Building a car is an entrepreneurship that only allows success and not failure, and Lei Jun must show enough sincerity to the outside world while being cautious and restrained.
Author |Wang San.
Edit |Eucommia.
* |Tidesight (ID: Tidesight).
On the 1003rd day after the announcement of the car, Xiaomi Auto showed its true face.
On December 28, Xiaomi Auto held its first press conference in Beijing. This is a pure technology conference, Xiaomi Chairman and CEO Lei Jun spent two and a half hours to give a comprehensive explanation of Xiaomi's motor, platform architecture, self-developed CTB integrated battery, die-casting, automatic driving, intelligent cockpit and other technologies, as well as the design of Xiaomi's first model Su7.
With less than 100 days left before the official launch of the product, Xiaomi Auto is left with only the only suspense, and it is also the part that the market is most concerned about - *
At the end of 2020, news began to spread in the industry that Xiaomi was making cars.
At that time, Yu Chengdong had just taken over Huawei Auto BU from Xu Zhijun, and after Ren Zhengfei established the background of "Huawei does not make cars", Huawei began to fully enter all car-related businesses other than "car manufacturing", including but not limited to intelligent driving, intelligent cockpit, intelligent networking, intelligent electric and intelligent car cloud.
Xiaomi is stealthy in the smoke bombs thrown by Huawei, and in the context of Huawei's resolute refutation of cars, Xiaomi's refutation of rumors seems more credible.
In December 2020, Xiaomi officials successively denied the rumors of building a car, and Xu Jieyun, deputy director of Xiaomi's general office, said on Weibo, "Just grasp one principle: anyone who says that Xiaomi wants to build a car is fake news." ”
In March 2021, Lei Jun stood on the stage and said, "Xiaomi will officially enter the smart electric vehicle market." ”
On March 30, 2021, Xiaomi's spring new product launch conference).
Lei Jun mentioned at that press conference that on January 15, 2021, Xiaomi's board of directors suggested paying attention to the electric vehicle industry, but he was very resistant in his heart: "Xiaomi has finally achieved the mobile phone business today, and it has finally become the third in the world. ”
In the 75 days after this board meeting, 85 industry visits and communication were conducted, in-depth exchanges with more than 200 automotive industry veterans, 4 internal management discussions, and 2 formal board discussions, and finally the decision was made to build the car.
As a result, Xiaomi announced the establishment of a wholly-owned subsidiary of smart electric vehicles, with Lei Jun as the CEO of the electric vehicle business, personally leading the project, and plans to achieve mass production in the first half of 2024.
There are three key points for Xiaomi to build a car.
First, it is expected to invest 10 billion US dollars in the next 10 years, with an initial plan of 10 billion yuan.
Second, "wholly-owned", like the original mobile phone, the company independently controls all the right to speak. For Lei Jun, who has made investments and has friends everywhere in the investment circle, this is not a simple matter, and China's rivers and lakes are sophisticated.
Third, "Lei Jun personally led the team" and concurrently served as the CEO of the smart electric vehicle business.
In September 2021, Xiaomi officially registered Xiaomi Auto*** with a registered capital of 10 billion yuan, and Lei Jun personally served as a legal person.
If you want to do big things, you need to get personnel done first.
Xiaomi's official Weibo released a photo of Lei Jun and 16 other automotive team backbones, except for Li Tianyuan, the former BMW Group IX designer, the rest are Xiaomi's internal backbones, Hong Feng, Lu Weibing, and Liu De, three Xiaomi partners, serve as Xiaomi Auto executives and supervisors.
At the same time, Xiaomi has launched a large-scale talent entrance in automobile-related fields such as R&D, manufacturing, advanced chain, and intelligence, and has joined Xiaomi one after another, including Yu Liguo, former president of Jihu Automobile, Huang Zhenyu, former vice president of Magna China, Hu Zhengnan, former president of Geely Research Institute, Qiu Zhen, former senior exterior designer of Mercedes-Benz German headquarters, and Shin Muto, former senior interior designer of BMW.
With a large number of heroes, the pressure of management grows. At the beginning of its establishment, Xiaomi Auto established a relatively flat organizational structure, with multiple business divisions, and the general manager of each division reported directly to Lei Jun.
In July 2021, Xiaomi released 500 self-driving-related recruitment positions on its official recruitment interface. According to the financial report data, as of the second quarter of 2023, the number of R&D personnel related to Xiaomi cars is close to 3,000. Lei Jun also said in an interview that Xiaomi's first car as a whole invested 3,400 engineers and invested more than 10 billion yuan in research and development.
In addition to personnel, it is also necessary to determine the model.
There are three mainstream models for new EV manufacturers: the OEM model, which bypasses the qualification threshold, the self-built factory model, and the smart car model, which only produces technology and does not end up as a model represented by Huawei.
In April 2022, Xiaomi Auto's car manufacturing base in Yizhuang New Town started, which is the first phase of Xiaomi's vehicle factory, covering an area of nearly 720,000 square meters, and has been completed in June 2023, including 6 workshops of die-casting, stamping, body, painting, ** and battery, with an annual production capacity of 200,000 vehicles.
According to Xiaomi's plan, the automobile project will build Xiaomi Auto headquarters base, sales headquarters, and R&D headquarters, of which the estimated annual production capacity of the self-built factory is 300,000 units, and the second phase of the plant is expected to start in 2024 and be completed in 2025.
At present, Xiaomi's qualification application for car manufacturing is still advancing.
In August this year, Xiaomi Auto was approved by the state and has completed the filing of new models in the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. According to the process, after obtaining the national approval, the enterprise also needs to pass the assessment of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology's "Rules for the Administration of Access to Passenger Car Manufacturers and Products" and "Rules for the Administration of Access to New Energy Vehicle Manufacturers and Products", and be included in the "Announcement of Vehicle Manufacturers and Products" in order to obtain production qualifications.
Xiaomi's new model SU7 has been filed with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, and the production capacity of the first phase of the factory has already begun to operate, so it may only be a matter of time before it obtains "double certification".
*: Ministry of Industry and Information Technology**).
The "makeup photo" of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of Xiaomi Auto shows that the font of "Beijing Xiaomi" on the rear of the car is consistent with the font of "Beijing Automobile", according to which it is speculated that Xiaomi's current production may be using BAIC's car-making qualifications. In January 2022, Yu Liguo, who previously served as the director of the strategic planning department of BAIC Group and the executive deputy general manager of BAIC New Energy, joined Xiaomi Auto as vice president of Xiaomi Auto and political commissar of Xiaomi Auto Beijing headquarters.
In the 1,003 days after the announcement of the car, Lei Jun successively solved the problems of talent echelon, car-making qualifications, and self-built factories, paving the way for car-building.
In recent years, the growth of the global mobile phone market has been sluggish, and the ecological chain built by Xiaomi has not been able to get out of the second growth curve, which constitutes the fundamental reason for Xiaomi's car manufacturing.
According to IDC data, in 2022, global smartphone shipments will be 12100 million units, a year-on-year increase of **113%, the lowest since 2013. Counterpoint expects global smartphone shipments to continue to decline by 5% year-on-year in 2023, the lowest level in a decade.
At the same time, new energy vehicles have become one of the few large-scale and high-growth tracks in the field of technology consumption. According to the data of the China Association of Science and Technology, from 2020 to 2022, China's new energy vehicle sales will be 13670,000 units, 35210,000 and 68870,000 units, a year-on-year increase. 6%。In November 2023, the penetration rate of new energy vehicles in China exceeded 40%, hitting a record high.
It is Xiaomi's ultimate goal to break through the ceiling of the existing business by linking smart cars with existing smartphones and IoT businesses to create a closed loop of people, cars and homes.
However, Lei Jun summed up the reason for building the car in a more relaxed way - destiny.
*:Lei Jun Weibo;has now been deleted).
After stepping over the threshold, the real dilemma surfaced – what kind of car to design?
According to Lei Jun's recollection, when the Xiaomi car team was first formed, he convened the team for a three-day and three-night meeting, and only discussed a simple question: what kind of car do you want to build when you join Xiaomi?
The answer was revealed at the first press conference: "What we want to build is not a mediocre car, we want to build a dream car comparable to Porsche and Tesla, and it is also a good-looking, easy-to-drive, comfortable and safe mobile intelligent space." ”
Lei Jun said that in the first stage, the car is just a travel vehicle;** In the second stage, the car is transformed into a mobile computing terminal;In the third stage, the car will further evolve into an "advanced mobile intelligent space", and this is the starting point of Xiaomi's car.
The industry is obsessed with unveiling the mystery of Xiaomi's first model, seeing the real face, and even a "leak" occurred before the press conference, but Lei Jun wants to show the technology more, which can be seen from the special technical conference.
In the warm-up stage of the press conference, Lei Jun continuously emphasized on Weibo the view of "insisting on positive development and starting from the underlying core technology".At the press conference, Lei Jun mentioned "ten times the investment to build a good car", and the total R&D investment reached 10 billion yuan.
Before showing the model, Lei Jun focused on Xiaomi's investment and achievements in the fields of motor electronic control, die-casting integration, and self-developed battery technology.
In the "show muscles" link, Lei Jun started from the "three parts" of electric vehicles. Xiaomi Auto released the super motor V8S, which reached 27200rpm, the maximum horsepower reached 578PS, the peak power was 425kW, and the peak torque reached 635Nm, with a maximum efficiency of 9811% with a power density of 1014kw/kg。
In the case of the same torque, the higher the speed of the motor, the faster the vehicle speed, and the stronger the performance, which is the main competition direction of the current electric vehicle enterprises.
At present, the mainstream motor speed in the industry is below 20,000rpm, and only some models can exceed 20,000rpm, such as Tesla Model S Plaid (20,000rpm), Zeekrypton 001 FR (21,000rpm), and Zhijie S7 (22,000rpm of Huawei DriveOne).
If the Xiaomi Super Motor V8S is not expected to be available in 2025, it can really break the new record of 22000rpm achieved by Huawei DriveOne a week ago;Or all car companies will stop technology research and development in 2025, Xiaomi Super Motor V8S can also achieve "the world's first mass production motor speed, refreshing the global motor speed ceiling".
However, objectively speaking, Xiaomi Super Motor V6 has been mass-produced and put on the car, with a speed of up to 21000rpm, which is also in the forefront of the current mass production models.
In order to make up for the loss of not being far ahead of the motor, Lei Jun brought another set of data - zero hundred acceleration 278 seconds, more than the Zhijie S7 with the blessing of Huawei DriveOne 33 seconds, 3 of the Tesla Model S0 seconds, 2 of the Porsche Taycan Turbo93 seconds, showing the temperament of the "King of Volumes".
In order to roll up parameters in the field of electric vehicles, the unavoidable link is the battery, and the direction of competition in the battery field is voltage. Xiaomi Su7 uses 800 volts silicon carbide platform, although 800 volts is the standard configuration of current mainstream models, but according to Lei Jun, many so-called 800 volt cars are actually mostly only 700 volts, and some even only 600 volts, while Xiaomi Su7 has a maximum of 871 volts.
In addition, Xiaomi Su7 adopts CTB integrated battery technology, which has the advantage of making the battery pack a part of the body and replacing the bottom plate of the entire body. Xiaomi has adopted the industry's most stringent battery safety standards to ensure that even if the water cooling system is not working, there is no open flame and no heat spread when the battery is fully charged at 55 degrees. Lei Jun said that high-performance lithium-ion batteries have the advantages of long life and fast charging, which solves the pain points of short range of current electric vehicles.
In fact, another advantage of CTB's integrated battery technology is that it reduces the vertical height of the vehicle, which not only leaves more space for the passenger compartment, but also improves the aesthetics of the vehicle. Many car owners may not realize that the culprit "panoramic canopy" that leads to the summer driving umbrella sunscreen is not a necessity to create a sense of atmosphere in the propaganda language, but after the huge battery pack occupies the chassis space, the glass is thinner than the metal insulation layer to "steal" back to the passenger height of 2-5 cm.
network, invasion and deletion).
According to Lei Jun, the thickness of Xiaomi's CTB battery pack + floor is only 120mm, and the volume efficiency is 778%, the first in the world. The Xiaomi SU7 has two versions of the battery pack, one is the ternary lithium version of CATL and the other is the lithium iron phosphate version of BYD, which has a range of 800 km and 668 km respectively.
Lei Jun said that Xiaomi, as a native of the northern car company, is determined to become the "king of winter tram battery life", so it uses a dual-mode heat pump, which can not only heat the cockpit alone, but also heat the cockpit and battery pack at the same time, with higher thermal management efficiency.
The next focus is on the integrated die-casting technology - Xiaomi Super Die-Casting. Xiaomi adopts a self-designed 9,100-ton integrated large die-casting equipment cluster system, which refers to the tonnage of the clamping force of large die-casting, which is uncoiled by Tesla.
On September 22, 2020, Musk proposed the integrated die-casting technology at the Tesla Battery Day press conference, the advantage of which is to simplify the connection process of the rear floor of the model in the welding process, and Tesla's Shanghai Gigafactory applied a 6,000-ton die-casting machine to die-cast the rear bottom plate that originally required more than 70 parts of the welded parts, which greatly shortened the production time.
At present, Tesla's Shanghai factory still uses a 6,000-ton die-casting machine, while the U.S. factory has just achieved 9,000 tons, and Xiaomi has an additional 100-ton clamping force tonnage, and has won.
In terms of body, Xiaomi Auto uses the self-developed material "Xiaomi Titan Alloy", which contains 30% recycled aluminum, and Xiaomi Auto has also become the second car company to develop its own body metal materials in addition to Tesla.
The torsional rigidity of the whole vehicle of the Xiaomi Su7 is 51000N·m DEG, and the drag coefficient is 0195cd, again "the world's first production car", won hemp.
At the Xiaomi automotive technology conference, Lei Jun focused on five technologies, including super motor, silicon carbide high-voltage platform, and super large die-casting, which are three hardware technologies, which are also evidence that they are comparable to luxury cars in terms of performance. However, the new car has never been a simple stacking and assembly, the second half of the automobile revolution is intelligence, the key lies in the reorganization of software and hardware technology and the development of intelligent applications.
As a representative of the transformation of mobile phone manufacturers into car companies, the connection between Xiaomi cars and Xiaomi mobile phones and Xiaomi ecological products is also considered to be the biggest advantage of Xiaomi car manufacturing, to be precise, the advantages that should be shown. As a result, among the five technologies highlighted by Lei Jun, the other two are intelligent driving and intelligent cockpit.
In terms of intelligent driving, Xiaomi Auto has brought three technological innovations - "zoom BEV technology", "super-resolution occupancy network technology" and "road large model technology".
The Xiaomi intelligent driving system uses high-precision maps and multi-sensor fusion, which can achieve L4 level autonomous driving functions, with functions such as one-key summoning of vehicles, automatic on-ramp, active lane change overtaking, unprotected steering U-turn, and automatic valet parking, covering high-speed, urban areas, parking lots and other scenarios.
Lei Jun said that Xiaomi's self-developed end-to-end perception decision-making model is the first in the world to be applied to a production car. Xiaomi's goal is to enter the first camp of the industry in terms of intelligent driving in 2024.
In terms of intelligent cockpit, Xiaomi's self-developed surging OS also announced that it was on the car, realizing the complete opening of the whole ecology of people, cars and homes, and also unlocking more ways to play the interconnection of the car and machine, and the five-screen linkage of the car machine system was displayed at the press conference, the cross-terminal experience of mobile phones and car machines, and the mobile phone application became a native application in the car in seconds, as well as an open hardware ecology.
In addition, "mobile phone AIoT" (artificial intelligence Internet of Things) is the core strategy that Xiaomi has long adhered to, according to Lei Jun, the addition of smart cars will make Xiaomi's layout in the smart hardware ecology more complete and have greater value, in the future, Xiaomi may realize mobile phones, cars, tablets, wearable devices, smart home comprehensive connectivity, in the operating system, application ecology, underlying data and hardware mutual assistance and other levels to achieve full integration, to create a multi-device collaboration of cross-device, cross-scene intelligent cockpit new experience.
However, car-machine interconnection, multi-screen collaboration, and intelligent driving are the regularization of mainstream smart car companies**, and it is also the part of the industry that has higher expectations for it since Xiaomi announced the creation of a car.
It's not as good as Lei Jun's golden sentences.
*:Lei Jun Weibo;
On the day of the official announcement of the car, Lei Jun said, "This is the last major entrepreneurial project in my life, and I am willing to bet on all the achievements and reputation in my life and go all out to make Xiaomi cars." ”
For Lei Jun, building a car is a business that only allows success and not failure, and he must show enough sincerity to the outside world while being cautious and restrained. The sincerity lies in the fact that all the information about Xiaomi's first model, except for the price, has been shown at the Xiaomi car technology conferenceIt is prudent to say that the price is precisely the most important information about the car as a consumer product.
Lei Jun's explanation is that the SU7 is actually already in mass production in small batches, but because there is still a lot of testing work to do, it will be a few months before it will be officially launched.
Before the press conference, Lei Jun also said in response to questions from netizens that the SU7 hopes to be comparable to the Porsche Taycan Turbo in terms of drivability and other mechanical qualitiesIn terms of intelligence, I hope it can be comparable to Tesla Model S;At the same time, there is the most advanced technology and the most abundant ecology. The pricing has not yet been finalized, however, the Xiaomi Su7 is indeed a bit expensive, but "expensive for a reason".
After testing the water at the press conference, we will adjust the expectations in combination with the feedback from the outside world, and wait and see the changes and sales of peers on the upcoming New Year's Day and Spring Festival, and then determine the final one, which may be the closest to the truth of the matter.
To ** the price of Xiaomi Su7, it is necessary to disassemble the characteristics of this product, but also to combine the price of existing products in the same industry, especially the price of competing products.
A few days before the press conference, Lei Jun built momentum through ** and social platforms, and Xiaomi even chartered several outdoor billboards to pay tribute to the "pioneers" of new energy vehicles such as BYD, Weilai, Ideal, and Huawei.
*:Lei Jun Weibo;
But after paying tribute to his domestic counterparts, Lei Jun identified the competitors for the first model of Xiaomi Auto as Porsche and Tesla.
The most important reason lies in the positioning of this model. Lei Jun believes that among the three stages, Porsche is a model of the first stage, Tesla has opened a precedent for the second stage, and the starting point of Xiaomi's car manufacturing is to create an "advanced mobile intelligent space", which is a new mission of the third stage.
*:Lei Jun Weibo;
The first model of Xiaomi Auto is positioned as a C-class high-performance ecological technology sedan, with a length, width and height of 4997 1963 1440mm, a wheelbase of 3000mm, and a sports car attitude.
Lei Jun said that the car has been developed for more than 130 years and has always been the "king of industry", and the car is the "spirit of the times", so he firmly chose to build a car. And it is easy to build a low car, but it is difficult to build a high car, so Xiaomi has chosen the difficult but correct path.
Such a high-performance sedan positioned in the C-class, the starting price is difficult to drop to 150,000 yuan, in addition to the industry's speculation of 990,000 yuan, 1490,000 yuan has been refuted by Lei Jun himself, he said at the press conference: "Don't talk about 9 again."90,000, impossible, don't talk about 1490,000, we have to respect technology. ”
In fact, while doing enough "high-end positioning" to pave the way, Lei Jun cleverly avoided the most speculated starting price - 1990,000 yuan.
If Xiaomi Su7 starts at a price of less than 200,000 yuan, it will have to face the competitive pressure of BYD, although Xiaomi Su7 has advantages in appearance, configuration, and performance, but BYD's monthly sales of 300,000 units The accumulated brand potential energy will still put pressure on Xiaomi, which has just transformed into a car. What's more, BYD's way of breaking the involution has always been simple and rude, first cut the price by 10,000, and if it doesn't work, it will be 20,000, which is the cost management ability driven by the scale advantage, and it is also the most lacking ability of Xiaomi, which is still entangled between ** and sales.
If Xiaomi Su7 starts at a price of 200,000-300,000 yuan (the mainstream configuration version may be higher than 250,000 yuan), it will cut into the ** segment with the most abundant choices of pure electric cars, Tesla Model 3, Zhijie S7, Xiaopeng P7 P7i, BYD Seal, Extreme Krypton 001 007, and Lantu Chasing Light, but this is the most reasonable ** segment with the configuration of Xiaomi Su7.
Of course, the starting price of Xiaomi Su7 may also be higher than 300,000 yuan, after all, Lei Jun mentioned that the price of products with the same performance and configuration is more than 400,000 yuan, and it has been rooted in high-end positioning from the first model, which is Xiaomi's experience over the years"Cost performance and cost performance", and it is also the best solution to ensure profit margins in the stage of insufficient production capacity and achieve a virtuous cycle of R&D and production.
The "same performance and configuration product" mentioned here refers to the SU7 MAX, which is the top-of-the-line version of the first model, and its main selling points include an acceleration of 2 to 100 km/h78 seconds, 265 kilometers per hour, 800 kilometers of cruising range, 100 kilometers of braking 333 meters, which means that the Xiaomi Mi Su7 will likewise cover multiple ** bands in different versions and configurations.
At the press conference, it was mentioned that the ordinary version of the rear motor drive, which has shrunk in terms of battery and fast charging, and also cut the configuration of lidar, electric tail, air spring, CDC shock absorber, HUD, electric suction door, etc., but the specific configuration is not fully introduced.
Based on the existing information, Guanchao New Consumption (ID: Tidesight) expects that the price of the top version of Xiaomi SU7 will exceed 300,000 yuan, after all, the cost of a 100-kilowatt-hour ternary lithium CATL battery is more than 100,000 yuan. The starting price is below 200,000 yuan, or between 200,000 yuan and 300,000 yuan, the key is what configurations will be cut in the "simple configuration" version, which is also the gap left by this technology conference for future product launches.
In addition, on December 26, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced the "Catalogue of New Energy Vehicle Models for Reduction and Exemption of Vehicle Purchase Tax" (the first batch), and two Xiaomi SU7 models are listed, which means that the purchase of Xiaomi cars can enjoy a tax exemption of up to 30,000 yuan.
The upcoming 2024 will be the most fierce year for new car competition, the industry has entered a mature period of large-scale growth, and players who have survived a new round of reshuffle will accelerate the cannibalization of traditional fuel vehicles with their respective products and supporters, and win the last ticket to this red sea.
On December 18, 2023, Lei Jun said in an interview with CCTV's "Face to Face" that Xiaomi has many natural advantages in making cars, because the essence of today's smart electric vehicles is the integration of the consumer electronics industry, which is a big integration, so entering the automotive industry is challenging for Xiaomi, and the difficulty is controllable in general.
Returning to the home of the press conference, Lei Jun's self-confidence was more straightforward: "We will spend 15-20 years to become one of the top five car manufacturers in China and strive for the rise of China." ”
On the way to impact the high-end, Xiaomi is no longer the catfish of "1999 yuan to make a friend" when it first entered the mobile phone industry, with ten times the investment and tens of billions of research and development, and the goal is to leverage the 100 billion market.
As Lei Jun once set the tone: for Xiaomi, building a car is the first battle that is the decisive battle.