This article was originally produced by [10,000 points].
Author/Penny
More than eight months have passed since Xiaomi officially announced the construction of the car.
During this period, Xiaomi invested in the core links of automobile manufacturing such as batteries, autonomous driving technology, and automobile chips, including Black Sesame Intelligence, Yuntu Semiconductor, AVIC Lithium Battery, Aoyx, etc. In addition to investment, Xiaomi acquired the automatic driving solution provider "Deep Motion Technology" for 500 million yuan, and the entire car-making system was initially formed.
Looking back at March 30, Xiaomi released a "blockbuster" and officially announced its entry into the new energy vehicle market. At first, the outside world thought that this was a "joke" on April Fool's Day two days later, but afterwards it was found that Xiaomi had already begun the layout of new energy vehicles. There are many automobile-related patents, and Lei Jun, the head of Xiaomi, has also successively gone to several major domestic car companies "Bai Wharf" and appeared in the headquarters building of the Ningde era - all the car-making structures have been nearly perfected, only one foot away from the door.
On November 27, with the signing of the "Cooperation Agreement" between the Management Committee of Beijing Economic Development Zone and Xiaomi, it showed that Xiaomi wanted to build a car "boots landed". But despite this, people will still have a skeptical attitude towards Xiaomi's entry into the new energy vehicle market.
In the post-epidemic era, the new energy vehicle industry is competing for supremacy, and many car companies have achieved certain recognition from the market with advantages such as high quality, large mileage, and cost performance. But everything has two sides, while car sales are rising rapidly, the complexity of domestic "new forces" brands and products also means that Xiaomi's research and development, production and sales costs will increase significantly.
It is undeniable that smart electric vehicles are one of the biggest outlets at present. All along, not only mobile phone manufacturers such as Apple and Xiaomi are keen to build cars, But Huawei, Baidu, and Ali have also entered the game early in the field of new energy vehicles. But as far as Xiaomi is concerned, the problems that need to be solved in its car manufacturing may be more than the outside world imagines.
Xiaomi made a "big car" diagram what?
According to public reports, among the xiaomi automobile team members, there are many big coffee in the industry such as Yu Liguo, former president of Jihu Automobile, Hu Zhengnan, former president of Geely Research Institute, and other big names in the industry who have many years of experience in car manufacturing.
Lei Jun used such a "take-ism" method to form a "solid" combat team. Xiaomi's third quarterly report this year shows that xiaomi intelligent electric vehicle team members have more than 500 people, and the financial report also shows that xiaomi cars are expected to be officially mass-produced in the first half of 2024. Lei Jun even shouted out "all the accumulated records and reputations, fighting for Xiaomi cars".
So what is the picture of Xiaomi's entry into the new energy vehicle?
According to the caliber of Xiaomi's official external publicity: Xiaomi's car manufacturing this time is to complete its own ecological chain system, that is to say, for the construction of the future science and technology ecosystem, car manufacturing is the booster of this ecosystem.
In order to complete the construction of the ecological chain, Lei Jun and his millet naturally seek more possibilities, and this car building is an important part of enhancing their future imagination space.
Of course, from the perspective of the designer of an ideal ecological blueprint for construction, it is natural to build a fuller ecology in the future. It is difficult for us to determine the right and wrong of a series of practices of Xiaomi car manufacturing, after all, based on the most ideal and perfect ecological construction angle, more related business layouts can indeed enrich Xiaomi's future technology ecosystem.
But if we turn back the clock, from jia Yueting's LeTV "ecological anti" repeatedly frustrated the previous lessons, it can be seen that purely from the idealized level can be self-justified.
The idea of the ecosphere is like drawing a pie. Drawing a grand picture seems to boost stock prices in the short term, giving investors more stories to believe. But it's easy to draw bread, it's hard to make bread. The real difficulty is how to make this cake, many companies do not have such capabilities at all, whether it is LeTV at that time, or Evergrande not long ago. If you depict a pie that far exceeds the upper limit of your own ability, you can only tear down the east wall to make up for the west wall, so that the original building collapses in an instant.
The question for Xiaomi is whether the future delivery volume can reach 150,000 units.
In this regard, relevant industry insiders said to the study of 10,000 points: Xiaomi has a lot of debatable places in building cars. The first is positioning, at present, more competitiveness of domestic car companies is still stuck in the cost performance. In the past few years, domestic car companies want to launch high-end, although driven by new car companies such as Weilai and Ideal, there has been a certain improvement, but the overall high-end market share is not high, even if it is a very hot electric brand Krypton, but also because of Geely's series of operations led to a decline in the delivery of delayed user reputation. Therefore, the positioning of "Xiaomi Car" will affect the overall layout to a certain extent.
Secondly, there are also people who express another layer of concern: in terms of site selection, the headquarters of xiaomi's car manufacturing business landed in beijing economic development zone, and it is not known what kind of preferential policies have been given by the local government, but from the perspective of industrial supporting, the industrial chain of the economic development zone is not perfect, and there are only old-school car companies such as Beijing Benz and BAIC in the local area.
For the future market performance of Xiaomi cars, it seems that people will always think of the "Gree mobile phone" that is still unwilling to admit failure.
How many points does Xiaomi enter the "color"?
Behind all seemingly accidental phenomena, there is often an essential necessity.
An important factor in the emergence of the huge increment and structural changes in the new energy vehicle market is actually the profound changes in the environment. In November 2020, the General Office of the State Council issued the "New Energy Vehicle Industry Development Plan (2021-2035)", which raised new energy vehicles to the strategic level.
Since the beginning of this year, the sales structure of 4S store models can be said to have undergone earth-shaking changes, and for every ten pure electric vehicles sold, one or two fuel vehicles will often be sold. Previously, stores have been dominated by the sale of fuel vehicles.
According to media reports, in the limited number of the north, Shanghai, Guangzhou, shenzhen, 50% of the respondents said that they would buy new energy vehicles because they did not restrict the listing. At the same time, 89% of respondents said that the purchase of new energy vehicles is for commuting to work and belongs to users who just need it.
According to the relevant data of the China Automobile Association, the domestic sales of new energy vehicles in the first three quarters of this year totaled 2.157 million units, of which pure electric passenger cars contributed 1.68 million units. It can be inferred that new energy vehicles have become the first choice for car purchases for users in restricted cities.
The second is that under the incentive of the dual factors of capital and market, the electric vehicle industry is subverting the originally closed and traditional automotive industry, providing a once-in-a-century window of opportunity for foreign entrants.
The third is the advancement of battery technology and the reduction of vehicle costs.
Since the beginning of this year, the sales volume of new energy vehicles has reached a new high. According to data from the China Automobile Association, sales of new energy vehicles reached 383,000 units in October 2021, an increase of 1.3 times year-on-year; Cumulative sales in the first ten months reached 2.542 million units, an increase of 1.8 times year-on-year.
Sales of new energy vehicles are expected to reach 3.4 million units in 2021. In 2022, the sales volume of new energy vehicles may exceed 5.1 million units. According to industry insiders, the heyday of the domestic new energy automobile industry may come ahead of schedule.
It is precisely to see the strong growth of the automobile market and the rapid progress of new car manufacturing forces in the new energy market, Xiaomi also hopes to catch up with the wave set off by this domestic new energy vehicle. However, at least from the current situation, Xiaomi's entry time is at least 4 years late, and due to the increasing number of new entrants, the market's acceptance of these "new energy newborns" has gradually decreased, which is significantly lower than that of new car-making forces such as Ideal, Weilai, and Xiaopeng.
But Lei Jun also has his own set of logic, "word of mouth" is the magic weapon that Xiaomi relies on to survive. According to industry analysts, most of the users of Xiaomi cars in the future will be Xiaomi mobile phone users. Because smartphones are the most important part of the Xiaomi technology ecosystem. Through the sales and promotion of smart hardware devices such as mobile phones in recent years, Xiaomi has obtained hundreds of millions of users, and its potential buyers are also more than other new car-making forces, so it has comprehensive advantages.
Old-school audiences have always had a strong view that building cars requires years of technical accumulation. In contrast, the current new forces such as Weilai, Xiaopeng and Weima show that as long as this industry has a very strong capital, it can make up for the lack of technology, time, and research and development. As a fortune 500 company, Xiaomi's historical accumulation is much deeper than that of the three major new forces of automobiles, and Lei Jun's influence and human resources in the industry are also better than those of the three new forces.
However, at the same time, Lei Jun also knew that if the delivery could not be delivered in the end, everything else would be in vain. He has also publicly stated that the investment before the delivery of the car is a sword hanging over Xiaomi's head, and if the car is not smooth, it may also hurt Xiaomi's stock price.
epilogue
New energy vehicles have gradually begun to penetrate and replace fuel vehicles, and this subtle transformation has brought a new atmosphere to the new energy vehicle market.
Just, 10 billion? Can Xiaomi build a car in the end?
We know that car manufacturing requires three major elements "production qualification, production line, safety testing", and it is not easy to build a car, otherwise Jia Yueting will not stay in the "PPT car" stage.
The author believes that if Xiaomi wants to develop auto parts and The East Machine software system like BYD, and then assemble it into a whole vehicle, this road is almost impossible to complete, and 10 billion is not enough to burn. BYD has its own metal factory, batteries, four major processes 9 stamping, welding, painting, assembly), there is motor electronic control technology, which is its vertical integration mode of many years of accumulation of results, other new car companies want to imitate the basic impossible.
And Xiaomi wants to build a whole car, there is still a long way to go, after all, in this era of automotive industry change, anything can happen.
End of full text. Thank you for your patience in reading.