XIACF - Baidu and Geely push ahead with aggressive electric vehicles plan

Baidu (BIDU) and Chinese automaker Geely (GELYF) are pushing ahead with their $7.7B plan to build smart cars together over the next five years. The two companies say the Jidu Auto electric vehicle venture will bring in funding from Baidu and other investors. Jidu hopes to to launch its first electric vehicle in three years, but is making efforts to speed up that timeline. The first EV is expected to look like a robot and will target younger customers. Jidu then plans to release a new model every one or one-and-a-half years after its first launch to eventually take on local EV players like Nio (NIO), XPeng (XPEV) and Li AUto (LI). The models will use Geely's open-source platform and will sell vehicles directly to the public without dealerships. The chips might come from Baidu, Xiaomo (XIACF) or Huawei. Shares of Baidu are up 1.86% in premarket trading to $218.55.

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Baidu and Geely push ahead with aggressive electric vehicles plan