65438+On February 8, after the US stock market closed on Monday, the American online car giants Uber and Aurora issued a joint statement saying that Uber will be its self-driving subsidiary Advanced? Technology? Group (hereinafter referred to as "ATG") sold to Aurora? Innovative company, priced at $400 million in cash and 26% in Aurora. According to the regulatory documents of this transaction, all ATG shareholders, including investors and employees of Uber and ATG, will hold 40% shares of Aurora. Meanwhile, Uber? CEO Dara Kosrosasi (Dara? Khosrowshahi) will enter the board of directors of Aurora, an autonomous driving company.
On the second day after selling the most promising self-driving car business, Uber announced that it would put its taxi department (Uber? Elevate) sold to the flying taxi company Joby? Aviation industry, and invested $75 million in the latter. It is reported that in fact, as early as June of 5438+ 10, Uber had invested 50 million US dollars in Joby, but it was not made public; What about Uber? Elevate also operated a helicopter service in new york, but suspended its flight during the epidemic.
It is widely speculated that Uber's divestiture of the autonomous driving department and the flying taxi department is actually to let Aurora and Joby take over the self-driving car business and urban air taxi service for themselves. Doing so can not only make full use of each other's technological advantages, but also save hundreds of millions of dollars for tourism giants in the next few years. This is indeed a good choice for Uber, which is in urgent need of reducing expenses and controlling costs. Darakos Rosasi also said in an interview that the transaction with Aurora will accelerate Uber's profitability before the end of 20021.
Since its establishment, ATG department has been the department that burns the most money for Uber, but its development is not smooth. In 20 17, the autopilot giant Waymo sued Uber, accusing Anthony, the Uber autopilot engineer at that time. Lewandowski steals trade secrets. Although the two companies finally reached a settlement, Anthony? Lewandowski was sentenced to 18 months in prison, and Uber paid Waymo $245 million in shares out of court.
20 18 in March, Arizona, USA, a Uber self-driving car was tested and killed a woman who was crossing the road at a speed of 69 kilometers per hour. Although Arizona was acquitted of "autonomous driving" two years later, the world's first driverless car crash seriously affected the public and capital's expectations of Uber's autonomous driving technology, and also exposed its shortcomings and defects in autonomous driving technology to some extent.
Affected by the COVID-19 epidemic this year, Uber's business has been hit harder, especially its taxi business, which forced it to slim down. According to the Q3 financial report released by Uber in 2020, Uber's revenue in the third quarter was $365,438+0.90 billion, which was lower than the market expectation, down 654.38+0.08% compared with $38,654.38+0.38 billion in the same period last year, with a loss of $654.38+0.90 billion. Among them, ATG's actual revenue in the third quarter was only $25 million, with a loss of $654.38+$400 million. The accumulated loss in the first three quarters was $303 million, and the company's R&D expenditure this year has reached $457 million. Obviously, the autonomous driving business that has been at a loss has become a drag on Uber.
However, the ATG department is not the first project that Uber cut this year. In May this year, in less than two weeks, Uber announced its second layoff plan. The total number of layoffs in the two rounds reached 6,700, equivalent to 1/4 of the company's employees. Khosrowshahi, CEO of Uber, said in an email that the company decided to close 45 offices. At the same time, it is 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. Freight share; Shut down its product incubator and artificial intelligence laboratory Uber? AI withdrew from the competition in the electric bicycle industry.
After the outbreak, but in the delivery business, Uber? Eats' income began to increase significantly. The 2020 Q 1 financial report released by Uber shows that the order amount of taxi business income in the first quarter was $654.38+0.09 billion, down 5% year-on-year; Uber's take-away orders reached $4.68 billion, and its revenue increased by more than 50% year-on-year to $820 million. In the third quarter, its take-away delivery business has surpassed the taxi business and achieved contrarian growth, with revenue reaching1451000000 USD, up 125% year-on-year. This also made the media ridicule Uber 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, its profitability is indeed under great pressure, and in such a severe period, capital has become more and more "pragmatic." What's the use of telling a good story if you can't make a profit?
Didi plays the opposite game. During the epidemic, Didi is constantly trying to develop new business across borders. In March this year, Didi launched an errand service in 2 1 cities such as Shanghai, Shenzhen and Chongqing. According to the official introduction, the first batch of errand drivers are Didi drivers, who ride electric cars to take orders 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 income-generating opportunities to platform drivers.
In addition to running errands, Didi also tested community group buying, online orange heart optimization, and focused on spike products below the market price. At present, the business has been carried out 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 the attempts of Didi to explore the needs of users in the epidemic era.
In addition, in June this year, Didi Chuxing also opened the autopilot service to the public for the first time. Users can register online through Didi APP. After being approved, they will be able to call self-driving vehicles for a test ride free of charge on the self-driving test section in Shanghai. Its autopilot department completed Softbank's financing of more than 500 million US dollars? "Vision Fund Phase II" led the investment. Didi Chuxing said that it will increase investment in autonomous driving, road coordination and related AI technologies, and recruit as many as 200 employees. It is planned to increase the number of employees to 500 to 600 before the end of the year.
In September this year, Didi wholly invested in Huahu, which rose rapidly in the online car market in the first half of this year. I thought it was a "glorious battle" that challenged monopoly but failed to be acquired, but in fact, as early as April 20 19, Didi had acquired all the products and resources in Tu Tu. And package them into a company that Didi is fully controlled. In March this year, Didi changed Tutu's car. Today, com became a flower pig taxi, 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 dad is still your dad after all, but the bottleneck of Didi is still obvious. The data shows that Didi's share in the online car market has exceeded 60%, and the ceiling is emerging. It is obviously difficult to make a bigger breakthrough in this market. Moreover, according to public reports, Didi has burned more than 50 billion yuan since its establishment, and has not yet achieved profitability and is still losing money.
In China, its competitors such as the first car about the car, Shenzhou special car, Cao Cao travel, T3 travel and so on. , are constantly growing. Meituan, Gaode and other enterprises have also joined the network car 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 bicycles are under great pressure, and Meituan and Hello are their competitors. Of the 654.38 billion+billion single target of Didi Plan, Green Orange will achieve the goal of 40 million. In 2020, it is planned to put more than 20 cities and put in 2 million vehicles, focusing on first-and second-tier cities.
But many people are not optimistic about this series of actions of Didi, because it has not created more 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 60 billion US dollars before the IPO, so as to sell a good price in the capital market. Of course, Didi has always denied the hype of IPO news.
No matter whether Uber's refund is a drop in the bucket or not, no one can say which is more correct, but in general, their efforts will lay the foundation for better service to users.
Figure? |? From the network
This article comes from car home, the author of the car manufacturer, and does not represent car home's position.