Uber has been acting frequently recently, but unlike Didi's rapid expansion and crazy burning of money, it is constantly reducing costs and sharply slowing down. Why do the two travel giants make such completely different choices? What are the thoughts behind it?
On December 8, after the US stock market closed on Monday, American online car giants Uber and Aurora issued a joint statement saying that Uber will launch its autonomous driving subsidiary Advanced? Technologies? Group (hereinafter referred to as "ATG") is sold to Aurora? Innovation company, priced at $4 million in cash and a 26% stake in Aurora. According to the regulatory documents of this transaction, all ATG shareholders, including Uber and ATG's investors and employees, will hold 4% of Aurora's shares. Meanwhile, Uber? CEO Dara Kosrosasi (Dara? Khosrowshahi) will enter the board of directors of Aurora, an autonomous driving company.
just the day after selling the most promising self-driving car business, Uber announced that it would turn its flying taxi division (Uber? Elevate) sold to the flying taxi company Joby? Aviation, and invested $75 million in the latter. It is reported that in fact, as early as January, Uber had invested 5 million US dollars in Joby, but it was not disclosed; And Uber? Elevate also operated a helicopter service in new york, but its flight was suspended during the epidemic.
It is widely speculated that Uber divested the autonomous driving department and the flying taxi department, in fact, Aurora and Joby took over the self-driving car business and urban air taxi service for themselves. Doing so will not only make full use of each other's technological advantages, but also save the travel giant hundreds of millions of dollars in the next few years. This is really a good choice for Uber, which is in urgent need of reducing expenses and controlling costs. Dara Kosrosasi also said in an interview that the deal with Aurora will accelerate Uber's profitability by the end of 221.
since its establishment, ATG department has always been the department that burns the most money for Uber, but its development is not smooth. In 217, the autopilot giant Waymo sued Uber, accusing the Uber autopilot engineer Anthony at that time? Levandowski stole trade secrets. Although the two companies finally reached a settlement, Anthony? Levandowski was sentenced to 18 months in prison, and Uber paid Waymo $245 million in stock out of court.
In March p>218, in Arizona, USA, a Uber self-driving car under test killed a woman crossing the road at a speed of 69 kilometers per hour. Although Arizona made a verdict of not guilty of "self-driving" two years later, this first unmanned car crash in the world seriously affected the public and capital's expectation of Uber's self-driving technology, and also exposed its shortcomings and defects in self-driving technology to some extent.
This year, affected by the COVID-19 epidemic, Uber's business has been hit harder, especially the taxi business, which has forced it to slim down. According to the Q3 financial report released by Uber in 22, Uber's revenue in the third quarter was $3.129 billion, lower than market expectations, down 18% compared with $3.813 billion in the same period last year, with a loss of $1.9 billion. Among them, the actual revenue of ATG department in the third quarter was only $25 million, with a loss of $14 million, and the accumulated loss in the first three quarters was $33 million, and the research and development expenses invested by the company this year have reached $457 million. Obviously, the autonomous driving business that has been at a loss has become a drag on Uber.
however, ATG department is not the first project cut by Uber this year. In May of this year, in less than two weeks, Uber announced the layoff plan for the second time. The total number of layoffs in two rounds reached 6,7, equivalent to a quarter of the company's employees. Khosrowshahi, CEO of Uber, sent an email saying that the company decided to close 45 offices, and at the same time, it was considering selling non-core businesses and reassessing major investments in various fields, from freight transportation to autonomous driving technology. In the past few months, Uber has also sold Jump, a micro-banking department, and Uber, a logistics department. Shares in Freight; Shut down its product incubator and artificial intelligence laboratory Uber? AI has withdrawn from the competition in the electric bicycle industry.
after the outbreak, Uber? Eats' income began to increase significantly. According to the Q1 financial report released by Uber in 22, the order amount of taxi business income in the first quarter was $1.9 billion, down 5% year-on-year; Uber's takeaway orders amounted to 4.68 billion US dollars, and its revenue increased by more than 5% year-on-year to 82 million US dollars. In the third quarter, its take-away delivery business has surpassed the taxi business and achieved contrarian growth, with revenue reaching 1.451 billion US dollars, up 125% year-on-year. This also makes the media ridicule that Uber is going to be the American version of the US Mission.
in fact, in the final analysis, whether Uber cuts off non-core business lines or focuses on developing take-away business, it is largely just to survive better. After all, at present, it does have a lot of pressure on its profitability, and in such a severe period, capital has become more and more "pragmatic". If it is impossible to achieve profitability, what is the use of telling a good story?
Didi's playing method is completely opposite. During the epidemic, Didi is constantly trying to develop new business across borders. In March of this year, Didi launched an errand service in 21 cities including Shanghai, Shenzhen and Chongqing. According to the official introduction, the first batch of errand attendants were served by Didi's driver, who took orders by riding an electric car every day. The errands purchasing service is similar to flash shopping and US Mission errands, and provides purchasing services for vegetables, fruits, medicines, flowers and other commodities. Didi said that the original intention of launching the errand service was to provide convenience for community residents during the epidemic and bring new opportunities for drivers of the platform to earn income.
in addition to running errands, Didi has also tried community group buying, and the online orange heart is optimized, focusing on spike products below the market price. At present, this business has been launched in several cities. In this regard, Didi said that similar to new projects such as running errands and freight transportation, orange heart optimization is also one of Didi's attempts to explore the needs of users in the post-epidemic era.
In addition, in June this year, Didi Chuxing also opened its self-driving service to the public for the first time. Users can register online through Didi APP. After the approval, they will be able to call self-driving vehicles for a test ride free of charge in the Shanghai autopilot test section. Its autonomous driving department has completed more than $5 million in financing by Softbank? "Vision Fund Phase 2" led the investment. Didi Chuxing said that it will increase investment in autonomous driving, vehicle-road coordination and related AI technologies, and recruit as many as 2 employees. It is planned to increase the number of employees to 5 to 6 by the end of the year.
In September this year, Didi took a wholly-owned stake in Flower Pig, which rose rapidly in the online car market in the first half of this year. I thought this was a "glorious battle" that challenged monopoly but failed to be acquired in the end, but in fact, as early as April 219, Didi had acquired all the products and resources of Tutu. com and packaged them into Didi's fully controlled company. In March of this year, Didi changed the car of Tutu. com into a flower pig taxi today, and launched the slogan of the lowest price in the whole network for crazy marketing. Later, Flower Pig attracted a large number of young consumers to download and use it with a younger brand image and greater subsidies.
I have to say that in the online car market, your father is still your father after all, but the bottleneck of Didi is still obvious. According to the data, Didi's market share in the online car market has exceeded 6%, and the ceiling is emerging. It is obviously difficult to achieve a greater breakthrough in this market. Moreover, according to public reports, Didi has burned more than 5 billion yuan since its establishment, and it has not yet achieved profitability and is still losing money.
in China, its competitors, such as Shouqi Car Rental, Shenzhou Special Car Rental, Caocao Travel, T3 Travel, etc., are constantly growing, and Meituan, Gaode and other enterprises have also joined the online car rental battlefield through the aggregation taxi mode. In foreign countries, Uber has always been its biggest rival. In the field of two-wheeled vehicles, Didi's green orange bicycle pressure is not small, and Meituan and Hello are their competitors. Among the 1 million single targets of Didi Plan, Green Orange will achieve 4 million targets. In 22, it plans to launch more than 2 cities with 2 million vehicles, and focus on first-and second-tier cities.
However, many people are not optimistic about this series of actions of Didi, because it has not created a larger imagination space on both the new track and the old track. Therefore, many people believe that the goal of Didi's series of expansion is actually to raise the valuation to more than 6 billion US dollars before the IPO, so as to sell it at a good price in the capital market. Of course, Didi has always denied the speculation of IPO news.
No matter whether Uber's refund is a drop in the bucket, no one can say which is more correct, but in general, their pains will lay the foundation for better service to users.
figure? |? From the Internet
This article comes from the author of Chejia, car home, and does not represent car home's standpoint.