**: Snow Leopard Finance Club (ID: xuebaocaijingshe) Author: Hanxing.
In order to render and highlight the high-end positioning of Xiaomi cars, Lei Jun did his homework, and the entire press conference revealed a message between the lines: Xiaomi cars are not cheap.
In order to prove that this not cheap car is worth the money, Lei Jun spent a full 3 hours openly peddling the core selling point of Xiaomi cars to the outside world, and at the same time did not forget to complain about his friends.
Xiaomi mobile phones fought their way out with a cost-effective advantage. Now in the face of a more difficult situation, will Lei Jun "float", or will he once again give full play to the advantages of the master of expected management and do the opposite?
On December 28, at the press conference, which was publicized in advance and full of suspense, Lei Jun unceremoniously benchmarked Xiaomi Auto against the two most iconic car companies - the luxurious Porsche and the high-tech Tesla.
Lei Jun's performance before the press conference can be described as modest. On December 27, Lei Jun took down outdoor large-screen billboards in several cities and posted several Weibo posts in succession, paying tribute to BYD, Weilai, Xiaopeng, Ideal, and Huawei, the pioneers of the new energy automobile industry. This is not enough, and the word "sincere" must be added in particular.
But at the press conference, a string of friends who were not directly named were all crushed and "complained". "There is a benefit of being late, and we have a high starting point. Lei Jun said. He invested 3,400 engineers and more than 10 billion in R&D expenses for Xiaomi's first car.
For the management of expectations from the outside world and potential consumers, Lei Jun contributed to the textbook-level show. The question is, the Xiaomi Su7, which is not destined to be too cheap, how many rice fans can afford it?
Lei Jun set the tone: Xiaomi cars are not cheap
In order to render and highlight the high-end positioning of Xiaomi cars, Lei Jun has done his homework.
The PPT of this press conference can be said to be a collection of luxury cars: Tesla Model S, Porsche Taycan Turbo, BMW 5 Series, Mercedes-Benz EQS, and Mai** all appeared, and Lei Jun also mentioned these luxury brands many times in his 3-hour speech.
Lei Jun said that after a hundred years of development, the mechanical quality of the car has reached a very high level, and Porsche is the best benchmark. Since the beginning of the new century, Tesla has taken the lead in creating mobile intelligent terminals. "Now, Xiaomi believes that creating an advanced mobile intelligent space is the core proposition of the new century. ”
The day before the press conference, it was reported that at a recent Xiaomi internal event, Yu Liguo, vice president of Xiaomi Auto and political commissar of Xiaomi Auto Beijing headquarters, revealed that there are currently 3,700 people in Xiaomi's automotive department, and the goal is to build a dream car that can be compared to Porsche and Tesla.
Lei Jun affirmed this positioning at the press conference. "The goal set by Xiaomi Auto is to be comparable to Porsche and Tesla, to create the best dream car in the new era, and to do a good job of looking, easy to drive, comfortable and safe mobile intelligent space. ”
The arrangement of the launch event is also closely related to this theme. In the first hour and a half, Lei Jun focused on the sense of science and technology of Xiaomi cars;In the second hour and a half, Lei Jun spent all his energy explaining the product design of Xiaomi cars.
The price of such a high-performance, high-tech and ecological C-class sedan is naturally not cheap. Two days before the press conference, Lei Jun began to intentionally or unintentionally vaccinate Xiaomi Su7 for the high cost.
In a Weibo news on December 26, Lei Jun reviewed Xiaomi's 3-year car-making process, and said that it is very complicated, and it is a new beginning for himself and Xiaomi. To this end, Xiaomi has gathered thousands of expert-level talents, invested tens of billions of yuan, and worked hard for more than 1,000 days.
In response to questions from netizens, Lei Jun said that the pricing of Xiaomi cars has not been finalized, "but the su7 is indeed a bit expensive, but please believe that Xiaomi is justifiably expensive."
During the whole press conference, Lei Jun also frequently pointed out that "this car is not cheap".
For example, when introducing the battery pack technology, Lei Jun said that the battery cells of Xiaomi cars are filled with 165 pieces of aerogel insulation material, which is extremely strong and very expensive.
When talking about battery life, Lei Jun did not mention the relatively low-cost BYD lithium iron phosphate battery in the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology's declaration catalog, but talked about the SU7 equipped with a 101-degree ternary lithium battery of the CATL era, and the cars that can afford this battery on the market are generally priced at more than 400,000 yuan. Therefore, "Everybody stop saying 990,000 yuan, don't talk about 1490,000 yuan".
From the very beginning, Lei Jun has been laying the foundation for the high-end positioning of Xiaomi cars. In the book "Xiaomi Entrepreneurial Thinking" published last year, he concluded that he was in two "battles", one was the life and death battle of the high-end mobile phone, and the other was the last battle of Xiaomi Automobile.
And Lei Jun didn't want to experience another life-and-death battle in the last battle.
Since the beginning of Xiaomi's establishment, Lei Jun has been emphasizing Xiaomi's scientific and technological attributes and Internet thinking, but Xiaomi, which started with the MIUI operating system with a sense of science and technology, has been firmly labeled as "very cost-effective".
Subsequently, Lei Jun and Xiaomi spent more than 3 years, after several generations of high-end product attempts, until the Xiaomi 14 released in 2023, the high-end began to improve.
In October this year, Lei Jun proposed the company's new ten-year goal within Xiaomi, that is, to invest in the underlying core technology on a large scale, and strive to become a new generation of global hard technology leaders.
Taking advantage of this press conference, which only talks about technology, does not talk about products, and has no pricing, Lei Jun wants to establish the "human design" of science and technology for Xiaomi Auto and step to the end in one step.
Every sentence does not mention money, every sentence is money
In order to prove that this not cheap car is worth the money, Lei Jun spent a full 3 hours openly peddling the core selling point of Xiaomi cars to the outside world.
Lei Jun once revealed that Xiaomi will invest 10 billion US dollars in 10 years to build cars, of which 10 billion yuan will be invested in the first phase.
Where did Xiaomi's 10 billion go?Lei Jun's answer is, technology + ecology. It is embodied in five aspects: motor, battery, large die-casting, intelligent driving, and intelligent cockpit.
While introducing these five core technologies, it has also become a standard action to "complain" about friends by the way.
Lei Jun first introduced Xiaomi's self-developed motor, he believes that the motor is the core technology of electric vehicles, which directly determines the performance of the car. "Mainstream luxury brands like BBA and Porsche have achieved 16,000 rpm, Tesla used to be the world's motor ceiling, and the new Model S Plaid is priced at nearly one million rpm and has a speed of 20,000 rpm. ”
Xiaomi's V6 and V6S motors reach 21,000 rpm and will be installed on the first models of Xiaomi SU7. Lei Jun said that the 22,000-rpm motor released by friends a month ago is actually still much behind Xiaomi in terms of maximum torque, maximum power, and power density.
In terms of battery, Lei Jun said that Xiaomi has developed a new super 800V (volt) silicon carbide high-voltage platform, and deliberately emphasized that Xiaomi's 800V is "true 800V".
Most of the friends claim 800V, but in fact, they can't reach it, and some can be called 800V if they exceed 500V. Lei Jun said that Xiaomi's maximum voltage reached 871V, "and other car manufacturers may say that they are 900V or quasi-900V."
In 2020, Tesla opened the era of integrated die casting. Xiaomi Automobile, which regards Tesla as the benchmark, has also developed large die-casting technology. At the press conference, Lei Jun showed Xiaomi's full-stack self-developed 9,100-ton large die-casting cluster, and claimed that Xiaomi is the only automobile manufacturer in China that has both a full-stack self-developed large-scale die-casting cluster and self-developed alloy materials.
In terms of intelligent driving, Lei Jun has announced a research and development progress in August last year, with a total investment of 3.3 billion yuan in the first phase, and an additional 4.7 billion yuan in the follow-up.
At this press conference, he once again elaborated on the latest progress of Xiaomi's intelligent driving.
Xiaomi adopts the same mainstream scheme in the industry as Tesla, BEV+Transformer+Occupy the underlying algorithm of the network, and adds technologies such as zoom, vector algorithm, and road model.
The super-resolution occupancy network technology of the Xiaomi Su7 can reduce the recognition accuracy to 01 meter, "Tesla can do 0."34 meters, the domestic friend is 02 meters".
An employee of a head intelligent driving company who had been in charge of mass production projects told Snow Leopard Finance that compared with the autonomous driving ** in August last year, Xiaomi autonomous driving at this press conference has been able to bypass cartons and construction areas, and this level of progress will take two to three years for traditional car companies to do.
But he also believes that what Xiaomi has released now is only a demo, and what is presented in ** is also a more basic scene, such as zebra crossings to avoid pedestrians. The unmanned vehicles in the first echelon of autonomous driving can already drive into crowded urban villages.
Lei Jun put the introduction of the smart cockpit at the end, he believes that this is Xiaomi's most powerful and most anticipated link.
The Xiaomi car machine is equipped with a surging OS system, which can realize the seamless connection between the mobile phone and the car machine, and the hardware products of the Xiaomi ecosystem can also realize the password-free connection to the car machine with the same account.
Apple has never been absent from Xiaomi's press conference, and this time is no different.
Lei Jun said that for those users who have not bought a Xiaomi mobile phone, Xiaomi car support for Apple devices is the best, not only fully supporting wireless CarPlay, but also based on airplay to achieve video and audio flow, and even support iPad rear expansion, control air conditioning, ** and seats.
Apple users drive Xiaomi cars, I think they can have a very good experience. ”
However, the capital markets did not react eagerly to the conference. On December 28, the Hong Kong stock Hang Seng Technology Index **34%, technology Internet concept stocks rose, but Xiaomi ** 025%, "Xiaomi Group's stock price turned down" rushed to the hot search on Weibo.
To build a car for the "elite of the times", Lei Jun floated
In the face of Lei Jun's unsparing "Amway", the focus of attention of rice noodles and car buying groups is still the pricing of Xiaomi's first car.
During the press conference, in a group of nearly 500 "rice noodles", guessing ** was the most lively topic. "Now I feel 1990,000 is out of the question. "At least 2990 thousand. "It's not like you can afford it. ”
In the message under Lei Jun's Weibo, there are also many high-praise comments asking about the price of Xiaomi Su7. At around 5 pm on the 28th, half of the top ten hot searches on Weibo are related to Xiaomi, the second most popular is "Xiaomi car appearance", and the fourth is "Xiaomi car**".
Since he went all out to build a car, although the product has always been shrouded in a veil of mystery, Lei Jun has never hesitated to show his determination and never miss any opportunity to convey confidence to the outside world.
When planning for Xiaomi's car business, Lei Jun optimistically predicted that even if 1% of tens of millions of rice noodles were willing to pay, it would bring Xiaomi a "fantastic start".
He also proposed a three-tiered final corollary in his biography.
The first layer is that the mobile phone industry has entered a mature stage of stock competition, and smart cars are becoming the next biggest outlet, almost all giants in the field of consumer electronics have left the layout, Xiaomi does not do cars will become a traditional company that has lost its growth space.
The second layer is the endgame of the smart electric vehicle industry. Lei Jun believes that after 15 or 20 years, the industry will enter a mature period, and the world's top five brands will hold more than 80% of the market share, that is, only enter the global front.
Fifth, the annual shipment of more than 10 million vehicles, it is meaningful.
The final endgame is how Xiaomi won one of the five "ultimate tickets". Lei Jun said that Xiaomi's determination and confidence to make cars come from rice noodles, "I don't want to do too much, I don't want to be entangled, and I only care about making a good car for rice noodles at the moment."
But time has passed, and the "upstarts" in the automobile circle who often benchmark luxury cars, can rice noodles still afford to climb high?Lei Jun personally admitted that the "a little expensive" Xiaomi car, how many users are willing to pay for it?
Lei Jun once launched a poll on Weibo, "What is the approximate price of your first car from Xiaomi?"The voting results show that the largest number of people choose less than 100,000 yuan, accounting for 39%;The number of people who chose 100,000 to 150,000 yuan ranked second, accounting for about 27%.
After the press conference, some rice fans spoke on social **, hoping that Xiaomi Auto can achieve the ultimate cost performance and give back to rice fans.
After all, the long-overdue Xiaomi car will face fierce competition in the Red Sea.
In a research report, SPDB International predicts that in 2024, domestic NEV passenger vehicle sales will reach 11.19 million units, a year-on-year increase of 27%, and the growth rate is lower than the 365%, the new energy vehicle market is rapidly saturated.
A director of the sales department of a car company told Snow Leopard Finance and Economics that the price of the Su7 two-wheel drive version is expected to be "more than 200,000 yuan", and the four-wheel drive version may be about 50,000 yuan more expensive than the two-wheel drive version.
Tianfeng analyst Ming-Chi Kuo Previously, the price of Xiaomi cars will be less than 300,000 yuan, and shipments in 2024 are estimated to be 56,000 unitsIf the price is close to or even lower than 250,000 yuan, there is room for shipments.
At present, the market's pricing expectation for Xiaomi cars is generally between 200,000 and 300,000 yuan. In this ** range, there are Tesla Model 3, BYD Han EV, BYD Seal, Xpeng P7, Zhijie S7, Zeekrypton 001, NIO ET5, BMW i3, etc., which can be called a strong forest.
Xiaomi mobile phones fought their way out with a cost-effective advantage. Now in the face of a more difficult situation, Lei Jun is "floating"?Or once again give full play to the advantages of the "expectation management master", and do the opposite: emphasize that Xiaomi cars are not cheap, raise external expectations, and finally surprise the market when the ** is announced?
Until that number is revealed, no one knows the answer.
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