Not only abroad, but even our memory of Baidu still stays on the slogan of "Baidu", and because of this sentence, Baidu has become the Chinese website with the largest search volume in the world.
In the data of 20 19, the cumulative number of users of Baidu's whole platform exceeded1000 million, the market share of search volume exceeded 72%, and the daily information flow exceeded1500 million. It is no exaggeration to say that Baidu has propped up the search engine in China. But for a long time, the P/E ratio of Baidu compared with Ali and Tencent is only 19.32 times, which is about half that of Ali and Tencent. In everyone's cognition, "Baidu is just a search engine".
But in fact, Baidu is trying to play the role of accumulating wealth under the pressure of hard work.
As an important achievement of artificial intelligence, Baidu Apollo has transformed Baidu into a real technology company. With the help of the "wind of autonomous driving", Baidu ranks among the first echelon in the field of autonomous driving in the world. This road took six years.
0 1 Open the door to the automobile world
Almost like Ali, Tencent and Huawei, Baidu finally "invaded" the automobile manufacturing industry, but the key to opening the door of autonomous driving is to build a car. Just compared with their in-vehicle system software development, Baidu is too advanced.
12 18, Baidu or Weimar will jointly build cars. At present, the two sides have entered into cooperation discussions, and Baidu and Weimar have the same caliber "no comment". However, Baidu insiders revealed that Baidu will release a brand-new chip on the 22nd of this month, which will be mounted on the brand-new Weimar model.
From 20 17, Baidu officially established the "Apollo" autopilot subsidiary. Among many cooperative car companies (with Geely, Volkswagen, Toyota, Ford, etc. ), Baidu seems to have a special affection for Weimar, not only investing 10 billion yuan in it, but also forming the "strongest intelligent ally to build a car". This year, Weimar's 654.38+000 billion D round investment also included Baidu's name in the list of follow-up investments. This brand-new chip is also based on the "independent parking" technical achievement Valet jointly developed by Weimar Automobile and Baidu at the end of 2065.438+09. Stop the car After the self-parking solution, it is another brand-new attempt.
Between the keen winds in the automobile industry, the marriage between Baidu and Weimar seems to have been finalized. After all, judging from the intimacy between Baidu and Weimar, "together" is only a matter of time.
Between the news that Baidu and Weimar cooperated to build a car, Baidu's share price rose for six consecutive trading days. As of 65438+February EDT 16, Baidu's share price rose more than 7% in intraday trading, and its share price exceeded $200. Catherine? The Ark Fund operated by Wood (female Buffett) is also constantly adding positions in Baidu. At present, Ark's funds hold 983,000 shares of Baidu, with a value exceeding10.80 billion USD; At the same time, Arete, a foreign investment bank, also gave Baidu a "buy" rating with a target price of $250.
Under the tide of the industry, Baidu actually achieved a new high market value in the past two years, approaching 65 billion US dollars.
The formulas of technology companies and new power enterprises also make Baidu more suitable for current industry trends. It does not directly participate in the process of building a car, and chooses to become a "car porter", which will give full play to the advantages of the automatic driving system that has been accumulating power since 20 13, and use Weimar's exhibition stage to show the functions of automatic driving and artificial intelligence to the greatest extent.
With the continuous rise of Baidu's share price, the voice of capital behind it is getting louder and louder. Some industry analysts even suggested, "If Tesla is the benchmark effect of electric vehicles and NVIDIA is the stimulus of the chip market, then in the field of autonomous driving, Baidu will act as the main force to stimulate the China market from the whole path system of chips, data, algorithms and solutions. On the current way forward, Baidu's participation in building cars is both an opportunity of the times and an appointment of the current industry. "
It is unknown whether such an evaluation is over-praised, but there is no doubt that it is a slap in the face for Wall Street investors who once only thought Baidu was a search engine company.
Earlier, Navigant? The list of autonomous driving competitiveness released by the research shows that the four companies in the first echelon are Waymo, Cruise, Baidu and Ford. Autonomous? Vehicies, only Baidu is on the list in China. As the world's first mass-produced autopilot computing platform, Baidu is not high-profile at this time, but when.
02 prove technology with technology
Baidu is determined to do a good job of autonomous driving.
If the cooperation with Weimar is successful, it can be regarded as "a gamble with like-minded friends", and Na Wei Horse is the stepping stone to help it open the car door.
From 20 15 to 20 16, when the smart car was upgraded to Baidu L3, Baidu's R&D expenses increased by more than 25 times. It is also one of the few BAT-level giants to include "R&D investment" in key companies.
Once you set foot on the road of autonomous driving, you can't bring any profit return in the short term except wasting money and energy. However, Baidu has been burning money continuously. Huge R&D expenditure is expanding at an annual rate of more than 10%. In the first three quarters of 2020, Baidu's R&D expenditure was 4.2 billion yuan, 4.8 billion yuan and 4.69 billion yuan respectively.
From unmanned closed roads in China to the first public unmanned license for public roads, Baidu has gradually changed its label of "search engine" into "autonomous driving".
In 20 19, among the top five AI companies in the world listed in Harvard Business Review, Baidu became the only China company on the list, and the number of AI patent applications in the world ranked first among China enterprises.
Finally, Baidu found a correct position after the adjustment of "a strong man's broken wrist", and Li Yanhong, a low-key and tenacious leader, is also trying to prove his views in his speech at Cambridge University to the world. Li Yanhong believes that the future era will be divided into three forms. "The first one is the PC Internet era; The second is the era of mobile Internet; The third is the era of artificial intelligence. "
What Baidu needs to do is to take advantage of its search engine construction and use technology as a technical proof that Baidu's bet in the autonomous driving industry is not wrong.
However, the "spring" that Li Yanhong wants is not yet mature.
For the autonomous driving industry, it is only a seedling now, and the current era is in the explosive growth stage of the mobile Internet. Tik Tok, Aauto Quicker, short videos, live broadcasts and content communities are constantly emerging, but Baidu does not have many advantages. Baidu's biggest profit points are search engines and products made in intelligent cloud. Between the mobile Internet and artificial intelligence interaction, Baidu is in an awkward position in a sense.
Choosing autonomous driving and artificial intelligence has undoubtedly chosen a lonely road. No one can predict where the "spring" of autonomous driving is. At this moment, Baidu can only decisively choose its comrades-in-arms and take advantage before it is fully grasped. This has also become the key interpretation of Baidu Weimar's upcoming joint efforts. At least on the road of autonomous driving, Baidu is not walking alone, and compared with the enthusiasm of Ali and Huawei, Baidu, which is relatively lagging behind, does not have much time to think.
In the financial report letter of Baidu Q3 in 2020, Baidu once again made clear its goal, and put the mobile ecosystem based on Baijiahao, applet and hosting page at the same height as Baidu AI cloud AI solution; At the same time, Li Yanhong also stressed? "We must fight for the future with a second-time entrepreneurial mentality of returning to zero". On the road of Baidu's autonomous driving, Baidu still has a long way to go, the money continues to burn, and the project continues to develop.
03 market chase
Judging from the current trend of capital's pursuit of Baidu, Baidu's release of Apollo project progress, including medium and long-term goals, is very conducive to improving Baidu's current situation in the capital market and increasing the price-earnings ratio.
On February 8th, 65438, the 2nd Baidu Apollo Ecological Conference was held in Guangzhou. At the conference, Baidu not only comprehensively demonstrated the latest progress of Apollo in the fields of intelligent transportation, smart cars and autonomous driving, but also released the intelligent solution ANP for Lego smart cars.
This driver assistance system (ANP) relies on Apollo, the only L4 pure vision automatic driving technology in China. Lite, L4 automatic driving technology is reduced in dimension and released to the field of assisted driving. Unlike the industry scheme, which only supports high-speed and urban loop lines, ANP can be used on urban roads, go deep into more complicated sections, and realize full-scene automatic driving mass production solutions.
Baidu Apollo Ecological Conference is interpreted as a weather vane event of "domestic autonomous driving really sets sail", and Baidu will also undertake more arduous responsibilities than developing autonomous driving projects. The continuous blessing of L4-level autonomous driving has made Baidu ahead, but the L3 and L4 levels advertised by major car companies are still "strangled" in the dilemma of being unable to get on the road without a license. Only Baidu, which has a "death-free gold medal", is qualified to create more, which is the necessity of its existence and one of the reasons why capital is gradually optimistic.
According to Baidu's plan, in the next 3-5 years, the estimated mass production capacity of Apollo intelligent drive products will be 6.5438+00,000 units.
Just the day before the conference, Apollo also obtained the Beijing driverless test license. The unmanned test mileage in Beijing and Changsha has exceeded 52,000 kilometers.
According to the latest news, Baidu and SAIC will become the first online car platform in China to open autonomous driving service. Unlike the previous Didi Chuxing, you don't need an appointment experience. The automatic driving experience of the first automobile does not require an appointment, and anyone can experience the automatic driving service through the first automobile.
The market chase has begun, and Baidu must go ahead and take the lead. According to McKinsey's research report, China will be the largest autonomous driving market in the world in the future. By 2030, the total sales of self-driving cars will reach 230 billion US dollars, and the order amount of travel services based on self-driving may reach 260 billion US dollars.
There is no doubt that Baidu is betting on this protracted war.
In 2030, ten years will be enough for the country to change hands, but Baidu is slowly expanding its ambitions. It will be in any city with automatic license plates, from Beijing, Cangzhou and Chongqing. This kind of project that wins by quantity and data can only be tasted by practice. With the acceleration of new infrastructure in the 5G era, the domestic autonomous driving industry is in a good situation, and the autonomous driving industry is bound to usher in a golden period of development. Baidu wants to be king. Now, the weather, location, and people are approaching it.
This article comes from car home, the author of the car manufacturer, and does not represent car home's position.