SAIC continues to expand into the high-end market.

On November 26, the high-end intelligent pure electric vehicle project "Zhiji Auto" jointly developed by SAIC, Pudong New Area and Alibaba Group was officially launched on the same day, and it was announced that it would settle in the Zhangjiang Intelligent Park of Pudong New Area.

Zhiji Auto’s founding round of financing was jointly completed by SAIC, Pudong New Area and Alibaba Group, making it the first domestic automotive technology company with a founding round of tens of billions.

Affected by the good news, SAIC Group's opening rose by more than 4% on November 27, and then its stock price hit the daily limit. As of the close, its stock price reached 27.08 yuan, an increase of 8.54%.

Partner Zhangjiang Hi-Tech achieved its daily limit, trading at 19.36 yuan.

Industry insiders believe that this is another key layout for SAIC to seize the high-end market after SAIC Audi.

Caijing.com Auto contacted Zhiji Auto regarding product and other related issues, but the other party did not immediately respond to the above request for comment.

Aiming directly at the high-end market, Zhiji Auto has become SAIC's "No. 1 project."

According to official information, Zhiji Auto is a user-oriented automotive technology innovation company that is committed to becoming "the implementer of travel changes in the intelligent era" and realizing "software-defined cars."

In terms of business value model, Zhiji Auto draws on the concept of the Internet and emphasizes using user data to drive corporate value.

In terms of business, Zhiji Auto will launch high-end luxury electric smart cars based on a new electronic and electrical architecture.

The new architecture connects the ECU controller, which is highly related to the vehicle and the driving experience, from the bottom up, integrating customer scenarios and vehicle perception, and supporting users to carry out a high degree of customization.

Zhiji Automobile has established an exclusive intelligent travel research institute to create an international R&D system of "one horizontal and three vertical".

Among them, the vehicle R&D center serves as the "horizontal axis" to achieve "business penetration" of the data drive center, intelligent driving center and forward-looking styling center.

Zhiji Auto will also mainly rely on SAIC Group’s existing innovation achievements, including three core technologies, smart driving technology, artificial intelligence, big data, cloud computing, network security, intelligent manufacturing and international layout, to provide support for its own development.

In terms of supply chain, Zhiji will cooperate with Alibaba in user big data, the latest technology of DAMO Academy, Internet of Vehicles and new retail; Pudong New Area will use the high-tech industrial cluster ecology of Zhangjiang High-tech Park and technical resources such as AI and chips to provide

To support; establish a joint venture with Infineon to establish an IGBT core component company; form an alliance with CATL on power batteries, and cooperate with China Mobile, Huawei, etc. in 5G technology.

According to the plan, in January next year, Zhiji Automobile is expected to simultaneously launch a new high-end car brand in Shanghai, London and CES in North America, and debut two models including a sedan and an SUV.

Capital operation integration resources Zhiji Auto has adopted a market-oriented capital operation model, which is expected to give full play to internal enthusiasm and utilize external resources.

An announcement issued by SAIC on the 26th showed that the group plans to jointly invest in the establishment of "Shanghai Yuanjie Intelligent Technology Equity Investment Fund Partnership (Limited Partnership)" with Zhangjiang Hi-Tech and Hengxu Capital *** to invest specifically in high-end intelligent pure electric vehicle projects.

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The total capital subscribed by the fund is RMB 7.2 billion, of which SAIC Motor contributed RMB 5.399 billion.

The fund also plans to invest specifically in Zhiji Auto with Alibaba (China) Network Technology Co., Ltd.

The fund invested this time is still in the process of being established.

According to Shanghai Automobile News, in this project, SAIC invested approximately 5.4 billion yuan, Pudong Zhangjiang invested 1.8 billion yuan, and Alibaba and others invested 2.8 billion yuan.

After completing the founding round of financing, Zhiji Auto has become a tens-billion-level automotive technology innovation company.

SAIC stated that this investment is conducive to creating a win-win and sustainable development strategic partnership.

In the future, we will also cooperate with Internet companies, technology companies, and travel platforms including Alibaba to introduce more social capital in conjunction with business expansion.

Currently, there are more than 200 members in the Zhiji Automotive project, half of whom are from within SAIC and the other part are employees from the cross-border automotive industry.

It is expected that the new company will have 300 employees by the end of this year and will grow exponentially by the end of next year.

Bai Yiyang of the Research Department of CMB International believes that the biggest highlight of "Zhiji Auto" is the introduction of Alibaba.

SAIC is expected to rely on its own technology accumulation in hardware to complete the pre-embedding of hardware during the joint development process, while Alibaba will rely on its accumulation in software and cloud services to help "software-defined cars".

What needs to be mentioned in particular is that Alibaba has strong capabilities in the Internet ecology, with layouts in core e-commerce, new retail, entertainment, office, maps, health and other fields. In the future, it is expected to form a unique presence in Zhiyi Auto.

Ecology, achieve breakthroughs in the "fourth screen" of automobiles, and set off a wave of development of automobile intelligence.

This is actually the essence of a “user-oriented” automotive technology innovation company.

Forming a company to change lanes and overtake As early as 2016, SAIC cooperated with Alibaba to launch the Zebra Intelligent Mobility System and the first mass-produced Internet car Roewe RX5. Since then, it has also been electrified, intelligently connected, socialized, and internationalized.

A lot of layout has been done.