The competition for electric vehicles is becoming increasingly fierce, and the so-called undecided are all dark horses.
Before Apple set up an early car project but in the process of three twists and turns in the promotion, now there is Xiaomi to plan and then move, with a rhythm of breaking bamboo to quickly enter the car business.
After the official announcement of the car, the Xiaomi automobile project was in full swing, from recruiting talents, registering companies to building factories, and quickly building a car-making framework. Even Lei Jun said that "Xiaomi's car manufacturing progress exceeded expectations."
Regarding Xiaomi's car, the latest news is that it will launch a engineering prototype in the third quarter of this year. In addition, Auto Heart heard that Xiaomi will launch 4 models, namely two models of A+ Class and B Class car.
01
Xiaomi Car: Positioning A+ and B-Class cars
Mainly in the 150,000-300,000 range
In 2010, the early days of Xiaomi's mobile phone entrepreneurship coincided with a blue ocean in the Chinese smartphone market, and there was a huge blank opportunity in the market.
Xiaomi positions the mobile phone brand to focus on the two directions of "high-end" and "smart". But in fact, in the product planning and landing stage, Xiaomi strives to pursue low prices to seize the market, resulting in low brand positioning, compared with foreign Apple and Samsung, the brand position and brand value are not high.
In 2022, another reincarnation.
After Lei Jun shouted out the slogan of "the last major entrepreneurship in his life", how can Xiaomi find the correct positioning and accurate force in the electric vehicle market of the entrants?
Last April, Lei Jun launched 3 votes on Weibo:
What car do you want Xiaomi Cars to be?
Regarding the brand of Xiaomi car, use the "Xiaomi" brand or take a new brand?
What do you want the first car of Xiaomi car to cost?
Then Lei Jun announced the voting results: Today's Weibo voting results show that fans want us to do mid-to-high-end cars, so the price range of the first Millet car is 100,000-300,000 yuan.
Although in the user survey, users have the highest demand for Xiaomi models below 100,000, this price point is not in line with the brand strategic positioning of Xiaomi Car.
A person familiar with the matter revealed to the heart of the car that Xiaomi car is mainly positioned as a high-end model:
Mid-range model, A+ class with a price range of 150,000-200,000 (L2+ autonomous driving)
High-end models, B-class cars priced at 200,000-300,000 (L3 autonomous driving)
The main model of 150,000 yuan to 300,000 yuan, this range is similar to the current 3,000 yuan price of the smart phone market, is expected to be the largest number of entrants, the most fierce competition, the highest elimination rate of an electric vehicle segment.
This means that Xiaomi cars are more focused on the mass market and pay more attention to cost performance to attract a wider range of market consumer groups.
Ding Lei, CEO of Gaohe Automobile, has such a saying: China's new car manufacturing has formed a new pattern, Xiaopeng covers the range of 150,000-400,000, Weilai covers the range of 400,000-500,000, and Gaohe covers the range of 600,000-800,000.
From this positioning point of view, Xiaomi Automobile will benchmark Xiaopeng Automobile.
Image from the web
This time, Lei Jun, once an important investor in Xiaopeng Automobile, has changed from a shareholder to a direct competitor.
In 2017, Lei Jun participated in Xiaopeng A+ and Series C financing through Shunwei Capital, and gave He Xiaopeng a lot of advice in the development process of Xiaopeng Automobile.
Especially in the positioning and marketing of Xiaopeng Automobile, he shared a lot of experience with He Xiaopeng, making Xiaopeng Automobile a smart car with cost performance and sense of technology as the main selling point in the new forces.
The model of Xiaopeng Automobile and Xiaomi mobile phone is very similar, which is also an important reason why Lei Jun was willing to invest in the stock in the first place.
According to Xiaomi's car roadmap, Xiaomi's first model will be listed in 2024, so the PK of Xiaopeng Automobile and Xiaomi Automobile will be a major attraction.
02
What is the basis for Xiaomi cars to enter this market?
Xiaomi makes cars and has a strong invisible advantage - rice noodles.
Lei Jun has said that Xiaomi Guanwei has conducted an online survey on whether to build a car, about 10,000 people participated in the vote, and as many as 92% of users chose to support Xiaomi's car- and claimed to buy Xiaomi-made cars.
This is equivalent to Xiaomi cars already have potential consumer and user viscosity.
As some loyal rice noodles age, Xiaomi's product transition from young people's first phones to their first cars also fits their growth curve.
The young user group is the most sticky basic user. This group will be the main driver of China's new consumer economy. Young people's consumption is more advanced, and the quality and personalization of car manufacturing require more diversity.
It is foreseeable that Xiaomi's huge user base is enough to support the sales of xiaomi cars in the first stage.
On the channel, Xiaomi has opened more than 10,000 Xiaomi homes. After a series of adjustments, Xiaomi has explored a new set of offline retail business models, which can realize the digital and standardized management of Xiaomi Home.
Referring to Huawei's strict selection launched by Huawei, the car sales business is extended to the offline stores of Huawei mobile phones, forming a unique landscape of selling cars in the left hand and selling mobile phones in the right hand.
According to people familiar with the matter, the last piece of the puzzle that Xiaomi Home has formed to form a closed loop is new energy vehicles.
Most of The Xiaomi Home stores are set up in the core business district, the store area is generally between 100 and 460 square meters, if an area is set aside from the existing Xiaomi Home store to sell cars, it will not increase additional costs.
03
How to build a Xiaomi car?
In November 2021, half a year after announcing the construction of the car, Xiaomi Automobile officially settled in the Beijing Economic Development Zone, and the R&D headquarters and sales headquarters were also landed.
Judging from the official information, Xiaomi Automobile Factory is located in Majuqiao Intelligent Manufacturing Base (Intelligent Manufacturing Base) in Yizhuang New Town (Tongzhou Area) in Beijing, and the total investment of the project is expected to be 63 billion yuan.
Xiaomi will build a vehicle plant with an annual output of 300,000 units in two phases, of which the first and second phases of production capacity are 150,000 units each, and it is expected that the first car will roll off the production line and achieve mass production in 2024.
It is reported that the first phase of production capacity of 150,000 vehicles, of which the production line investment will account for about one-third of the initial investment of 10 billion, about 3 billion -4 billion.
Determining the headquarters and factory to settle in the city is an important node in the preliminary preparation of Xiaomi's car manufacturing.
Although the production capacity of the first phase is 150,000 vehicles, the heart of the car has been heard, and Xiaomi believes that selling 80,000 vehicles a year is a success.
On March 21, a Xiaomi executive spoiled the latest developments in Xiaomi Cars.
According to Luo Baojun, general manager of Xiaomi's Beijing-Tianjin branch, Xiaomi Automobile's engineering prototype will be unveiled in the third quarter of this year, and then he also sold a pass: "It will definitely break everyone's imagination."
04
The challenge of Xiaomi car building
In addition to the advantages of a huge millet fan base and ready-made channels, millet that builds cross-border cars also faces many challenges in the automotive industry: it does not have the bargaining advantage of the supply chain, and the construction of the automatic driving system also needs to make up lessons.
Vehicle development and production are highly dependent on Tier1, which are mostly domestic and foreign suppliers with strong capital and high technical barriers.
As a new recruit in the automotive industry, Xiaomi cannot have the vertical integration ability of the supply chain as in the field of mobile phones and AIOT, and can take the lead on its own, forming a dominant position of large quantity and price pressure on suppliers.
In this case, Xiaomi wants to build a cost-effective car with certain challenges.
Another problem is that Xiaomi's self-driving talent is relatively weak at this stage. Xiaomi's intelligent driving department plans to compile a scale of 500 people, and it is reported that the current personnel will be more than half. In contrast, Xiaopeng's autonomous driving related personnel have exceeded 1,000 people.
According to the plan, Xiaomi's first car will be officially mass-produced in the first half of 2024, and it is likely to be delivered by the end of 2024 or 2025.
According to this time node, 2025 is the first year of L4 automatic driving landing, and in 2025, there will be head car companies to launch L4 autonomous vehicles. This means that xiaomi cars have lagged behind since their launch, and the challenges from friendly competitors are very large.
Some industry insiders believe that Xiaomi's car manufacturing is a car-making behavior centered on Lei Jun, and what kind of car-making is caused by Lei Jun's personal cognition of car-making. Xiaomi Auto entered the market late, and lost the first opportunity in the concept of car building, market, talent, and user cultivation, and there is a gap with Wei Xiaoli, which is difficult to look back on in the short term, and it is also the norm to follow suit.
Of course, compared with the new forces of car manufacturing, Xiaomi has a solid and flexible ecological chain system, and has unique advantages in the field of car company competition and competition such as car machine system and interior space, which is also an important starting point for Xiaomi to open the market through differentiated strategies.
With reliable quality products to open up the Volkswagen tram market, supplemented by the unique advantages of the intelligent ecological chain and rice noodle support, it is only a matter of time before Xiaomi Cars gain market.
"The Heart of the Car · The connoisseur said" trailer
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