Image source: vision china
Xiaomi car has not yet entered the market, and Lei Jun has begun to be anxious.
Recently, Lei Jun, chairman of Xiaomi Group, said in an interview with CCTV that he was worried that Xiaomi’s car would not catch fire as soon as it came up, and that everyone would buy it. "It was all kinds of anxious emotions."
In fact, since the day when Officer Lei announced the construction of the car, Xiaomi Automobile has always brought its own traffic attributes, but this is a "double-edged sword"-
- On the one hand, Xiaomi automobile has gained great attention from the public without blowing off dust. Even though the government has not disclosed the progress of Xiaomi’s car-making, new news has been constantly revealed and even leaked many times.
- On the other hand, the public’s high expectation of Xiaomi car is undoubtedly the pressure of Xiaomi to build a car. The public’s hung appetite needs to be fed to avoid traffic.
Although Xiaomi automobile has not entered the market, it has attracted much attention. In the face of huge traffic dividends, Xiaomi’s approach is not to increase exposure, but to maintain a "mystery."
It is reported that Xiaomi will launch a car-related event on December 28, but Xiaomi has not officially announced it. This kind of publicity rhythm is rare and abnormal in the industry.
But in any case, the debut of Xiaomi’s first model has entered the countdown, and the first shot of Xiaomi’s car will eventually be revealed. However, before Xiaomi Automobile officially entered the market, there were many difficulties ahead.
"Net red face" get together, can Xiaomi SU7 break through?
In November this year, Xiaomi Automobile landed in the new batch of new car declaration catalogue of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, and the first product of Xiaomi Automobile was also made public for the first time.
It can be seen that the appearance of Xiaomi’s first car is similar to that of Porsche Taycan, and it is similar to the models of Zhijie S7, Extreme Krypton 007, Extreme ROBO-02 and Star Road Interstellar ES.
Comparison between Xiaomi SU7 and competing models
According to the specific parameter information, the length, width and height of the first car "SU7" of Xiaomi are 4997mm/1963mm/1455mm, and the wheelbase is 3000mm, which is longer than the potential competitors such as Model 3, Tucki P7, Zhijie S7, and Extreme Krypton 007.
According to external sources, Xiaomi’s first car may be divided into three versions, namely, the regular version, the Pro version and the MAX version, and the price may be in the range of 190,000-300,000.
We should know that the B-class sedan market of 200,000-300,000 is the most competitive position at present. In this market segment, there are old faces such as BYD Han EV, Tesla Model 3 and Tucki P7, as well as the newly listed Zhijie S7, Yinhe E8 and Extreme Krypton 007.
Judging from the performance of the players on the field, BYD Han EV and Tesla Model 3 have gained a firm foothold, and sold 12,841 vehicles and 23,999 vehicles respectively in November, making them the two major peaks.
Among the new entrants, Zhijie S7 is an ecological product of HarmonyOS Zhixing, which uses Huawei’s latest technologies in chassis, safety, cockpit and intelligent driving, and is equipped with Huawei’s intelligent driving solution ADS 2.0；; Geely Group sits behind Krypton 007 and Galaxy E8.
In other words, Xiaomi SU7 is about to enter a battlefield surrounded by enemies.
According to the published application information, we can only know that Xiaomi SU7 will use lithium iron phosphate battery, and the supplier is Xiangyang Fudi Battery Co., Ltd. under BYD. The peak power of the driving motor is 220kW, and the supplier is United Automotive Electronics Co., Ltd.. In addition, the vehicle will provide optional items including side fender lettering, ETC, exterior rearview mirror, skylight glass, laser radar and so on.
Although more specific configuration information about Xiaomi car has not been made public, from the perspective of Xiaomi’s genes, its accumulation on mobile phone terminals makes it potentially competitive in smart cockpit.
In October this year, Xiaomi released "澎湃 OS" to open up the ecology of people and cars. Through the opening of the bottom layer of cross-scenario and cross-ecological software, Xiaomi Automobile got the card of "cross-terminal and cross-scenario experience", and the car companies in the industry currently have this kind of simultaneous layout of mobile phones and car terminals. There are three manufacturers: Geely, Weilai and Huawei.
Whether Xiaomi can release the advantages of drivers’ interconnection to form competitiveness after entering the automobile market is unknown, but the game between Xiaomi SU7 and Zhijie S7, Yinhe E8 and other products in drivers’ interconnection is actually that Xiaomi is once again facing Huawei, Meizu and other old rivals.
In addition to the competitiveness of product configuration, the most uncertain thing about Xiaomi Automobile at present is the pricing problem-the pricing is too high to gain market recognition and affect sales; If the price is too low, the standard line of brand impression will be set, and at the same time, factors such as profit rate need to be considered. At the same time, the intensified price war also makes the pricing of Xiaomi Automobile more difficult.
Faced with the layers of new and old players, Xiaomi SU7 has officially started the breakout campaign since it entered the arena.
How can the latecomers make up for the battle of opening the city with wisdom?
"The goal of Xiaomi Automobile is to enter the first camp of the autonomous driving industry in 2024", which is the swear words released by Lei Jun in his annual speech in August 2022.
In Lei Jun’s view, autonomous driving is the key to the success of smart electric vehicles. Xiaomi will also choose autonomous driving as the breakthrough direction of smart electric vehicles and unswervingly follow the path of full-stack self-research.
Before this path was made public, Lei Jun began to set up an autonomous driving R&D team with L4 as the goal as early as 2021, and integrated the artificial intelligence laboratory, Xiaoai team, mobile phone camera department and other departments of the group to provide cooperation for intelligent driving development.
According to the information revealed by Lei Jun in his speech, the first phase of Xiaomi Auto’s self-driving project invested 3.3 billion yuan in research and development. The team covers sensors, chips, sensing control algorithms, simulation technology, high-precision maps, high-precision positioning, tool chains, training capabilities and other automatic driving full-stack technical talents.
Later, external news pointed out that the person in charge of Xiaomi’s auto-driving was Ye Hangjun, a veteran of Xiaomi. He joined Xiaomi in 2012, and was first responsible for cloud technology, then for the artificial intelligence department, and then switched to the auto-driving industry.
According to Lei Jun’s interview with CCTV, Xiaomi invested 3,400 engineers in the first car and invested more than 10 billion in research and development.
Smart driving industrial chain enterprises invested by Xiaomi
In order to quickly make up lessons in autonomous driving, Xiaomi invested in a large number of upstream and downstream companies in the industrial chain before the layout of autonomous driving, including black sesame intelligence, an automobile chip manufacturer; Automatic driving manufacturers Momenta, Zhixing, Zongmu Technology, etc.; Laser radar manufacturer Hesai Technology, etc., and in 2021, it wholly acquired the autopilot company DeepMotion Tech Limited, which has a layout in the fields of high-precision positioning, high-precision maps and 3D scene reconstruction.
However, the demonstration of Xiaomi’s auto-driving technical ability still stayed in August, 2022. At that time, the video data showed that Xiaomi’s auto-driving system could realize the functions of calling vehicles with one button, automatically entering the ramp, actively changing lanes to overtake, making unprotected turn/U-turn, automatically bypassing temporarily stopped vehicles/accident vehicles/roundabout, and autonomous parking service. After the vehicle is parked and parked, it can also be automatically charged by the mechanical arm.
After more than a year of R&D iteration, it is still unknown whether these capabilities can be mass-produced. However, the domestic smart car market has ushered in an unprecedented development period, and the competition of car companies in intelligent driving has moved from high-speed NOA to urban NOA, and they are competing to be involved in the battle of opening the city NOA.
Some manufacturers have experienced the game of choosing high-precision maps, and the algorithm has also been iterated, reconstructed and revised, while Xiaomi Automobile has always been in a silent state.
Intelligent driving ability is on the one hand, and more importantly, engineering landing and verification. It needs a certain amount of training and testing on the open road. Even if Xiaomi’s first model has the ability of NOA in the city as soon as it comes on the stage, it still needs to catch up with the players who are relatively the first to lay out in the open speed.
Liu Yilin, Senior Director of Autopilot Products in Xpeng Motors, recently publicly talked about the importance of real vehicle data to the verification of urban assisted driving test. He mentioned that "it is risky to rely on shadow mode on a large scale in the cold start stage, because there is no real vehicle data, and whether the shadow mode itself is reliable or not has not been verified. Only by combining the real vehicle verification+simulation mileage+shadow mode, combined with the Bad Case of a large number of production vehicles, can the functional safety be more securely guaranteed. "
According to various plans, Huawei NCA plans to be available nationwide by the end of this year, Xpeng Motors NGP plans to expand to 50 cities by the end of this year, and Weilai NOP+ will open 60,000 kilometers by the end of this year. All car companies are accelerating the landing of urban driving assistance capabilities, and all of them have a certain amount of real vehicle data running on the road.
Xiaomi Automobile, which wants to enter the first camp of the autonomous driving industry in 2024, should compress the competition in product experience, online time and the number of Kaesong into a more compact time range, so as to be able to compete with other automobile companies. This is not only a technical competition, but also a sales competition and a resource competition.
Can the trial of productivity hell stand up?
Entering the manufacturing process is the beginning of Xiaomi Automobile’s mass production.
In an interview with CCTV, Lei Jun said, "Cars are really complicated. I am particularly worried that if they don’t catch fire, everyone won’t buy them; What is more worrying is that if everyone comes to buy it, it will take a year or two to wait, and it will definitely be miserable. "In fact, it refers to the management of supply chain and factory capacity.
Screenshot of the new car declaration catalogue of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology
It can be seen from the information of the new car declaration catalogue of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology that the qualification subject of Xiaomi Automobile is "Beijing Automobile Group Off-road Vehicle Co., Ltd." and the production address is "No.21 Courtyard of Huanjing Road, Beijing Economic and Technological Development Zone", that is, the location of Xiaomi Automobile’s self-built factory.
Although it is still doubtful whether Xiaomi’s automobile production qualification has fully landed (according to the Regulations of the National Development and Reform Commission on Automobile Industry Investment Management in 2018 and the Regulations of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology on New Energy Automobile Production Enterprises and Product Access Management in 2020, the new car manufacturing company needs to obtain the two qualifications of the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology at the same time), it can be confirmed from the application information that Xiaomi will produce "Xiaomi SU7" in its own factory.
Xiaomi Automobile Factory has two projects, one of which covers an area of about 720,000 square meters and has an annual production capacity of 150,000 vehicles. At present, it has been completed and started to enter the trial production stage. The first product prototype has been off the assembly line and is ready for mass production. The second phase is scheduled to start in 2024 and be completed in 2025.
Lei Jun once said that the first model of Xiaomi Automobile plans to sell 100,000 vehicles in the first year and deliver 900,000 vehicles in the next three years. This means that from 2025 to 2027, Xiaomi Automobile needs to produce and sell at least 300,000 vehicles every year.
Although Xiaomi has experience in supply chain management and manufacturing in the field of mobile phones, it is still a novice in the automobile industry. The automobile industry, which is known as the "pearl in the crown of human manufacturing", not only has a long supply chain, but also has a difficult capacity management. Even the head car companies such as Tesla and BYD can’t escape the torture of "capacity hell".
This year’s "Biography of Musk" recorded the whole process of Tesla Model 3′ s experience of productivity hell. Even the Tesla factory with high automation degree will be stuck in the production line because of a slight mistake or a certain part. An unimpeded production line needs more time to run in and accumulate a lot of invisible knowledge in management and technology besides the initial capital investment and the design of the production line.
The difficulty of capacity management lies in supply chain management. A supply chain manufacturer once told Titanium Media App that Xiaomi’s early negotiations with the supply chain gave an expectation of "100,000 in the first year". Usually, suppliers will arrange production according to demand, but when the production capacity is tight, some suppliers will tilt resources based on strategic considerations, which will undoubtedly increase the difficulty of supply management of car companies.
This year, Tucki G6 Max had affected the delivery speed because the laser radar supplier was not prepared enough; In the delivery of Krypton 001, the production capacity of Krypton 001 was slow due to insufficient suspended supply.
Xiaomi Automobile Factory only entered the trial production stage in September this year, producing about 50 prototype cars every week. For Xiaomi automobile, which has not experienced actual production, supply chain management and capacity management are all thresholds that it has to cross.
There is no "newcomer protection period" in the automobile market.
Xiaomi once entered the mobile phone market as a subversive, but in the matter of building a car, Xiaomi is actually no different from many new force car makers. There may be no shortage of pits to step on and classes to make up.
Different from the new car companies that have already entered the market, Xiaomi needs to face the cruel competition in the automobile industry when it enters the market. It is a consensus in the industry that the new energy vehicle market enters the knockout stage. Whether it is a three-year boundary or a five-year competition period, the first shot is particularly important for Xiaomi Automobile, which arrived late.
After all, in the face of fierce market competition, there is no so-called newcomer protection period.
(This article is the first titanium media App, written by Xiao Man, edited by Sharla Cheung)
