Kunpeng Project
Text: Zhou Xiongfei
Lei Jun, a marketing master, has recently been on the hot search with other car companies.
The day before Xiaomi's automotive technology conference, Lei Jun, chairman of Xiaomi, paid tribute to BYD, Weilai, Xiaopeng, Ideal, Huawei and other manufacturers on Weibo.
Xiaomi Auto hit the giant screen advertisement to the location of the headquarters of these brands, which really created a wave, whether it was to follow up the interaction, or to express disgust, Lei Jun and Xiaomi Auto became the focus of attention.
Lei Jun paid tribute to his peers on Weibo, the picture source Lei Jun Weibo.
In order to build momentum for Xiaomi cars, Lei Jun and Xiaomi are very "fighting", recently, Lei Jun almost posted an average of two Weibo every day to promote his "last entrepreneurial project".
Yesterday afternoon, at the Xiaomi car technology conference with the theme of "leapfrogging", Xiaomi car finally unveiled the mysteryJudging from the appearance, interior and technology of the Xiaomi SU7 car, it is also understandable why Lei Jun wanted to "salute" his peers before the press conference.
Because of millet, it is touching the "friend businessman" to cross the river.
Let's take a look at the motor first, based on the industry base of the existing motor maximum speed of 20000rpm, Xiaomi Auto has launched V6, V6S and V8S and the super motor that is being pre-developed, of which the maximum speed of the super motor can reach 35000rpm.
In terms of battery architecture, Xiaomi Auto has chosen the 800V high-voltage architecture that has become standard in the industry, and said that it is equipped with CTB integrated battery technology.
In terms of intelligence, Xiaomi Auto can be said to have integrated the existing solutions in the industryThe technical route of LiDAR + BEV + Transformer + OCC occupancy network is adopted. Based on these technologies, Xiaomi Auto has optimized its zoom BEV, super-resolution OCC, and road model to strengthen its intelligent driving capabilities.
In the smart cabin, Xiaomi Auto also uses the current industry's mainstream 8295 chip as the main control chip, as well as the "five-screen linkage" arrangement of the central control screen + HUD + instrument screen and rear screen. At the same time, it is also equipped with Xiaomi's self-developed surging OS system, which can realize the interconnection of Xiaomi mobile phones or Apple mobile phones, so as to realize the interconnection of "people, vehicles and homes".
In terms of product appearance, the Xiaomi Mi SU7 adopts a low-lying streamlined coupe design, and adopts a semi-hidden door handle and automatic sports rear wing, as well as a 0195cd drag coefficient and other performance.
Looking at it this way, Xiaomi Su7 has strong capabilities from appearance to performance, which is behind its strategy of "integrating the strengths of hundreds of schools". However, in the case of "I have it, others have it or will have it soon", Xiaomi Auto lacks a bit of personality, and when it is actually listed, it may fall into homogeneous competition in the industry.
Lei Jun attaches great importance to Xiaomi cars, and in his opinion, when Xiaomi Su7 is launched next year, he is confident that the intelligent driving ability of this car will not only enter the first echelon of the intelligent driving industry in 2024, but also become a "dream car" comparable to Porsche and Tesla. So, will young people pay for Xiaomi cars?
Motors, batteries and large die-casting are many core technologies in the era of smart cars. ”
At the press conference, Lei Jun expressed his perception of building a car in more than three years, and he also said"I believe that after reading these contents, you will definitely have a deeper understanding of Xiaomi's car making. ”
First of all, in terms of motors, according to Lei Jun, at the beginning of the development, they saw the highest speed motor in the industry at that time, which was the 20,000rpm motor equipped with the new Model S Plaid, so their goal was to create a motor that exceeded this speed.
As a result, there is a series of Xiaomi Super Motors (Xiaomi Hyper Engine) products released by Lei Jun at this press conference. Among them, Xiaomi Auto first released two motors, V6 and V6S, with a maximum speed of 21000RPM, which can be mounted on 400V and 800V platforms respectively.
Xiaomi Super Motor V6 and V6S motor parameters.
In addition, Xiaomi cars are also challenging higher revsFor example, the super motor called V8S was launched, with a maximum horsepower of 578PS and a maximum speed of 27200rpm, which is already the highest speed in the industryThere is also a pre-developed motor, which can reach a speed of 35,000 rpm.
Behind the drastic increase in speed, there are many difficulties that need to be solved. According to Lei Jun, in order not to break the rotor under high-speed rotation, Xiaomi Auto has improved the material and replaced the existing material with higher strength silicon steelOn the other hand, the technology of two-way stereo oil cooling is adopted in the super motor to reduce the problem of motor heating.
From the perspective of the industry, Xiaomi's silicon steel rotor for automobiles is one of the few innovations in the industryHowever, in terms of oil-cooled motors, the Porsche Mission R and Feifan F7 are also equipped with oil-cooled motors, but there are slight differences in the technical route of oil-cooled motors.
According to the plan of Xiaomi Auto, the V6 and V6S in the super motor will be mass-produced by Xiaomi SU7, and V8S is expected to be on the car in 2025, because the latter is more expensive, which may also mean that Xiaomi Auto may launch new products at that time.
After the electric motor, there is the battery, which is considered the "heart" of the electric vehicle. According to Lei Jun, Xiaomi Auto and CATL have in-depth cooperation, based on the technology based on the latter's Kirin battery, and launched Xiaomi's 800V silicon carbide high-voltage platform, and with CTB integrated battery technology, its battery pack can achieve a maximum power of 150kWh and a maximum range of more than 1200 kilometers.
It should be noted that the 800V silicon carbide high-voltage technology and CTB integrated battery technology adopted by Xiaomi cars are not the first in the industryBecause the former has become the mainstream technology of the layout of many car companies, and the latter technical route, BYD began to lay out very early, all of which are to integrate the battery pack into the lower body to reduce costs and improve the energy density of the battery pack.
Xiaomi car CTB integrated battery technology.
On this basis, Xiaomi Auto claims to have "pioneered the inverted battery cell technology". In short, when the cell is upside down, the pressure relief valve on the cell is also inverted, which improves the safety of passengers in the cabin and further frees up space in the cabin.
It is worth noting that this cell inversion technology is a combination of Kirin batteries and CTB by CATL, in other words, this technology may also be used in the products of other car companies cooperating with CATL in the future.
While developing the three-electric system, Xiaomi Auto has also taken a fancy to the integrated die-casting technology.
This technology was started by Tesla in 2020, which took the lead in achieving 6,000 tons of large die-casting mass production in the Shanghai factory, and two years later, Tesla's integrated die-casting was upgraded, and the 9,000-ton integrated die-casting machine was installed in Tesla's Texas factory, and it was put into operation this year.
In the past two years, the technology has also sparked the pursuit of many car companies, such as NIO, ZEEKR, Xpeng, Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen. Among them, based on the 7,200-ton integrated die-casting machine of ZEEKR, an integrated die-casting rear aluminum body was created for the brand's ZEEKR 009.
The integrated die-casting technology of Xiaomi Auto is named "large die-casting technology". According to Lei Jun, the total tonnage of the die-casting machine of Xiaomi Automobile is 1050 tons, covering an area of 840 square meters, which can achieve 9100 tons of die-casting clamping capacity, helping Xiaomi Automobile to achieve integrated production of rear body floor.
In order to increase the safety performance of the rear body when it is rear-ended, Lei Jun said that the integrated die-casting parts of the rear body have been innovated, and a three-stage collision collapse structure has been added to the rear body anti-collision beam. However, from the perspective of the industry, the ZEEKR 009 model and the Volvo EM90 model have been equipped with a similar structure of this innovative technology.
Xiaomi car three-stage rear floor anti-collision technology.
In addition, according to Lei Jun's words, Xiaomi Auto has developed its own alloy material "Titan Alloy", and said that Xiaomi Auto is the only car factory in China that has mass production of self-developed alloy materials. However, according to Wired Travel, Tesla, Weilai, Zeekr and Gaohe and other car companies have also begun to develop materials for die-casting alloys very early.
Intelligence has become a crucial capability for smart cars. For the latest technology route in the industry, Xiaomi Auto is also researching and adopting.
Let's take a look at smart driving first. According to Lei Jun, at present, Xiaomi Intelligent Driving (Xiaomi Pilot) can realize high-speed NOA, urban NOA and driving and parking integration. can do this, mainly because Xiaomi cars are basically "the best of a hundred" at the hardware and algorithm level.
For example, in terms of hardware, it is not only equipped with two NVIDIA Orin X, but also a 128-line integrated lidar from Hesai, as well as multiple cameras and millimeter-wave radar for fusion perception.
In terms of algorithm technology, Xiaomi has optimized and launched technologies including zoom BEV, super-resolution occupancy network and road large model on the basis of the BEV+Transformer architecture and OCC occupancy network commonly used in the industry, so as to be accurate to 005 meters, the perception accuracy is accurate to 01 meter, so as to achieve "no map" high-level assisted driving ability of driving and parking.
The underlying architecture of Xiaomi's intelligent driving algorithm.
From an industry perspective,At present, when mainstream car companies develop their own automatic assisted driving capabilities, they are based on the BEV+Transformer architecture. At the same time, NIO, Xpeng, Li and Jiyue have also incorporated the OCC occupation network into their own perception models.
In terms of smart cabins, the overall layout is not much different from the existing mainstream new energy vehicle interiors, equipped with 16In addition to the 1-inch 3K resolution center display, it is also equipped with a HUD, a reversible instrument screen, and two flat screens in the rear, so that the whole car can be linked to 5 screens.
In terms of interaction,Lei Jun focused on the function of handcar linkage,Simply put, the operation of the central control screen on the car is no different from the operation of Xiaomi mobile phones,At the same time, the software on the mobile phone can also flow seamlessly to the central control screen of the car machine。 From the perspective of the industry, the hand-car interconnection is no longer exclusive to Xiaomi Auto, and it has been realized by Huawei, Lynk & Co and Weilai.
Ecology is also a function that Lei Jun focuses on. In his opinion, the car machine ecology of Xiaomi cars is as rich and open as that of Xiaomi mobile phones, and it also supports user-defined applications. It's just that such a car-machine system ecology, and the Huawei Hongmeng OS ecology equipped with Wenjie and Zhijie, can also be realized.
After talking about these technologies, Lei Jun also reneged on his previous promise of "only talking about technology", and opened a pre-conference for Xiaomi Su7, from the appearance and interior design of this model, you can also see the shadow of other cars.
The most obvious is the exterior design of the Xiaomi SU7. Since the appearance of this car was ** out, there are many voices inside and outside the industryThe Xiaomi Mi Su7 looks at the side with the Porsche Taycan Turbo almost "carved out of a mold";And on the front and rear of the car, there are also many people who think that they are like Paramela and Aston Martin respectively.
Comparison of Xiaomi Su7 and Porsche's Taycan Turbo.
In the interior seats, according to Lei Jun's introduction, the driver's seat has a turning assist support function, for example, when cornering at high speed, the two side supports of the seat can be automatically inflated in order to give the body enough support. However, it should be noted that this roll support function has also been implemented on ZEEKR 001.
Based on the above analysis, from the three-electric system, to intelligent technology, to vehicle design, Xiaomi Auto has adopted the method of learning from others and optimizing on this basis to build cars. At the same time, Xiaomi Auto is also accelerating its preparations to sell cars.
Xiaomi Auto is accelerating the expansion of channels.
Recently, according to new news ** and other reports, Xiaomi Home stores in many areas of Beijing are under renovation. According to the information previously revealed by Lu Weibing, president of Xiaomi Group, the maximum area of Xiaomi's new store will reach about 600 square meters.
In response to this information, Wired Travel also asked Xiaomi Home employees in Hangzhou and other places, and their reply was"It is not yet known which stores will enter the car, but the relevant plan should already be in place, and the stores that will enter the car will probably be closed for renovation in the near future. ”
In addition, according to the design drawings of the new Xiaomi Home that have been exposed on the Internet, the entire store is divided into a Xiaomi car display area, a Xiaomi mobile phone and IoT smart product display area, as well as a rest, order contract negotiation and other areas. This also means that when the Xiaomi Su7 is officially launched next year, it will be sold in the same store space as Xiaomi mobile phones and many other products such as IoT.
It should be noted that this sales model is not the original creation of Xiaomi Auto, because Huawei, which is also a "cross-border player", has used this model to help Cialis sell cars for two years.
Since 2021, the Wenjie series models created by Huawei and Cialis have not only attracted the attention of consumers, but also brought about an increase in sales after entering Huawei's offline stores. For example, the M5 achieved a total of 5The sales volume of 60,000 units once became a popular product;After the launch of the M7 this year, the sales volume of the following month also exceeded 10,000.
Source: AITO Auto Official WeChat.
Similar to Huawei, after years of layout, Xiaomi also has rich store channel resources. According to the statistics of Guojin**, as of the beginning of this year, Xiaomi had a total of 1With 20,000 Xiaomi Homes in 2,200 counties and cities, it is expected that Xiaomi will have 500-600 stores to use if the smaller stores that cannot display the show cars are removed.
In the view of Sun Hao, an expert in the intelligent automotive industryXiaomi will use the existing offline channels to sell cars, on the one hand, for cost considerations, compared to relocation, construction of stores, on the basis of the original store transformation, the cost will be less, plus now Xiaomi Home stores are also opened in the core of the business district, for the display of Xiaomi car show cars is also helpful.
Sun Hao also believes that Xiaomi Auto may have seen the positive impact of Huawei stores on the brand radiation of Wenjie series products, and also wants to increase traffic and order conversion rate for Xiaomi Auto through its own brand effect, which is the right choice.
At the same time as the expansion of stores, there is also an expansion of store staff.
Check Xiaomi's official website, you can see that it has opened the recruitment of Xiaomi auto store managers, new energy vehicle sales supervisors, retail market managers and other positions in Beijing, Tianjin, Shijiazhuang and other places.
Among them, the recruitment of Xiaomi's offline store manager is more demanding, not only requires sales management capabilities, data analysis capabilities and business development capabilities, but also requires front-line growth to management experience in the new energy automotive industry, and the salary is about 15,000-30,000 yuan according to the information on the previous network.
The recruitment information for store managers on Xiaomi's official website is screenshotted from Xiaomi's official recruitment website.
In addition to building and renovating sales channels, Xiaomi is also promoting the construction and expansion of factories in order to achieve market and mass production next year.
According to Wired Travel, Xiaomi Auto announced as early as the end of 2021 that Xiaomi Auto projects such as the headquarters base, sales headquarters, and R&D headquarters would be settled in the Beijing Economic and Technological Development Zone. Today, two years later, Beijing Yizhuang Xiaomi Automobile Factory has been implemented.
According to the plan of Xiaomi Auto, the headquarters base and sales headquarters and R&D headquarters of Xiaomi Auto will build a vehicle plant with an annual output of 300,000 units in two phases, of which the first phase covers an area of nearly 720,000 square meters, which will start in April 2022 and be completed in June this yearThe planned area of the second phase of the project is 606 square kilometers, construction is planned to start next year and be completed in 2025.
Like offline stores, Xiaomi's auto factory is also expanding its recruitment. According to the first financial report, since September this year, Xiaomi Auto has entrusted a third-party manpower company to recruit a large number of workers for the factory, in addition to general workers, including testing, quality inspection, equipment maintenance and other positions are expanding.
Compared with many new energy vehicle companies that used the OEM model to build cars in the early stage of development, Xiaomi Auto embarked on the road of building its own factory at the beginning. In the eyes of the industry, Xiaomi Auto may have also learned some lessons from the industry, after all, although OEM cars can ensure that products can quickly reach mass production in the early stage, there are obvious disadvantages in product quality control and **chain**.
North Gate of Xiaomi Auto Beijing Factory (Phase I), photo source Yicai.
From adopting a similar model to Huawei's sales channels, to deciding to adopt industry experience and choosing to build its own factory, coupled with the aforementioned points, Xiaomi Auto has also chosen the existing design, technology and architecture solutions of mainstream brands such as NIO, Xpeng, Zeekr, AITO and Porsche in terms of product design and technology research and development.
As a "latecomer" to the car-making track, the performance of the first car has become a crucial node for its future development, so the current way to build a car by drawing on the strengths of hundreds of schools in the industry is also the safest path in the industry.
However, for young people who pursue personalization and differentiation, whether they will choose Xiaomi cars in the homogeneous new energy vehicle track depends on how Xiaomi and Lei Jun will carry out user operations in the future.
As for how Xiaomi cars will perform next year, Lei Jun is not sure.
Recently, Lei Jun was interviewed by CCTV's "Face to Face", when asked about his expectations for Xiaomi cars and the first product SU7, he said"I have high expectations, but I'm also worried that if it doesn't get popular, everyone won't buy it;What's even more worrying is that if everyone comes to buy it, it may take a year or two to wait for the first time, and it will definitely be scolded. ”
This also means that Lei Jun is very clear about the current situation of Xiaomi Auto - compared with new energy brands such as Tesla and "Wei Xiaoli", or independent car companies such as Changan and Chery, or traditional car companies such as BBA and Volkswagen, Xiaomi Auto belongs to the "latecomer" on the new energy car manufacturing track.
In addition, next year, the new energy vehicle industry will enter the decisive stage, and Xiaomi Auto chose to release and launch its first product at this stageThere may still be some challenges in passing the test of the market and being welcomed by consumers.
According to the existing public information of Xiaomi Auto's first product, Xiaomi SU7, the size of the model is 4997*1963*1455mm, and the wheelbase is 3000mm, which is positioned as a medium and large coupe model, and Weilai ET7, ZEEKR 001, Huawei Zhijie S7 and BYD Seal belong to the same track products.
As mentioned above, the Xiaomi Su7 has a similar design to some mainstream models in the industry in terms of product appearance and interior design, and even does not differ much from the Porsche Taycan Turbo in appearance, so this Xiaomi car cannot occupy much of a design advantage.
In terms of power, the Xiaomi Su7 should be divided into two versions, rear-wheel drive and four-wheel drive, with a top speed of 210km h and 265km h respectively. In terms of maximum speed, Xiaomi Su7 has a big advantage over the current version of the same class.
In addition, in terms of intelligence, according to the current product map, its high-end version should also be equipped with lidar, which should be matched with cameras and millimeter-wave radar to achieve an automatic assisted driving scheme that integrates perception. The low-configuration version should occupy the network with pure vision + OCC. As mentioned above, these technologies and algorithms have been adopted by many car companies in the industry, and Xiaomi Auto does not have much of a leading edge.
In terms of cruising range, Xiaomi SU7's 668-800 kilometers is higher than that of NIO ET7 and BYD Seal at this stage of the same levelHowever, it should be noted that NIO's 150-degree ultra-long-lasting battery pack has landed, which can allow the ET7 to achieve a range of more than 1000 kilometers after being equipped, and the maximum range of Xiaomi Su7 will be difficult to occupy an advantage on the battlefield next year.
NIO 150-degree ultra-long battery pack, source NIO official WeChat.
Finally, there is the brand power. Although, as mentioned above, the "self-contained traffic" influence of Lei Jun and the Xiaomi brand will definitely bring high attention to Xiaomi cars and their products. But it cannot be denied that a "cost-effective ghost" also surrounds Xiaomi and Xiaomi car brands.
Since Lei Jun shouted the declaration of "Xiaomi enters the game to build cars", "cost-effective", "the first car for young people", "19990,000 yuan, make a friend" and other keywords and jokes have continued with the process of Xiaomi's car manufacturing.
There will be such a phenomenon,It also has to be due to the fact that Xiaomi mobile phones have become the first mobile phones of countless young people by virtue of their cost-effective product advantages, so that they will gradually form a huge volume of rice noodles. But at the same time, the label of "cost performance" may also be engraved on the Xiaomi brand.
Because of this, when some ** speculated that the price of Xiaomi cars would be 250,000 yuan, or even more than 300,000 yuan, it caused a lot of discussion.
But according to yesterday's press conference, Lei Jun has made it clear that "9990,000 yuan and 14990,000 yuan is impossible", and said that the first product of Xiaomi Auto will be more expensive, and the probability will not be "19."99 Make a friend", after all, the price and performance of Xiaomi Su7 determine the brand height and tonality of Xiaomi cars.
Xiaomi su7 Based on the above analysis, Lei Jun and Xiaomi Automobile, if they want to gain an advantage in the battlefield of new energy vehicles next year, it is not easy to even "become famous in the first battle", after all, the industry situation is currently a battlefield for comprehensive strength.
This requires Xiaomi Auto not only to create differentiated product power and memory points, but also to ensure the stability of production capacity and ** chain. More importantly, it is also necessary for young people to stop looking at Xiaomi cars with cost-effective labels.
Fortunately, at present, Xiaomi Auto has not been officially launched, and ** has not been announced, leaving Lei Jun and Xiaomi Auto with a few months to make some adjustments according to market feedback. It's just that, as Lei Jun said two years ago, "for Xiaomi, building a car is the first battle that is, the decisive battle", and Xiaomi cars need to be prepared as soon as possible.
At the request of the interviewee, Sun Hao is a pseudonym in the article. ）