Tucki and Didi officially announced the strategic cooperation, and the brand-new sub-brand was ready to come out, with a sword finger of 150,000 files.

Just now, Xpeng Motors and Didi Chuxing have reached a new strategic cooperation.

▲ Screenshot from: WeChat official account, Xpeng Motors

According to the official announcement of Xpeng Motors, in order to promote the long-term win-win strategic cooperative relationship between the two parties, Xpeng Motors will issue Class A common stock accounting for 3.25% of the total share capital after the transaction, and acquire the related assets and research and development capabilities of Didi’s smart electric vehicle project. Didi will become a strategic shareholder of Xpeng Motors, and the lock-up period of the first batch of shares is 24 months.

Xpeng Motors conditionally agreed to make the acquisition at the highest consideration of about HK$ 5.835 billion. The target business covers the R&D, design and engineering development of new intelligent electric vehicles, and Xpeng Motors became the first vehicle enterprise to obtain a comprehensive vehicle with Didi Sheng system. Xpeng Motors will formally enter the stage of brand strategy by reaching a brand-new strategic cooperation.

It is worth mentioning that the core of this strategic cooperation between the two parties is an A-class intelligent electric vehicle, code-named MONA in Tucki, which will enter the market as the first product of a brand-new brand in Tucki and is expected to be put into mass production in 2024.

According to Tucki, the cooperative launch of MONA will further strengthen the technological competitive advantage of Tucki’s products in the A-class market, make intelligent driving technology a standard in the most mainstream market segments, and accelerate the landing of "universal technology and intelligent equality".

For the mass market, there may be some doubts about Tucki’s decision to buy Didi Chuxing. According to the report of China Business News, an informed source pointed out that after the acquisition, Didi will not only transfer the existing technology platform to Tucki, but also be responsible for the sales of some MONA projects through its own channels.

In addition, people familiar with the matter further revealed that MONA’s sales will be aimed at both corporate procurement and the general consumer market, that is, the B-end and C-end markets will go hand in hand.

After the news of the strategic cooperation was released, the share price of Tucki stocks led by 15.59%.

Hit it off, Didi Tucki takes what he needs

The cooperation between the two sides in building a car is not an armchair strategist.

Didi is not the first time to get involved in vehicle manufacturing. It is reported that in 2018, Didi and LI jointly set up Orange Power Travel, intending to cooperate to launch a pure electric MPV model. However, the cooperation between the two parties ended in vain, and Orange Power Travel filed for bankruptcy in August 2022; In November 2022, Didi finally took the first step to build a car and cooperated with BYD to launch the first online car D1, but unfortunately, D1 also performed poorly in the online car market.

At the beginning of 2022, Didi Chuxing was exposed to the internal self-developed car-making project "Da Vinci". The new project is positioned as a 150,000-A pure electric vehicle, facing the main electric vehicle consumer market. It is a pity that "Da Vinci’s independent project eventually went to a bad end and became another negative asset of Didi Chuxing.

The strategic cooperation with Tucki is more like Cheng Wei’s compromise and giving a go.

Under the background of this strategic cooperation, Tucki can empower intelligent driving on the basis of Didi’s self-developed vehicles, and turn "Da Vinci" into reality in another form. After the acquisition, the products of MONA project will be transferred to its own production base in Tucki.

▲ Didi CEO Cheng Wei

Tucki wants to build a 150,000-class walking model, and there are early signs.

At the recent performance meeting of the second quarter financial report, He Xiaopeng rarely talked about the 150,000-class self-driving car. Tucki used to think that 150,000 cars could not be fully self-driving, but now his ideas and views have changed, and 150,000 cars also have the opportunity to launch fully self-driving cars. The change in He Xiaopeng’s attitude is likely to come from the MONA project exposed today; In Tucki’s "warm-up" plan, Tucki hopes to reduce the BOM cost of XNGP by 50% through technological innovation in 2024, so that intelligent driving hardware can truly become the standard of the whole department.

▲ Image from: Bloomberg

For Cheng Wei, the strategic cooperation with Tucki can untie the Didi car-making business and push it to the main market in another form; Tucki, on the basis of Didi’s self-research, launched a brand-new second brand to undertake the task of reducing costs and accelerating the exploration of the market by high-level intelligent driving.

The cooperation between the two sides can be said to be a hit-it-off, and each has its own needs.

Passenger travel, the next step for Tucki’s gross profit margin to return to normal.

On the same day 6 years ago, I devoted myself to Xpeng Motors full-time; On the same day three years ago, Xpeng Motors was listed on the New York Stock Exchange; Yesterday, it represents a new step for us in smart cars, which is both a coincidence and an opportunity! The wave of smart cars is coming …

He Xiaopeng himself said this on social platforms.

▲ Friends circle from He Xiaopeng

Tucki has devoted his sales ambition to this cooperative A-class car. MONA is planned to be launched at the end of 2024. We need to pay attention to the explanatory word "conditional" in the Xpeng Motors announcement mentioned above. Combined with the relevant channel news, it is speculated that the "conditional" here may point to the delivery of cooperative vehicles. Tucki hopes that MONA can reach the delivery target of 180,000 new cars at the highest. With the delivery of 180,000 units, this A-class pure electric vehicle has a high probability of placing its hopes in the field of passenger travel.

For reference, we can take Guangzhou Automobile Ai ‘an as an example. In the past July, GAC Aian delivered a total of 45,000 new cars, an increase of 80% year-on-year; From January to July, GAC Ai ‘an has delivered a total of 254,300 new cars, achieving a year-on-year increase of 103%.

Interestingly, Ai ‘an can be said to be a "professional user" of online car. According to relevant statistics, at present, more than 300,000 Ai ‘an models have been put into operation in the domestic online car market, which accounts for 1/4 of the overall online car market; Among the models and products of GAC Ai ‘an, nearly one-third of pure electric models are used in the online car business. In 2021, 43% of Ai ‘an’s annual sales volume was converted into network car models, of which at least 60% of Aion S was digested by the B-end market, and the data of Aion Y also reached 20.33%.

The domestic online car market is indeed promising.

In addition to the domestic market, Tesla, far away from the other side of the ocean, has also turned its attention to the lucrative passenger transport market.

At this year’s Tesla shareholders’ meeting, Musk took the lead in announcing two new models, one of which is the compact "Model Q" that Dong Che will track and report many times; As for another new car, Tesla didn’t give much news, but combined with the news from foreign media, this new model launched with "Model Q" is similar to the appearance of "van", which is suspected to be Tesla’s key model for rental operation.

At the shareholders’ meeting, Musk unabashedly expressed optimistic expectations for the two new models. Musk further stated that the two new models will win more than 5 million annual sales for Tesla in the future. This bread model suspected of being oriented to taxi passengers will undertake one million annual sales tasks.

With the acquisition of Didi’s smart car assets, Tucki seems to be laying out its own passenger travel business. At the same time, facing the domestic C-end (customer end) and B-end (enterprise end) markets, MONA in Tucki has a meal and two meals. While gaining a share of the online car market to save the gross profit margin, Tucki is also exploring another self-driving survival path for future competition.