There are no surprises in Xiaomi s car, it s all suspense

Note: This article was originally written by Xinzhi Business Observer, and is prohibited without permission**.

For this automotive technology conference, Xiaomi has been setting off for nearly 1 month.

Before the press conference, Lei Jun even claimed that "this time only the technology will be released, not the product", which is unbelievable and confusing. Both ppt 20 iterations, or a continuation of Nikola, this "technology" conference with a specific term added to it, have whetted the public's appetite.

On December 28, Lei Jun, the founder of Xiaomi, appeared at the press conference in a suit and leather shoes, and it can be seen that he was a little nervous.

On December 28, Lei Jun got up early in the morning and released the "Xiaomi Automotive Technology Conference" on Weibo.

He said he was a little excited, but more nervous.

Since Xiaomi Group announced its entry into the field of new energy vehicles, the controversy has not been small, from the technology of car manufacturing, to the price of the car, to the scolding war with Yu Chengdong, chairman of Huawei BU, and even the recent real pictures of the car that ran away in advance, all of which have made Xiaomi cars like a big enemy, and frequently spoke.

Contrary to Huawei and Meizu's "getting involved in the field of new energy vehicles, but not making cars", Xiaomi is making cars in person.

In July this year, "Beijing**" disclosed that Xiaomi's factory in Yizhuang, Beijing has been completed, and Xiaomi is recruiting workshop workers on a large scale, with an average salary of 6,000 to 7,000 yuan. It is understood that the daily output of Xiaomi prototypes is about 50 vehicles.

Since announcing the car, Xiaomi has only invested a lot more in the automotive field - in December, Lei Jun was interviewed by CCTV's "Face to Face" program, he revealed that Xiaomi invested 3,400 engineers and more than 10 billion yuan in the research and development of its first car.

Because of this, Lei Jun has absolute expectations for Xiaomi cars, "Anyway, I do it in a way that I want to get."

And after setting off the atmosphere for nearly 1 month, at two o'clock in the afternoon on December 28th, Xiaomi Auto Su7 and Su7 Max finally unveiled its mysterious veil, and Lei Jun in a suit and leather shoes on the field was also nervous to the naked eye.

The conference lasted for 3 hours, and the transcript of the conference was up to 10,000 words, including the all-round technology display of Xiaomi Auto's electric drive, battery, large die-casting, intelligent driving, and intelligent cockpit.

At this press conference with "Xiaomi technology" as the core, Lei Jun has always been in mind for his friends, Porsche and Tesla have always run through the audience, and the words "comprehensive leading", "world's first", "highest standard", "peak performance", "unique" and "ceiling" continue to come out of Lei Jun's mouth.

Lei Jun, in the end, still lived like Yu Chengdong.

However, Lei Jun's mass production of 6,000 tons of large die-casting at Tesla's Shanghai factory in 2020 is somewhat unmartial compared with Xiaomi's 9,100-ton large die-casting cluster today.

is also a friend, in January 2022, the relevant technical leaders of NIO and Xiaopeng also attended the off-line ceremony of Guangdong Hongtu Technology's 6,800-ton new energy vehicle chassis integrated die-casting structural parts. In December of the same year, the new generation of NIO ES8 was launched, and it was announced that it had become an 8,800-ton die-casting machine, creating a die-casting aluminum body with integrated front and rear ends. On November 17 this year, Xpeng X9 was released, and at the same time, the 12,000-ton integrated die-casting production site of Xpeng's Guangzhou Huangpu factory was unveiled.

Tesla, which was given an example by Lei Jun, also reported in September this year that its integrated die-casting technology had made the biggest breakthrough, and it only took 18 months to develop a new car.

Similarly, Lei Jun at the press conference benchmarked the 20,000-rpm motor of Tesla's new Model S Plaid, which costs one million, and regarded the 21,000-rpm motor of Xiaomi cars as a performance revolution.

Prior to this, Huawei released the electric drive system DriveOne, the maximum speed has been claimed to reach 22000 rpm, and it has been installed on the Zhijie S7.

Even the integration of CTB batteries, cell inversion, and heat pump management emphasized by Lei Jun are actually not subversive innovations. Either there are already peers who are one step ahead, or there are already mature first-class business technology lines. In terms of car-making hardware technology, the disruptive contributions that Xiaomi can make do do not seem to be as dazzling as it sounds.

According to his theory, I am afraid that Tesla and Porsche do not have the ability to accompany domestic new energy.

At present, in terms of performance, no one dares to make a conclusion about whether Xiaomi cars can compete with Porsche and Tesla.

But in terms of appearance, Xiaomi cars have lived like Porsche-because the car looks too much like Porsche, Xiaomi's artificial intelligence assistant Xiao Ai actually "refers to Mi as Jie". Some netizens found that Xiao Ai was used to identify Xiaomi Su7**, and the result was displayed as "Porsche".

Compared to the technological improvements, the real advantage of Xiaomi cars lies in its "ecosystem".

On August 16, 2011, Xiaomi launched its first mobile phone product, with its research and development of MIUI system, 1999 yuan pricing, directly played a trump card in the field of mobile phones, ending the era of domestic copycat machines.

After great success in the field of mobile phones, Xiaomi launched smart home products in 2016 to create a full ecological chain of Xiaomi.

MiMIUI is the source of Xiaomi's history,Lei JunOf course, he also has high hopes for Xiaomi cars to join the Xiaomi ecosystem,It represents Xiaomi's "people, cars and home ecology"It has officially closed the loop。

It is worth mentioning that at the press conference, the hardware ecology of Xiaomi Auto Carlot was fully open to third parties. According to reports, the hardware ecology of Xiaomi Auto Carlot has four major characteristics: "Mijia ecology is not inductive to get on the car, the central control screen can be expanded, the center console can be expanded, and the seat back can be expanded".

Xiaomi's operation is somewhat suspected of "grabbing the market" with his two peers who did not personally build cars.

In the case of Huawei's car BU, it does not build cars, but co-designs models with several existing automakers. However, these models are equipped with Huawei's operating system and driver assistance system, and its smartphone users can sync settings and apps between the phone and the car.

On November 30, Shen Ziyu, chairman and CEO of Meizu, announced that next year, Meizu Group will launch a customized Meizu car, which will not only be equipped with the Flyme Auto system, but also integrate Meizu's past experience in software, design, interior and other aspects, and only sell it in Meizu Group channels.

What is more interesting is that before the Xiaomi car conference on December 28, Lei Jun sent a poster to pay tribute to BYD, Wei Xiaoli, Huawei and other car companies. In addition to Huawei, all the car companies that Lei Jun paid tribute to responded.

However, Yu Chengdong suddenly posted a circle of friends during the Xiaomi press conference, saying that "the M9 is at its peak, unbounded imagination" and "M9 has created a miracle of global high-end cars".

Although Yu Chengdong did not mention millet, the outside world saw that his eyes were full of millet.

After all, the scolding war between Yu Chengdong and Xiaomi has lasted from mobile phones to new energy vehicles.

At the beginning of this month, Yu Chengdong once again started a scolding war with Xiaomi, Xiaomi named him, saying, "Recently, Mr. Yu Chengdong has made untrue remarks about our company's 'keel shaft' technology, please follow the basic rules of 'science and rigor', and please do not smear peers and mislead the public."

Compared with Yu Chengdong, an old opponent, Shen Ziyu of Interstellar Meizu was even more polite, and directly issued an angry article to denounce Lei Jun and Xiaomi Auto for emotional kidnapping.

Xiaomi has not officially set foot in the field of new energy vehicles, and the relationship with friends has been on the same footing, but I don't know who can win in this ecological competition.

The essence of this huge Xiaomi car conference is to raise the public's expectations and make the people feel "worth the money", because Lei Jun himself admits that the pricing of Xiaomi cars is "indeed a bit expensive".

Unlike the "cost performance" of Xiaomi mobile phones, this time, Xiaomi cars are taking the high-end route.

Previously, there has been speculation on the market about the price of Xiaomi cars, but Lei Jun has been hiding and keeping his mouth shut, even at the "Xiaomi Automotive Technology Conference" on December 28, he only gave a general range-

9.90,000 impossible. ”

14.90,000 is also impossible. ”

The same battery of the car** are more than 400,000 yuan. ”

Xinzhi intercepted the sales data of new energy vehicles in the latest year (November 2022-November 2023) and found that among the more than 200,000 new energy vehicles, Tesla's Model Y is unbeatable, the second best-selling is also Tesla's Model 3, and the third-selling is the BYD Tang series.

Tesla performed like this, and it is no wonder that Lei Jun will benchmark everywhere at the press conference.

As early as the beginning of the establishment of Xiaomi mobile phones, Lei Jun took Jobs as his idol and proposed to benchmark the iPhone and let Xiaomi mobile phones catch up with Apple. Now that Xiaomi is building cars in the sea, it has also chosen its own benchmark - Tesla, but I don't know if Xiaomi will be able to create brilliance again this time.

You know, new energy vehicles are a rather money-burning industry.

As early as 2014, Jia Yueting, the former Internet tycoon and founder of LeTV Group, announced that he would go to the sea to build a car, and then, the public watched him suffocate for his dreams, and finally went overseas, and he still does not dare to return to China.

Similarly, with this ambition, there is Xu Jiayin, the former richest man in China, who smashed tens of billions of yuan and set foot in the field of new energy vehicles, but the result was a failure. In July this year, Evergrande Automobile released a financial report, with a two-year loss of 84 billion.

Even Huawei, a mobile phone friend who does not personally build a car, is also losing money in this field and has been losing money for many years.

In May 2019, Huawei's car BU was established, and since then it has begun its extremely long "loss of money journey" - Yu Chengdong has publicly stated that Huawei has directly invested 7,000 people in the car BU and indirectly invested more than 10,000 people, and it will burn more than a billion dollars every year.

It is rumored that Huawei has invested more than 20 billion yuan in car BU. However, the revenue of the car BU is extremely mismatched with the investment, and the annual revenue in 2022 is 207.7 billion yuan, and its revenue in the first half of 2023 will be 1 billion yuan.

The perennial losses not only put Yu Chengdong under great pressure, but he also sprayed with friends every day, shouting "far ahead";It also made Huawei unbearable, and finally stripped the car BU from Huawei's system.

Just a month before the Xiaomi technology conference - November 26, Changan Automobile announced that it signed a "Memorandum of Investment Cooperation" with Huawei on the 25th, and after negotiation between the two parties, Huawei established a new company, operating independently, Changan as an investor, and the company's current positioning is "automotive electrification intelligent open platform".

In the automotive field, there is a general industry consensus that the initial investment cost is huge and the return cycle is long, and building a car is only a small problem that needs to be overcome in the early stage, and the operation and sales in the later stage are the hurdles that cannot be bypassed.

Even Tesla, which Lei Jun regards as the ultimate rival, has been in a state of loss all year round since its establishment in 2003, losing money for 17 consecutive years, and it will not turn a profit until 2020.

Looking at China, car companies are not having a good time - even NIO, which has a place in the field of new energy, has created a famous meme of "losing 100,000 yuan when selling a car". In 2022, NIO's net loss was as high as 1443.7 billion yuan, it also successfully refreshed the data of losing money by selling cars, and the loss was as high as 11780,000 yuan.

Xiaomi's R&D investment of 10 billion yuan, in the field of new energy vehicles, is just a tuition fee. But in terms of momentum, I'm afraid no one can come out on the right side of Xiaomi.

The era of new energy vehicles has passed, and Xiaomi cars are too late for the market. At the same time, the intelligent ecology of automobiles has also entered the second half, and the competition is becoming more and more fierce.

But whether it is for Lei Jun or Xiaomi, they have just taken the first step, and the tram market that they are about to step into is the real undercurrent.

But in any case, Xiaomi and its friends will eventually have a battle!