing Box will focus on the B-end function, and reduce the C-end function, "To accurately define the depth, in fewer fields, do deeper applications." ”
In addition to seeking to precisely define the depth of the product internally, Zhixing Box is also cooperating with the outside as much as possible to strengthen its own strength.
At the China Online Ride-hailing Industry Summit, Zhixing Box signed a strategic agreement with CITIC**, China CITIC Bank Zhengzhou Branch, CITIC Financial Leasing, and CNCBI Zhenhua at the China Ride-hailing Industry Summit held in Zhengzhou, Henan Province, and the two parties reached an agreement on relevant cooperation intentions. The CITIC consortium will provide all-round, full-cycle and full-process comprehensive financial services for Zhixing Box in terms of bank credit, equity investment and investment banking business.
In addition, Zhixing Box also signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Ant Digital. In the future, the two parties will carry out the following major cooperation for the B-end travel market to provide more optimized smart travel solutions for the industryCombined with the B-end travel scenario, jointly create competitive financial and insurance solutions;Co-create intelligent cockpit ecological services and strengthen the digital management and control of vehicle assets.