The appearance of a new Jiyue brand in the Geely holding cage is a kind of workaround to obtain permission from the Chinese authorities to produce the Jidu Robo crossover 01. However, the prospects for the joint brainchild of Geely and Baidu are still vague.
About ten years ago, the leadership of the Chinese IT giant Baidu thought about diversifying its business and launched the development of its own autonomous driving system — then this topic seemed very promising, promising a radical restructuring of the entire global automotive industry and multibillion-dollar profits for those who were among the first to launch unmanned vehicles on the market. Already by the end of the last decade, the industry's enthusiasm for drones had dissipated like smoke, many companies stopped developing them, but not Baidu.
Jidu Robo-01
In 2021, Baidu and Geely formed a joint venture called Jidu Auto to produce unmanned electric vehicles, Baidu's share in this joint venture was 55%, Geely's share was 45%. Jidu showed the first model called Robo-01 last summer and launched it on sale in the fall, but due to specific changes in Chinese legislation, as CnEVPost and STCN write, it was impossible to start industrial production of Robo-01 due to lack of Jidu Auto has the necessary «qualifications», while Geely's license to launch the project under the new legislation was not enough.
Jidu Robo-01
To solve the problem, on August 9, Baidu and Geely created a new joint venture Hangzhou Jiyuyue Automotive Technology with the Jiyue trademark (this word translated from Latinized Chinese means «extreme», «ultimate», «very large»), in which Geely's share is already 65 %, Baidu's share is 35%, and in this configuration, the government gave the green light to the project. Yesterday, the Jiyue 01 crossover surfaced in the database of the Chinese Ministry of Industry — this is the renamed Jidu Robo-01, on the same day the Geely press service announced that Jiyue 01 will enter the market in the fourth quarter of this year and that Jiyue will build a network of its own charging stations in China. So far, the Jiyue brand does not even have its own website, and the emblem has not been changed at all.
Recall that the Jiyue 01/Jidu Robo-01 is a mid-size electric crossover based on the SEA modular platform developed by Geely, its main feature is Baidu’s advanced autonomous driving system, for which 2 lidars, 5 radars are integrated into the body, 12 cameras and 12 ultrasonic sensors. Overall length of Robo-01 is 4853mm, width is 1990mm, height is 1611mm, wheelbase is 3000mm.
Jiyue 01 1/3 Jiyue 01 2/3 Jiyue 01 3/3
The debut version of the crossover is twin-engine (one motor per axle), the maximum combined power of the two motors is 400 kW (544 hp), acceleration to 100 km/h takes 3.9 s. The CATL battery with a capacity of 100 kWh provides 600 km of run on the CLTC cycle on one charge. There will also be a version with a «halved» power plant, that is, with a single electric motor on the rear axle with a capacity of 200 kW (272 hp).
At the end of last year, Jidu Auto The Guangzhou prototype of the second model is the Jidu Robo-02, which will obviously soon become the Jiyue 02. The second model is a large liftback, there are no technical details about it yet.
Jidu Robo-02 1/3 Jidu Robo-02 2/3 Jidu Robo-02 3/3
In fact, the only fundamental difference between Jidu and other premium brands owned by Geely (primarily Polestar, Volvo and Zeekr) is the autopilot Baidu, which will still be out of work in the foreseeable future, since autopilots of level 3 and above have not yet been legalized in China, which means that expensive hardware and no less expensive software will be used only for typical electronic driver assistants, and At the same time, the driver himself will be obliged to look at the road all the time.
Level 3 autopilots today are legalized only in the USA, Germany and Japan, and even then with a lot of restrictions and reservations, and full-fledged autonomous driving on At this stage in the evolution of mankind, it is not yet possible due to ethical, legal and technical restrictions.
In general, so far Jiyue seems to be just another Geely premium brand offering the consumer another option for the design of electric vehicles on the SEA platform. Isn't it too much?
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