Text: Liu Junhong.
Edited by Wang Yisu
Don't talk about 990,000, impossible, don't talk about 1490,000, Xiaomi su7 is justifiably expensive", Lei Jun, founder and chairman of Xiaomi Group, left ** as the biggest suspense to the market at the Xiaomi automotive technology conference on December 28.
Xiaomi Automobile, 1003 days after Lei Jun's high-profile announcement of the crossover, finally made an official public appearance on December 28. Although Lei Jun had previously announced this press conference, "I will not release products this time, only talk about technology." But with the introduction of Xiaomi's car technology and the appearance of the real car at the Xiaomi SU7 pre-conference, everyone discussed for a while how much the car equipped with Xiaomi's self-developed motor, battery, large die-casting, intelligent driving and intelligent cabin was sold.
On the one hand, in order to benchmark similar products in the current market, Xiaomi SU7 is equipped with an 800V SiC power platform, ultra-high speed motor, integrated die-casting, intelligent driving of the same level of new car-making forces, and the configuration of Xiaomi's characteristic AIoT smart cabin is benchmarked against Zhijie S7, and it is expected to rush to 300,000 with full configuration. But on the other hand, according to Lei Jun's operation of "repeatedly persuading executives overnight" in Xiaomi mobile phones, this "young man's first Xiaomi smart car" seems to have a lot of pricing space.
Lei Jun's ambiguous attitude towards the automobile this time, coupled with the public tribute to friends before the press conference, can see Lei Jun's awe of the automotive industry. "We will spend 15-20 years to become one of the top five car manufacturers in China and strive for the rise of China." The ultra-long target cycle announced at the press conference also means that Xiaomi Auto still has a lot of unfinished business on the road to development.
At the moment when smart cars are becoming more and more volatile and about to trigger the elimination mechanism, Lei Jun's last venture with dignity is actually full of the smell of "sitting at the table and playing slowly".
This immediately opened up a gap between Xiaomi's attitude and other automakers who are "fighting bravely" in 2023. In particular, Xiaomi Su7 is in front of Huawei's smart car Zhijie S Wan's "encirclement and suppression" of the extreme krypton 007, and the price reduction offensive of the C-class car in the new forces of car manufacturing and traditional car manufacturers, coupled with the upcoming traditional car factories in 2024 to step up the upgrade of automotive intelligence.
Lei Jun's "unhurried" attitude has aroused some dissatisfaction in the capital market. Since the Xiaomi press conference on the afternoon of December 28, Xiaomi's market value has fallen by about 8%.
Xiaomi Automobile, which has obtained many advanced technologies in the intelligent automotive industry and has characteristic AIoT intelligence, is still looking for its own positioning.
Surprisingly upright, Lei Junxiu has basic hardware skills
Keeping the right is surprising", Lei Jun said in the CCTV "Face to Face" program on December 17, the first principle formulated for Xiaomi cars.
Following this line of thought, Xiaomi Auto's technology conference this time mainly focused on five links: electric drive, battery, large die-casting, intelligent driving and intelligent cockpit. From the breakthroughs and effects of these technologies, we can see that Xiaomi Auto has followed the cutting-edge technology of smart cars and learned from the best cases.
In ***, strong power has always been exclusive to high-end luxury cars. Countless supercar and off-road enthusiasts are intoxicated by the sound of V6, V8 and V12 engines. Corresponding to electric vehicles, Xiaomi's HyperEngine V8S and HyperEngine V6 V6S respectively benchmark the performance of the big V8 and big V6 powertrains in the fuel era. A more powerful electric drive means a higher speed of the motor. Through the research and development of rotor materials, Xiaomi has achieved a breakthrough in Xiaomi motors, and it has also made Xiaomi cars "more energetic".
Taking the HyperEngine V6S as an example, in terms of motor speed, Xiaomi surpasses the Taycn Turbo, Model S Plaid and Zeekrypton 001FR (20620rpm), which are known for their performance. Although the output capacity (torque and power) is weaker than that of the TayCN Turbo, the power density of the Xiaomi motor is higher in the context of high-performance motors that are "easy to make big and difficult to do small". At the same time, in the upcoming HyperEngine V8S motor, its power density reaches 10It is 14 kW kg and provides a power output of 425 kW and a peak torque of 635 Nm. The speed of up to 27,200 rpm also exceeds the current industry-leading Huawei DriveOne (equipped with the Zhijie S7, with a maximum speed of 25,000 rpm).
A stronger motor also needs a stronger power platform to support.
The Xiaomi Su7 adopts the 800V SiC power platform that follows the forefront of the industry. In terms of battery design, Xiaomi's battery solution is the same as BYD's current one, using the CTB (battery in the body) scheme that can accommodate more battery cells. The difference is that with the ternary battery, the battery capacity of Xiaomi cars can reach up to 150 degrees, and the theoretical CLTC range is up to more than 1200km.
It is worth noting that in order to be the "king of winter" in the north, Xiaomi has adopted the design of inverted cells in addition to internal "stacking" of multi-layer physical protection, liquid cooling, aerogel heat insulation sheet and other protective measures in battery safety. The technology is similar to the downward exhaust channel of the Tesla 4680 battery pack. The inverted cell is designed to allow the battery pressure relief valve to open downwards, preventing heat from ejecting upwards due to thermal runaway in extreme cases. So as to gain more escape time after the accident and protect the safety of the cabin.
The power and battery are there, and the next thing is car manufacturingXiaomi has also followed in Tesla's footsteps to do the research and development of "integrated die casting".
Thanks to the integrated die casting, the number of body parts can be reduced, and the capacity of the automotive manufacturing process can be significantly reduced. Xiaomi has developed its own 9100T super die-casting technology, which has greatly reduced production man-hours by 45% and accelerated production. At the same time, the "72-in-one" rear floor parts were realized, the number of solder joints was reduced by 840, and the overall weight was reduced by 17%. In addition, due to the excessive pressure of Xiaomi's die-casting program, it is difficult for first-class merchants to meet, and Xiaomi has further developed a high-strength, high-toughness, heat-free and environmentally friendly die-casting material "Titan Alloy".
However, this is different from Tesla's design, which wants the car to be as integrated as possible. Instead of adopting a completely integrated design on the rear floor of the car, Xiaomi has adopted a scheme similar to the bumper of a car. By designing the collapse zone of two additional structural parts in the rear floor design, the "bumper" scheme of Xiaomi Auto avoids the problem of "one crash and all over" of the integrated body, and reduces the cost pressure of consumers to repair the car after an accident.
As a result, although the car-making qualification of Xiaomi Auto still needs to be affiliated with BAIC, the production process and equipment are based on self-development. Xiaomi has also become the only domestic automobile manufacturer that independently develops both large die-casting equipment clusters and die-casting materials.
So far, on the basis of Xiaomi's self-developed manufacturing line, high-performance electric drive and safe and controllable power platform, Xiaomi has realized the ability to build a high-performance pure electric car.
However, strong performance alone is not enough for Xiaomi cars to survive under the wave of automotive intelligence that will begin in 2023. To this end, Lei Jun shouted the goal of "entering the first echelon of the industry in 2024".
Through the intelligent configuration of Xiaomi cars, we have seen Xiaomi's thinking about extending its own ecology.
"Commonplace" intelligent driving.
The cockpit of "people, vehicles and homes" is integrated
It is also a mobile phone manufacturer that has entered the car, and Xiaomi's car intelligence is similar to Huawei in many aspects.
In terms of intelligent driving, Xiaomi's solution and Huawei's technical route are based on the industry consensus scheme of BEV+Transformer that focuses on perception and light map, and adds solutions for occupying the network (similar to Huawei's GOD network) and road model (similar to Huawei's RCR road topology inference network).
Among them, Xiaomi's road model can generate road maps similar to high-precision maps in real time, formulate more reasonable driving tracks, and make Xiaomi cars navigate smoothly without relying on high-definition maps. The part that differs from the industry is that Xiaomi has added an adaptive zoom feature on the BEV that follows the scene. Let the car in the narrow basement and wide highway, respectively more focused on "seeing near" or "far". Just like people mobilize the same mental power to concentrate, with the same computing power as Xpeng (2 NVIDIA Orin X chips, 508TOPS computing power), Xiaomi is able to achieve more refined occupancy network recognition and render it into a shape closer to the real thing.
For example, in the scenario of high-speed toll stations, the granularity of ordinary occupation network recognition is high, and the barrier seen by the car is "built" by a large square. In the same scenario, what Xiaomi cars see is closer to a pole, and Xiaomi cars are clearer in the perception of intelligent driving.
In terms of functional principle, Xiaomi's intelligent driving is more refined than the industry. However, under the current intelligent driving plan of a large number of car companies such as Ideal, Weilai, and BYD to land in the city in 2024, perhaps Xiaomi's planned NOA (high-speed + city) and valet parking functions will become "commonplace", and it is difficult to be called the first echelon leading the industry.
With the acquisition of Shendong Technology in 2021 as the official starting point of Xiaomi Smart Driving, the Xiaomi Smart Driving team, which has only been around for more than two years, is still relatively short of players who have been mass-produced in terms of car simulation and actual driving data. It will take more time to achieve intelligent driving leadership. However, in the intelligent cockpit of the car, Xiaomi has achieved its own style, and even some of the designs are more distinctive than the Huawei series.
In terms of the definition of the car machine, Lei Jun said, "In essence, this is a high-standard tablet on the car", Xiaomi simply used the idea of making a mobile phone and tablet to design the car machine. In terms of operation, the surging OS allows the Xiaomi car machine to get the same convenience and smoothness as the Hongmeng car machine, which can be used without learning. However, compared with its peers, Xiaomi's car machine is more convenient in terms of operation logic and multi-device interconnection.
Through the demonstration, we can see that the transition animation, card display, split screen, drop-down control center and other functions of the Xiaomi car machine are very similar to the operation logic of Android phones. At the same time, in the interconnection of multiple devices, the effect of Xiaomi car machine on the collaborative call of other device hardware is really amazing.
For example, when the content of the mobile phone is streamed to the car machine, unlike the projection function of other car machines, the Xiaomi car machine supports calling the car camera during the meeting;The mobile phone light sensor automatically adjusts the hardware of different devices such as the brightness of the reading light in the car.
However, this level of multi-device interconnection is not the limit of the Xiaomi Smart Cabin.
Based on Xiaomi's experience in AIoT, unlike Huawei's system, which only supports the linkage of additional tablets on the car, Xiaomi Auto also supports hardware expansion of other types of devices, allowing users to customize their own smart space in the car. For example, an external camera can be connected to the back of the passenger seat, and the front row can directly see the status of the children in the back row in the family sceneYou can directly suck a keyboard under the screen of the car machine to increase the convenience of car controlAs well as hardware expansion such as an external fragrance vaporizer in the handle part.
In this regard, Lei Jun excitedly said, "With the blessing of surging OS, we have realized the complete closed loop of the whole ecology of 'people, cars and homes' for the first time."
It is true that in terms of AIOT logic, Xiaomi cars have indeed realized the interconnection of devices in people (portable devices), cars (Xiaomi car hardware interconnection and expansion), and homes (Xiaomi home). However, considering the label of Xiaomi's AIoT ecology that was known for its cost performance, the best expectations brought by the high hardware configuration of Xiaomi cars, coupled with more consumer items implied by the expansion of on-board hardware, make buying and using Xiaomi cars well suddenly become beyond the consumption power of original cost-effective ecological users.
Similarly, under this previously established ecological cognition, consumers naturally think that Xiaomi cars should also take the "cost-effective" route.
And in the face of this problem, Lei Jun is also very entangled.
10 years late, Xiaomi cars need time
Lei Jun seems to be a little "twisted" about the mentality of Xiaomi cars.
This kind of "twisting" is not only manifested in Lei Jun's initial statement that this conference "only talks about technology, not products", but still brings SU7 to the stage and opens a product pre-conference. But unlike the previous Huawei Zhijie S7 pre-conference that was directly announced**, Lei Jun did not mention ** in this pre-conference conference, which seems somewhat unconfident.
The silence on the ** issue is essentially Xiaomi Auto's swing on "who exactly is this car sold to". And through the products of Xiaomi Su7, you can also see some conflicts in design concepts.
In terms of overall product design, Xiaomi is eager to build the SU7 into "the first smart car for young people".
As a C-class high-performance coupe, the main labels such as power performance, extreme sporty shape, scalable intelligence and bright color matching all show that the target customer group of SU7 is young users who prefer technology. But at the same time, under the new group strategy of "people, cars and home ecology" proposed by Xiaomi Group in October this year. Xiaomi Auto also seems to want to win the two very different product labels of the young people and the family in the car market at the same time.
"The demographic characteristics of different age groups, and his core pain points and lifestyles are still very different." At this year's Smart Expo, Zhu Chen, chief business consulting expert of the Automotive Industry Division of Thoughtwork Software, once shared. Under different user tags, different consumers also correspond to different consumption levels. The overall design of the car should also have a definite inclination.
From the "car and home" strategy focusing on families, Li Auto has proved with a monthly sales of more than 30,000 yuan that family needs may not need extreme performance, but need a more stable appearance, larger space, more spacious seats, a large language model focusing on children's knowledge and answers, and even a combination of "refrigerators, color TVs, and household items". And the needs of these parts, Lei Jun deliberately mentioned the family scene on the su7, but the specific functions are limited to the child safety seat and the call of the rear screen camera to watch the children in the back row.
Similarly, observing the definition of this year's Xpeng G6, Wenjie new M7, Wenjie M9 and other products, alsoAll of them have differentiated and well-defined labels.
The design concept of the SU7 is conflicting, not because Xiaomi has only been in the industry for more than three years since it announced its car construction in 2021. On the contrary, Lei Jun may have understood cars earlier than the new car-making forces he paid tribute to.
In 2013, when Xiaomi launched the mobile phone Xiaomi 2S, Lei Jun visited Musk twice and expressed his interest in cars, and then made many investments in the new energy vehicle industry through Xiaomi Group, Xiaomi War Investment and Lei Jun's Shunwei Capital. In 2014, He Xiaopeng, who was born in the Internet, founded Xiaopeng Motors.
It has been 10 years since Lei Jun was interested in cars, and in the 1003 days after Xiaomi's official announcement of the car, the high-end of the mobile phone Xiaomi 14 has made a major breakthrough, and Xiaomi cars have also completed almost all the mainstream smart car technology, and have completed the capabilities of high-end manufacturing, three electrics, intelligent driving, smart cabins and even intelligent chassis, bringing together core designers from BMW, Mercedes-Benz and other high-end cars.
However, the SU7, which is equipped with all the most high-end technologies, seems to be lost in this self-developed technology that follows the cutting-edge, and has become a product of stacked configurations without clear definitions, sliding in the direction that Lei Jun is trying to avoid.
Today's *** is indeed not difficult to save a car. It is to find a benchmark car, do reverse engineering, change the appearance, and it will be completed soon. But with 200 new cars released on the market every year today, do you need Xiaomi to save another one?Faced with the question of "** chain car", Lei Jun once said.
Cars are not like the mobile phone industry, volume technology, parameters, configuration can be recognized by consumers and high-end status. And Xiaomi cars are also like Huawei's smart cars, while mastering technology, it also needs time to precipitate.
Perhaps, Xiaomi Su7, just like Cialis SF5, is the "test of the waters" of Xiaomi cars.
In April 2021, Huawei launched its first smart car, the Cialis SF5. In this car, many configurations that are difficult for consumers to understand and cannot be called intelligent are integrated, such as a "huge" fuel tank with a range extender but equipped with 56L, wireless charging of mobile phones in the armrest box, and air conditioning wind direction that must be adjusted by entering the car menu. After iterating on the M5, M7, and S7 in less than three years, Huawei has gained the design capability for mass production of smart cars, and has received 20,000 units in just two days after the release of the luxury benchmark M9.
Although in the time window, there are Xpeng G6, Wenjie M5, and Zeekrypton 007, Xiaomi cars, which will only be officially released in 2024, can no longer become "the first smart car for young people". However, under Xiaomi's characteristic AIoT ecosystem, looking forward to a broader market space for smart cars in the future, the capital, technology and technology and technology of Xiaomi Group, which Xiaomi Auto is backed by, can become a boost for continuous iteration in the future.
Compared with the fierce competition that Li Xiang believes, "from 2023 to 2025, the automotive industry will usher in an extremely cruel knockout". Lei Jun is indeed not in a hurry, "We will spend 15-20 years to become one of the top five car manufacturers in China and strive for the rise of China." ”
Xiaomi car, it still needs more time to iterate.