When Gao He fell down in the first half of the year, he felt very tragic, but at the end of the year, it was more and more like a farce, which made people angry. But this is the winter of 2024, and it will obviously not be the last company that has not passed this year.
Wen San zhi Jia Wang Lao Jia ling Jiang
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At the end of 2024, there is a retro flavor, and the word "year-end" is apt to many car makers.
Half a month after the disappearance of the Internet, Zhang Yong confirmed that he had been transferred from CEO of Nezha Automobile as a consultant. Li Bin answered 203 questions at a communication meeting in one breath, diligently and seriously, but still could not get rid of being questioned. Of course, the most difficult thing was Xia Yiping, CEO of Jiyue Automobile.
On December 11th, when Xia Yiping announced that the company had entered the entrepreneurial 2.0 era through a five-minute video conference, employees in various departments of the company didn’t immediately understand that this statement was actually a euphemism for "dissolution in place".
T Jun was still writing a plan when she understood that Xia Yiping said that the new stage of entrepreneurship meant that wages would be stopped and social security payments would be stopped. When she found that the video of the ultra-Vietnamese anchor changing from selling cars to live rights protection was all over the network, she received HR’s alternative plan: either take the initiative to leave her job and compensate N+1, and the payment time is uncertain, or leave her job without pay, not only without salary, but also without social security.
And the girl behind her station has cried, and she is pregnant and about to give birth.
01.
The sudden collapse of a 5,000-person company
The employees of Extreme Vietnam are mainly distributed in Shanghai, Beijing and Wuhan, and the earliest time for Beijing employees to pay social security is December 13th. Extreme Vietnam Auto Grab announced its dissolution on December 11th because the cash in its account has been frozen, and there are rumors that there is no full cash in its account.
Such a sudden "dissolution" of a company with more than 5,000 employees did not give any warning or even a time window for the local government to understand the cause of the incident. Since 2014, in the tide of new car-building involving more than 200 entrepreneurial teams, the fate of Ji Yue is the most bizarre, and it can even be described as timid and sad.
This is not a retreat, let alone a business failure, but a chaotic, disorganized and irresponsible breakup.
This collapse not only hurt the owners and employees of the ultra-Vietnamese car, but also caused another collapse of Baidu’s investment in building cars, and cast a shadow over the reputation of all new brands.
For Baidu and Geely’s two major shareholders to withdraw their capital at the same time, the insiders of Extreme Vietnam said that it originated from Baidu’s sending a financial team into Extreme Vietnam in October 2024 to conduct due diligence to prepare for the original follow-up investment of 3 billion yuan.
However, this survey completely extinguished the idea of Baidu’s follow-up investment.
Caixin.com quoted Baidu insiders as saying:"As a result, it was found that there was a pool of bad debts with a financial hole of up to 7 billion, and it was decided not to continue to invest. 」
However, there is no official response to Geely, which is responsible for providing the platform and technology for building cars. The extreme statement circulating is that Geely has not received a fee since the first model was listed on the market.
However, according to internal feedback, Geely is open to the follow-up cooperation with Baidu, settles the necessary funds and continues to undertake the responsibility of OEM.
But Baidu doesn’t want to continue.
During the 48 hours when Xia Yiping faced angry employees and suppliers’ representatives alone, there were no shareholders’ representatives from Baidu and Geely, and rumors that Baidu might sue Xia Yiping and his management team have been raging.
In a video of a communication meeting held by employees of Chaoyue at 2 pm on December 12, Xia Yiping responded to the rumors of accounting chaos and internal corruption spread on the Internet: "The company’s governance is very good, and the shareholders’ representatives have audited the company every month, and they have just conducted a comprehensive audit of the company, which was completed by the shareholders’ representatives of Baidu. The company’s financial controller is also from Baidu, and shareholders have been involved for a long time, so don’t doubt that we.The comprehensive audit of the whole company has been completed without any problems.」
Liu Jining, the chief financial officer from Baidu mentioned by Xia Yiping, was said to have lost contact on December 2, and went to Singapore alone, and it was reported that he had taken away the company’s account books.
Today, 21st century business herald quoted an insider’s information as saying that Extreme Vietnam "internally uses the third-party enterprise financial management system-SAP (SAP) system, and any senior person in the company can get the company’s account books when entering the system. Since the establishment of the company, Ernst & Young, the auditor of Baidu, has audited the company in strict accordance with the standards of overseas listing. There is no such thing as anyone running away with books. 」
However, the insiders gave feedback to Zhijia. Only a few people, such as Xia Yiping and Liu Jining, knew the company’s financial situation.
Regarding the sudden shutdown of the company on December 11th without warning, Xia Yiping said, "I got the relevant resolutions from the board of directors and made the actions yesterday (December 11th), which were decided by following the legal process. I personally can’t decide this matter. I am just a minority shareholder, and 80% of the voting rights of this company are in Baidu. I just have the decision-making power in business. 」
This statement was considered by the employees of Extreme Vietnam that between Xia Yiping and Baidu, the two sides have been in a state of mutual dumping.
W Jun told Zhijia. com, "I began to believe that the online statement was that a few days ago, a disgruntled shareholder representative threw a cup at Xia Yiping and scratched his face. 」
On December 2nd, Xia Yiping released a short video in Tik Tok, in which his right cheek was injured. He laughed and said that he was bruised by riding a bicycle and was rumored to be beaten by employees: "Next time, you should show me boxing." 」
Ten days later, Xia Yiping, whose face was still scarred, was always surrounded by employees in the company, and was overwhelmed by the overwhelming shouts of "Give us the deposit to pay social security" and "Leave your ID card and passport".
As for Xia Yiping’s appearance in the office the next day after he announced the dissolution of the company in disguise on December 11th, an employee who has also been stationed in the company for more than 24 hours said, "His coming back is naive, silly and lovely. It can be understood as his kindness. 」
Xia Yiping, who returned to the company, kept the rhythm of communication every two hours yesterday. He was followed by employee representatives and supplier representatives. A supplier arrived in Shanghai from Wuhu, Anhui at four o’clock this morning, and he owed him as much as 100 million yuan.
▲ List of demands made by employees of Extreme Vietnam.
However, the stop and swing of the Extreme Yue is triggering a series of chain reactions. The intelligent driving function ASD of the sold models is disabled, only the lane keeping function is available, and the key function of the mobile phone is also advised to be used with caution. On the morning of December 13th, representatives of car owners have gone to the headquarters of the Extreme Yue Shanghai Company.
02.
A belated shareholder statement
At 17 o’clock on the afternoon of December 13th, 48 hours after the suspension of the company, Baidu and Geely, two major shareholders of the company, issued a joint statement saying that they would solve the social security payment of employees and the aftermath of employees who left the company as soon as possible. Maintain the normal use, after-sales and maintenance of users’ vehicles; And promote the reasonable and legal settlement of other matters.
This statement is a comfort to all parties, but it also indicates that the country has entered the countdown of closing the door for liquidation.
In this statement, it is specifically mentioned: "Jiyue automobile products are manufactured by Geely factory and authorized to operate exclusively by Jidu.」
This sentence shows the bitterness and helplessness of Jiyue Model: the trademark ownership of Jiyue Automobile belongs to Geely Group. After Jidu Automobile failed to obtain the production and sales qualifications, Geely Group temporarily authorized Jidu Automobile to save the scene, and finally formed the exclusive agency status of Jidu Automobile.
This paper statement completely presents Baidu’s free posture as a pure investor in the company of Jiyue Automobile.
Strictly speaking, Extreme Yue Automobile is not the first car-making project led by Baidu. In 2013, Baidu followed Google and began to lay out autonomous driving. On March 1, 2017, Baidu integrated related businesses and resources to establish Intelligent Driving Group (abbreviated as IDG). In the same year, Baidu released the "Apollo Plan" at the Shanghai Auto Show and opened the autopilot platform Apollo.Also in this year, Baidu repeatedly increased Weimar’s B, C and D rounds of financing, becoming its largest external shareholder.
Both Baidu and Tencent were early major investors in Weilai Automobile, but Baidu increased its investment in Weimar after discovering that it could not dominate Weilai’s investment.
The two sides also began to cooperate deeply in technology, especially in intelligent driving, and established the Weimar &Apollo Joint Technology R&D Center for Smart Cars to provide automatic driving solutions for Weimar production models.
At that time, there were rumors that Baidu had the possibility of holding Weimar. Every step forward in intelligent driving requires a lot of vehicle data, and also requires automobile manufacturers to open data interfaces to intelligent driving companies. Controlling a car company is of great benefit to intelligent driving research and development.
However, Weimar never got rid of Geely’s patent litigation from its founding to its final exit in a mess.
Freeman Shen, the founder of Weimar, assisted Li Shufu in the acquisition of Volvo Cars by Geely. However, when he left Geely to start Weimar Automobile, Shen Hui took away many talents from Geely in R&D, technology and quality control, which triggered a six-year dispute over Geely’s accusation of infringement of Weimar new energy vehicle chassis technology secrets.
The deep cooperation between Geely and Baidu began in July 2019. The two sides announced that starting from Geely Bo Yue PRO, Geely Automobile will be fully equipped with GKUI19 system integrating a small-scale in-vehicle interactive system.
On January 11, 2021, Baidu officiALLy announced that it would build a car. Geely was a strategic partner and became the first Internet giant in the BAT camp at that time. Li Yanhong put all his reputation on March 30, 2021. Lei Jun, who built a car all, started two months earlier.
At that time, Freeman Shen, the founder of Weimar Automobile, was also sitting in the audience. After a year of suffering from the COVID-19 epidemic, many new car-making forces suffered from sluggish sales and poor follow-up financing. Selling Weimar to Baidu has become one of the considerations of Weimar decision makers.
When Freeman Shen saw Li Shufu standing on the stage with Li Yanhong, he knew that his idea was impossible to realize.
On October 10, 2023, Weimar Automobile, whose IPO failed, filed for bankruptcy.
In June, 2024, after six years of long litigation, which cost more than 13 million yuan, Geely successfully defended its rights. In the second instance, the Supreme People’s Court applied twice the punitive damages judgment, and Weimar compensated Geely for its economic losses and reasonable expenses for defending its rights totaled about 640 million yuan.
In the interpretation of the outside world, one of the main reasons why Geely, which has held many pure electric brands, once again chose to cooperate with Baidu to build a car is to block the cooperation between Weimar and Baidu.
03.
There is no real founder’s extreme leap mode.
On March 2, 2021, Jidu Automobile was established. Baidu and Geely owned 55% and 45% of the shares respectively, and Xia Yiping became the CEO of the company.
Geely is responsible for manufacturing and exporting the vast platform of Geely’s own intellectual property rights. Baidu empowers automobile companies with core technologies such as artificial intelligence, Apollo autopilot, small-scale car, and Baidu map.
Xia Yiping was in the window of resignation after mobike, founded in Li Bin, was acquired by Meituan. There have been different opinions about whether he is a professional manager or an investor.
Xia Yiping called himself an early angel investor of Jidu Automobile yesterday, but his share was very small. After going through the B and C rounds of financing, Baidu has maintained 80% super voting rights in the joint venture company, which is the absolute leader of the company.
with regard toIn the third quarter of 2023, the new joint venture company, Jiyue Automobile, held 65% of Geely’s shares and 35% of Baidu’s shares. Behind it, Baidu failed to seek the qualification to build a car, so it could only borrow Geely’s qualification to build a car and the trademark "Jiyue". Geely and Baidu re-planned the stock ratio of the joint venture company to regulate the restrictions of the automobile industry policy, and thenThe ultra-yue automobile products are manufactured by Geely factory, and the exclusive operation mode is authorized to realize Baidu’s control over the car-making project.
Although Xia Yiping is the CEO of Jidu Automobile and Jiyue Automobile at the same time, his actual identity is not only the representative of Baidu in the joint venture company, but he can’t avoid the position that he is still a professional manager in essence:I only have the decision-making power in the specific operation of the company.
He has only one vote on the board of directors that can decide the fate of the company.
Xia Yiping’s first job crisis began in May this year. Since the first model of Extreme Yue Auto, Extreme Yue 01, went off the assembly line for pre-sale in September 2023, the monthly sales volume has been in the hundreds. The news that Baidu intends to replace Xia Yiping began to spread in the industry.
On August 29th, Jiyue held an end-to-end AI smart driving conference. In the media exchange session after the meeting, faced with the reporter’s question "What measures did Jiyue take to make sales exceed 1,000 units", Xia Yiping suddenly lost control of his emotions and shed tears. It was hard to suppress his sobs.
He said that thanks to the trust of shareholders of Geely and Baidu, the continuous live broadcast made users believe that Ji Yue was still alive and kicking, and Ji Yue walked out of the ICU.
After Lei Jun released SU7, there appeared a round of follow-up phenomenon in China automobile industry, in which the person in charge of the automobile brand personally broadcast the goods and strived to be online celebrity.
After Xia Yiping made up his mind to be "Dong Yuhui of the automobile industry", he set up a post in charge of his IP. He started shooting videos in May this year and shot more than 80 videos in June.
Xia once said,The output can’t meet the demand of the order, and it has encountered happy troubles.
What Xia Yiping didn’t disclose was that at the board meeting held in the middle of the month, Baidu executives didn’t know when the subsequent investment of 3 billion yuan would arrive.
Summer is still broadcast live day and night, regardless of hard work. A month ago, at the Guangzhou Auto Show, the third model, Robo X, was released.
Everything is going step by step.
Before the lockout, the sales volume released by Extreme Vietnam in November was 2,485, ranking 22nd in the list of new energy vehicles of Zhijia.com..
It can be considered that Ji Yue has been at the poker table.
In the normal golden September and silver 10, the company achieved the highest sales volume. Although it declined in November, it was still above 2,000 units, and the monthly sales volume exceeded the whole year of 2023.
From the outside world, including employees of the company, the performance of the company in the market is getting better at any level.
This once convinced the media that the news that CFO suddenly lost contact and laid off 40% employees was a rumor.
04.
Guest Li Yanhong
T Jun attributed Baidu’s abandonment of Jiyue Automobile to Baidu’s lack of strategic strength.
She followed Xia Yiping for many years, from mobike to Vietnam.
"Baidu, a company with an annual profit of 20 billion yuan, is unwilling to pay 3 billion yuan. (Investing 3 billion yuan) is basically a certain thing, and the company’s business has been promoted, but when the company really has no money on its account and hopes that 3 billion financing will arrive as soon as possible, Baidu suddenly stops. 」
The internal complaints about Baidu and Robin Li didn’t start today. In the past three years, Robin Li, as a shareholder, consumed his own traffic for the platform. Even most Baidu employees have never heard of this car brand invested by Baidu. This year, Yuejie organized a car sale in Baidu Park. "Baidu employees seem to be looking at a strange brand in front of us. 」
T Jun worked in Meituan for a short time after he was acquired by Meituan in mobike.
Wang Xing, the founder of Meituan, invested US$ 1.15 billion in LI. He is a major shareholder but not a controlling shareholder. However, in Mr. T’s impression, Wang Xing did not hesitate to recognize and admire the LI brand on any occasion. To his surprise, at one time, any employee who wanted to report to Wang Xing or report to the mezzanine basically changed his car to an ideal, because Wang Xing was talking about ideals every day.
In contrast, a surprising scene happened on September 10 this year.
This is the largest press conference since the establishment of Jiyue. In the VIP room at the 07 press conference site, Xia Yiping and Wang Yunpeng, vice president of Baidu Group and head of IDG, welcomed Li Bin, chairman of Weilai, Zeng Yuqun, chairman of Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Limited, and Li Yanhong himself as "seemingly masters".
At the beginning of the press conference, the group photo of Ber Ber and Zeng was once screened in the media group.
But to the media’s surprise, it was not Robin Li, a well-known Internet tycoon who had been under the stage for two hours, but Zeng Yuqun, the chairman of Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Limited, a battery supplier, who became the No.1 owner of the new car at the press conference.
When Zeng Yuqun gave a speech on the stage, saying that Rubin, like Li Yanhong, was the English name, Rubin under the stage still didn’t mean to get up and do his best as a landlord.
She said:"Li Yanhong became a guest at the company conference that he invested and led. 」
The reason why Li Yanhong didn’t get up to give a speech at the scene for two hours was "because Li Shufu, the chairman of Geely, who is also a shareholder, only appeared in the form of video, which made Li Yanhong feel unequal. Even though CEO Xia Yiping invited him many times, he still insisted on not giving a speech at the stage. 」
"He is like an emperor in the late Qing Dynasty, because foreign envoys don’t kneel down and don’t meet. 」
In fact, today’s resumption of trading stopped suddenly. Perhaps at that time, Baidu had made up its mind not to inject more capital, and Li Yanhong could not take the stage to express his position in an appropriate way.
Huawei, Baidu and Xiaomi announced their entry into new cars at almost the same time. The logic of Huawei and Baidu’s entry into cars is similar, creating opportunities for their huge investment in smart driving technology, and then attracting other brands to buy. When the sales volume of cars reaches a scale, their data can be fed back to the R&D team.
This year, the profit announced by Huawei BU is closely related to the sales of various models of HarmonyOS Zhixing.
Compared with Li Yanhong, both Yu Chengdong, a professional manager, and Lei Jun, an entrepreneur, made cars by ALL IN, which drained almost every traffic value from themselves.
It can be said that in the eyes of Yu Chengdong and Lei Jun, failure in building a car is not the same as ruin.
The same is true of Extreme Yue to Baidu, but it is nine Niu Yi hairs to Geely.
On the one hand, Geely is entering the strategic contraction stage of shutting down and turning around. After Li Shufu issued the Taizhou Declaration on September 20th, a series of integration measures of Geely were vigorous and vigorous. Geometry and LEVC were merged into Galaxy successively, and pickup truck brand radar was integrated into Geely Automobile Group to become a department, and extreme krypton and Lectra merged.
As for the smart cockpit and intelligent driving of Baidu valued by Geely, as early as July 4, 2022, the Xingji era of Geely Holding became the controlling shareholder of Meizu Technology.
Later, Xingji Meizu released the FlyMe Auto cockpit system with handcart interconnection, and at the same time invested in core engine technology to lay out intelligent driving.
Geely has no realistic need for further in-depth cooperation with Baidu. Under the guidance of the increasingly strong attitude of full-stack self-research by the OEM, Baidu has invested heavily in L2 and L4, but it is losing the opportunity to compete with Huawei and even Momenta.
The brief cooperation between Baidu and Lantu Automobile has been replaced by Huawei, and Robotaxi has expanded its cooperation in Wuhan, but the new generation of models has been delayed in mass production.
Baidu, which claims to be AII In AI, is said to have invested hundreds of billions of yuan in AI and smart driving. The more it is, the last terminal consumer product that Baidu AI mass production landed. The more it is alive, the more AI will be born.
But perhaps the investment of 3 billion yuan is also a heavy burden for Baidu today.
T Jun said that he finally believed that sentence, why Baidu stood in the air every time and missed the air.
Nearly 48 hours after his sudden death, the media have been making repeated offers, and employees of Extreme Vietnam also think that they have been kidnapped by Xia Yiping and Baidu, which is like entering a dead end.
Baidu, Xia Yiping, employees, car owners and suppliers are all losers for Baidu’s withdrawal in a huff.
Looking back at the extreme mode today, Xia Yiping, who is in the whirlpool, is not only a soul deliberately created by the extreme, but also a representative of Baidu’s management, and an object close to a professional manager who needs to be supervised and audited.
His distorted identity determines the extreme predicament.
On the occasion of a great leap, Li Zhenyu, one of the original founders of Baidu Apollo, has also left his job and joined a smart business.
In 2024, many companies founded by employees who left Baidu went public, such as Horizon founded by Yu Kai, Xiaoma Zhixing founded by Peng Jun and Lou Tiancheng, and so on.
Baidu is of course the Huangpu Military Academy that China is driving, but this formulation also means that Baidu itself has not walked out of the quagmire.
For the extreme collapse, Baidu ignored the point that the internet car-making enterprise, after all, is not a software company with light assets, and its logic of divestment and closure cannot be adopted in a one-size-fits-all manner.
Baidu, as the leading party, directly stopped investing in a manufacturing enterprise with more than 15,000 car owners, ignoring that automobile products need to be maintained, repaired and maintained for nearly ten years, and that smart cars need 24-hour service guarantee of cloud and car dealer software systems. It is doomed to face a new round of rights protection impact from car owners after appeasing its employees.
Baidu’s sudden withdrawal is not only an irresponsible and reckless move, but also greatly hurts China’s new car brand."Don’t buy products from new forces" is forming a label consensus.
On December 12, Yang Yueqing, the former engineering director of Gaohe Automobile Project, sent a video suggesting that the owner of the company should deal with it as soon as possible before its value response disappears so quickly. "Don’t have any illusions, its after-sales parts will be continuously supplied. 」
Although Baidu and Geely issued a statement on December 13th, claiming that they will carry out relevant maintenance and services for the vehicle models, the subsequent legal entanglement may be more chaotic with the employees.
At 8 o’clock last night, Xia Yiping responded to the Joint Statement issued by Baidu & Geely in the new round of rights protection negotiations. He himself said that he did not recognize it: "This is not a plan, and I don’t even think it is possible to make a statement. 」
In the early hours of midnight, Xia Yiping told employees that they had set up an emergency team specifically for employees’ compensation with Baidu and Geely, and calculated the compensation based on the list of all employees and the demands made yesterday. At the same time, shareholders and local governments also communicated with each other to promote the solution of the problem together.
As a new day approaches, employees and suppliers are still following him closely, and his desire to go back to the hotel to rest has failed.
"Today, it was said that people from management came to communicate, but we didn’t see it. An angry but very tired employee said, "My wife is going to lose her job, and her company is owed more than 50 million yuan. 」
Extreme Vietnam has not yet gone bankrupt and liquidated, and it is still a sustainable company. Will someone take over the offer later?
The Wuhan municipal government was once rumored to be one of the interested parties, which is related to the relatively pleasant cooperation between Baidu Apollo and the Wuhan municipal government. The venue of the ultra-Vietnam Wuhan is said to be used by the ultra-Vietnam free of charge by Wuhan, but who has the courage to make such a decision when it is becoming more and more like a joke?
Is this the end of the pole?
A geek in his twenties said to Zhijia. com, "I really like Jumbo 01. It’s a pity. 」
K Jun, an autobot who has been tracking the extreme Vietnam incident for two days, said, "When Gao He fell in the first half of the year, it felt tragic, but it was more and more like a farce, which made people angry. 」
But this is the winter of 2024, and it will obviously not be the last company that has not passed this year.
