In a 1923 article, the General Motors newspaper foreshadowed what the future car would look like: the car of the future would have more gauges than today's cars, and magnetic route finders and scrolling maps would be used. The route home will be automatically reported to us via wireless telegraph to avoid pointless congestion and detours.
In 2023, many prophecies from 100 years ago have been confirmed. With more gauges, more comprehensive data displays, and touch-based scrolling maps becoming the norm, we've long since leapfrogged wireless telegraphy because pointless congestion and detours have been replaced by apps like online maps that are more comprehensive, richer, and more intelligently planned.
Behind this is the change of technology and innovation. Since the invention of the first automobile by Karl Friedrich Benz in 1885, the automobile has become an innovative crossroads of energy technology, industrial technology and information technology. Now, these technologies are undergoing a "change unseen in a century" in the automotive industry, which has undergone one of the most profound changes in the past 15 years in its 137-year history: it is also the transition of the car from a moving vehicle powered by fuel and horsepower to an intelligent space powered by electricity and sensing electronics.
This profound change is being driven by two representative forces: one is the de facto electrification of automobiles pioneered by Tesla, which has made cars electric, computing platform, information technology, and some artificial intelligence, and promoted the popularization of autonomous driving technology.
The second is China's "new car-making force" in a broad sense, which includes not only the new forces that have been building electric vehicles since birth, but also the old car manufacturers who have successfully transformed, and the old information technology manufacturers who have made a thrilling leap towards the new industry of electric vehicles. They have carried out a Chinese-style extension of the automotive electrification revolution pioneered by Tesla in terms of the Internet and intelligence of automobiles, the large-scale practice of advanced manufacturing of electric vehicles, and the modular customization of key core technologies of electric vehicles.
Now, Xiaomi, which has been grinding for 1003 days in low research, has officially joined this battlefield of change.
As a latecomer, it must inject some new elements and imagination into the century-old changes in the world and China in order to gain the recognition of users and the true acceptance of the world.
Behind the Xiaomi car is the imagination of the three major technologies.
After the announcement of the Xiaomi SU7 model that entered the catalog of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology**, the industry had a consistent impression of it: it resembles a Porsche Taycan, and there is a trend of forming a "stalk" on social platforms. When Xiaomi built its first car, it paid tribute to Porsche, and the appearance was secondary, and more importantly, it was a tribute to the ultimate performance. Extreme performance means the capability of key technologies.
Just like the Porsche Taycan was the first electric car with an innovative two-speed "gearbox", this is its technical positioning among the other electric vehicles.
A real electric intelligent car is essentially composed of two key parts: a powerful motor and electronic control battery system, and a real sense of autonomous driving technology. The former is the essence of electric intelligent cars, and the latter is the most critical module of intelligence. It is precisely because of Tesla's original breakthrough achievements in these two aspects that it has established its epoch-making status.
The originality of the core key technologies of these two modules is essentially the key to measuring the competitive barriers of an electric smart car.
By the end of 2023, China's electric vehicle market seems to have entered a big year for electric smart cars in an instant, and it is not difficult to find from the naming system that the competition in the middle and high-end car series represented by the "7" is particularly fierce. However, among these competing products at the same level, there are not many that can really realize the full self-development of "three electrics".
For example, the electric motor exists as a core technology engineering as an alternative engine. This time, Xiaomi has joined the camp of independent research and development of key core technologies that only a few Chinese manufacturers can join.
From the beginning of the decision to build a car, Xiaomi launched the full-stack self-development of the electronic and electrical architecture of the whole vehicle. First of all, Xiaomi has developed its own super motor with the highest speed in the world, and from the beginning of its self-development, it is three generations at the same time, and its rhythm is a mature generation, a research and development generation, and a pre-research generation.
The V8S super motor with mass production capacity can reach 27,200 rpm, refreshing the ceiling of the global motor speed, and is expected to be launched in 2025. This motor is Xiaomi's first completely self-developed and self-developed Xiaomi super motor, Xiaomi's own production, and its core self-developed capabilities include fully self-developed fixed rotor design, 54-slot 6-pole design that breaks through patent blockade, 8-layer hairepin flat wire winding, and self-developed SiC electronic control.
These capabilities have pushed the V8S to lead in all parameters: 27200rpm, 578ps, 425kw, 635nm, and the highest efficiency of 9811%。
In the research and development process of this motor, Xiaomi has applied for a total of 155 patents in the field of motor electric drive, and 60 have been authorized.
Xiaomi's third-generation super motor is also already in pre-research, and the speed is expected to reach 35,000 rpm. This next-generation super motor of Xiaomi, which uses a carbon fiber laser winding process, is more advanced than Tesla, with a higher yield rate and better preload.
Secondly, in battery technology, Xiaomi has also completed the research and development of CTB integrated battery technology and battery management system. Among them, Xiaomi has developed the world's first CTB integrated battery with inverted cells, with an integrated efficiency of 778%, achieving the highest volumetric efficiency in the world. CTB technology is a battery-body integration technology that benchmarks Tesla's CTC technology, and it is also the battery pack technology currently promoted by BYD. Xiaomi's self-developed CTB technology has further exerted its capabilities: the thickness of the battery pack is only 120mm, which is the thinnest and most advanced in the industryUltra-high integration of minimalist circuits, wiring harnesses reduced by 91%, integration efficiency increased by 3%.
While developing CTB technology, Xiaomi has also built its own battery pack factory. At the same time, Xiaomi and CATL have jointly invested thousands of R&D engineers, and it took more than two years to build Xiaomi's 800V silicon carbide high-voltage platform, with a maximum high voltage of 871V, far exceeding its peers. In addition, for the pain points of winter battery life, battery safety, etc., the battery management system capabilities and safety standards have been upgraded.
At present, there are 132 patent applications in the field of Xiaomi batteries, and 65 have been authorized.
The breakthrough of self-developed integrated battery technology is an attempt by Xiaomi to break through the underlying key technologies of global smart electric vehicles.
What's more noteworthy is Xiaomi's autonomous driving technology. For a long time, the controversy between lidar and visual perception has been the focus of controversy in autonomous driving technology. The use of large language models for autonomous driving has always been only at the stage of imagination and demonstration. This time, Xiaomi became the first company to actually use the "big model of the road" for autonomous driving. Its essence is a multimodal large language model, which has made a key breakthrough and attempt with the judgment and perception of the "old driver" rather than the way of machine recognition and judgment.
Xiaomi's self-developed intelligent driving technology includes three key technologies: adaptive zoom BEV technology, road large model, and super-resolution occupancy network technology.
Relying on the industry's first adaptive zoom BEV technology, Xiaomi Auto can adaptively call different perception algorithms for different scenarios, such as making parking more accurate, urban scenes wider, and high-speed scenes farther. For the first time, a large road model is used, which allows Xiaomi cars to recognize real-time road conditions and intelligently adjust the driving trajectory, instead of relying on alarm maps to respond to road changes in real time and accurately generate driving guidance lines.
Coupled with the super-resolution occupancy network technology, it can break the inaccurate identification of the traditional occupancy network technology, and directly simulate all visible objects into three-dimensional objects with continuous curved surfaces, which can identify special-shaped obstacles more accurately.
In the past, the conflict between autonomous driving and large models lies in the conflict between accuracy and illusion, and it is worth looking forward to whether this vertical industry model is based on the knowledge base and experience of "old drivers".
It is worth noting that although Xiaomi has created a number of leading technologies for intelligent driving, Xiaomi cars are not in a hurry to take off the lidar, whether in the use of perception hardware or chips, Xiaomi cars provide themselves with enough redundancy. At the same time, in some scenarios, Xiaomi already has the underlying algorithm capabilities that are two generations ahead of the industry, such as the world's first mass-produced end-to-end perception decision-making model developed by Xiaomi.
In a mechanical parking space that is almost the same width as the car, it may not be possible to park by relying on traditional perception, Xiaomi's perception decision-making model can be a two-in-one perception and decision-making algorithm, which can be observed in real time and dynamically adjusted to park in ultra-difficult parking spaces. Of course, the investment in achieving these R&D breakthroughs is also huge: Xiaomi has invested a total of 4.7 billion yuan in the first phase of autonomous driving capabilities alone, with an exclusive team size of more than 1,000 people.
After all, the car is a century-old industry in the world, respect for the tradition of the automotive industry, respect for people's traditional habits of car handling, respect for the century-old car culture, and at the same time fully absorb and respect the wisdom and achievements of the changes in the past 15 years, which is not ignored by any "new force" entering this market. Despise the tradition, despise the detail experience, and despise the tuition fees of automobile manufacturing, which many companies have paid. In the past 13 years, Xiaomi has paid manufacturing tuition, and it will not pay it again.
The first Xiaomi car is a smart electric car, which was established at the beginning of Xiaomi's decision to build a car, and also contains the meaning of "double tribute":
It pays tribute to Porsche's sense of fine industry and quality, and at the same time pays tribute to Tesla's electric and intelligent innovation.
This double tribute to the holy grail enterprises of the two eras, the best result is a product with the spirit of both Porsche and Tesla, which can only be a "classic" smart electric car.
This positioning also determines what the Xiaomi car we see today looks like, as well as its **. This is not a car product that can be compared to the "1999" Xiaomi generation mobile phone, in the car category on the market, it is a car with a price in the middle and upper level, with some classic attributes, which not only loses the excellent driving experience, but also gives a new connotation at the intelligent level.
Lei Jun's recent response to the pricing of the first Xiaomi car was, "There will be a reason why it will be expensive." So, it may not be the first car for young people, but it has the potential to become the next car for China's "backbone".
To some extent, such a car can only be designed, developed and produced in a large manufacturing country like China, and it is the culmination of "advanced manufacturing" in the field of consumer-grade industrial products. This is an experience of modern intelligent manufacturing technology.
While preparing for the first model, Xiaomi has invested in a new smart factory in Yizhuang, Beijing, and what is remarkable is that in the Xiaomi car smart factory, it has the only self-developed large die-casting cluster and integrated die-casting technology in China.
As we all know, the practice of Tesla's integrated die-casting technology in the Gigafactory is the key to Tesla's leapfrogging improvement in manufacturing efficiency. This time, Xiaomi's self-developed large die-casting cluster and integrated die-casting technology have carried out another extreme training in the direction of higher efficiency of Tesla's previous breakthroughs. There is no doubt that this is also a key breakthrough in China's advanced manufacturing.
This means that from mobile phone manufacturing to the world's top automobile factories, Xiaomi has the leading complete industrial manufacturing strength of the times.
The breakthrough in the key technology of large die-casting cluster and integrated die-casting is an extreme experiment, and Xiaomi is also the only automobile manufacturer in China that has developed both a large die-casting equipment cluster and die-casting materials. Xiaomi's self-developed 9100-ton integrated large die-casting cluster, including, self-developed a full set of die-casting island assembly lines containing 60 equipment and precision control of 433 process parameters, and self-developed visual large model quality judgment system, only a large die-casting cluster equipment covers an area of more than two basketball courts, but at the same time, it also helps Xiaomi to achieve the integration of 72 parts of the rear floor of the car, reducing the number of solder joints by 840 and reducing the weight by 17%, which has brought a huge cost reduction advantage to vehicle production.
Xiaomi's self-developed die-casting material is named "Xiaomi Titan Alloy", which is a high-strength, high-toughness heat-free and environmentally friendly die-casting material, and Xiaomi is also the only domestic automobile manufacturer with a patent for mass production of self-developed die-casting alloy materials. At the same time, Xiaomi has also developed its own multi-material performance AI** system, from 10.16 million formulas, select the best alloy formula that takes into account strength, toughness and stability, and add 30% recycled aluminum, which is very environmentally friendly.
From the point of view of practicality, while adopting integrated die-casting technology, Xiaomi is also committed to breaking the curse of high maintenance costs, Xiaomi adopts a three-stage repairable design, integrated die-casting rear floor + detachable collapse area, and after the occurrence of medium and low-speed collisions, there is no need to replace large die-castings.
Xiaomi's internal strength in making cars, soda is reflected in its manufacturing accumulation in the past 10 years. In the past three years, Xiaomi has weakened the attributes of an "Internet company" and emphasized the accumulation of advanced manufacturing, and Xiaomi's "black light factory" itself is a practical example of Chinese-style advanced manufacturing. When Xiaomi needs to really build a car, the most basic and difficult road of advanced manufacturing has been completed in bumps and bumps, and it no longer has to look for foundries everywhere like more than 10 years ago, fall into the quagmire of the first chain, and repeatedly grope and try in the process of exploring independent manufacturing.
In a sense, the advent of Xiaomi cars is a tour of Xiaomi's advanced manufacturing capabilities and even China's advanced manufacturing capabilities for consumer-level industrial products.
Paying tribute to Porsche and Tesla, it is not enough to do what they have done and then take a small step forward, it must find the problems that have not been fully solved in the course of the 100-year change. One of the most important issues is the complete intelligence of the car.
Autonomous driving technology isn't all there is to a car that's completely intelligent. It solves the intelligent part of the automatic operation and driving of the car as a supercomputer, but it does not really solve the intelligent problem of the car, especially the car, as a private space. Basically, the "spatial intelligence" of all smart electric vehicles, including Tesla, is limited to the central control screen next to the driver's seat. Navigation, maps, entertainment, and video operations are performed through voice or gesture control on the only central control screen. It's not smart.
The identities of the driver and passengers of a sedan are diverse. He She may be a driver, or a professional manager who is busy with ** meetings, a teenager who plays games, a primary school student who uses an iPad to do homework, a keyboard party, and a fruit fan ......Most of the time, when they're sitting in an electric car that claims to be "smart," the car doesn't help them expand what they want to do — a lonely screen that can usually only handle one or two monotonous problems at a time.
Xiaomi Auto tries to solve this problem. Because of the large number of hardware categories, rich experience in software and the Internet, coupled with the cross-platform attributes of hyperos, it seems to be more imaginative in solving this problem: the split multi-screen function of a large central control screen, Xiaomi pad hangs on the rear screen chain to get on the car, application throwing, application sharing, insert a physical keyboard for control, and even the camera of the car itself can be shared for ** meetings, and Apple users can also do their own things on the expansion screen of Xiaomi cars......The goal behind it is very clear: to make the car more space, and everyone can use the camera, screen and cloud services of the car to do what they like and have to do.
This is what Xiaomi wants to do beyond Tesla: to create a mobile smart space to achieve the integration of people and vehicles.
Well, it means, first of all, that people, devices, and intelligent services cooperate with each other and evolve together. And the core of all this is the Xiaomi surging OS on the car, to achieve the interconnection of drivers. Through the underlying reconstruction, cross-terminal intelligent connection, active intelligence, global security, and open ecology to create a closed loop of people, vehicles, and homes, Xiaomi has a consistent interactive experience with mobile phones and tablets, and can quickly get started without learning. In addition, through the multi-task flexible framework, desktop applications can be dragged and dropped, resized, and automatically adapted.
At the same time, the ecological unity of the car machine and the mobile phone can also realize the seamless connection between the mobile phone and the car machine, for example, when the mobile phone enters the cockpit, the mobile phone icon will automatically appear in the car machineThe mobile phone looks half of the **, and the car machine continues to broadcast in full screen;Feishu documents on mobile phones, full-screen display on the large screen of the car machine. At the same time, Xiaomi also launched the industry's first cockpit system streaming OTA upgrade technology, which upgrades the whole package of the cockpit system in 3 minutes and the whole car in 30 minutes.
Of course, the most important thing is actually how Xiaomi integrates the application ecology + hardware ecology + Xiaomi cariot ecology. Xiaomi Pad alone has 5000+ applications, and Xiaomi has adopted a strategy of gradual adaptation, and the experience will only get on the car when the experience is up to standard. The Xiaomi mobile phone application can be pinned to the car, and the car machine can be turned into a native application in seconds.
At the same time, 1000+ Mijia devices all support non-inductive boarding, which can realize automatic discovery, password-free access, and set up automation scenarios.
Xiaomi Auto has also reserved ecological expansion capabilities, and the four sides of the central control screen support hardware ecological expansion, and the PIN point expansion interface is reserved around to support plug and play of devices;The storage space of the center console and the back of the seat also support the expansion of the hardware ecosystem, and it can be connected to the Xiaomi tablet, and it can also be switched to the native car machine system.
Xiaomi's cariot ecology is also fully open to the three parties, such as full support for wireless carplay to take care of Apple users, and the rear expansion screen also has iPad-exclusive accessories and exclusive applications.
As Lei Jun recently wrote on Weibo: The development trend of smart electric vehicles is the integration of the consumer electronics industry and the intelligent ecology, and Xiaomi Auto will comprehensively redefine the technology stack, which will be a major leap in the field of technology.
It means that the car is intelligent as a private space, making the cockpit truly intelligent and liberating the shackles brought by the central control screen. If you use the Mi Home app to control this car, you will even find that the car itself is presented in the interior layout of the home. At the same time, this also makes Xiaomi car itself the largest smart home hardware of Xiaomi, so that this car has more malleability and imagination in terms of digital experience and human-based intelligence.
China's EV manufacturers are generally more experiential and "network-sensitive", thanks to the portraits of Chinese NEV users, the obsession of Chinese tech companies with cross-screen and cross-platform experiences, and China's achievements in internet and digital entertainment over the past decade, which should be part of the creative offerings of electric smart cars by Chinese players.
Many people discuss whether the Xiaomi car came too late, and indeed, it didn't come early at all. Many people believe that in China's new energy vehicle market, where competition is so fierce that even Tesla CEO Elon Musk feels brutal, there is a widespread belief that there is no ticket if you come late.
However, the smart electric vehicle market itself is still a continuous evolution, from hardware to software to maintain a rapid iteration of the market, it will further promote the change of a smart electric vehicle experience, function and even form, and the more you go forward, the more you fight for internal strength - independent research and development, experience of internal strength, manufacturing internal strength, and the intelligent internal power of the car itself function extension.
Lei Jun said that Xiaomi's way of making cars is very simple - it is surprisingly upright, and the starting point is also very clear: start from the underlying core technology, seriously build a good car, and then through 15 to 20 years of hard work, become the world's top five car manufacturers.
But achieving this goal is much more complicated, and it took Xiaomi 1,000 days to hand over the answer sheet, and paid ten times the industry's investment in the same period. In the end, in addition to the full-stack self-research ecosystem, Xiaomi built its own intelligent manufacturing production base, and relying on these core capabilities, it found the positioning of the first Xiaomi car SU7: a smart car that can lead the advanced mobile intelligent space with excellent performance.
Behind the product is internal strength, which is also the recalibration of Xiaomi's company's technical and industrial capabilities.
It is not a company that has entered the smart electric vehicle industry in vain. It already has a relatively solid foundation for advanced manufacturing, the accumulation of basic research and development of autonomous driving and electrical and electronic architecture, and its own cross-platform operating system. It may not be born to shock the industry, but it does stretch people's imagination about what a truly smart electric car is, and imagination means hope.