Lei Jun made a car: hundreds of billions of investment, difficult to solve the anxiety?

March 30, 2022, if it is not a commemorative day with special significance, then it is likely to become a common day in the exchange of stars and moons.

However, for Lei Jun, the founder of Xiaomi Technology, this is the first anniversary of his leading Xiaomi to build a car. At this time last year, Lei Jun said in his speech that building a car was his "last major entrepreneurial project in life" and "willing to press the entire reputation of life, once again put on the battle, and fight for Xiaomi Car".

Investing $10 billion in the next ten years to make a good car for all rice noodles was a solemn commitment made by Lei Jun at that time. Since then, Xiaomi has completed the industrial and commercial registration of two automobile companies, invested in upstream and downstream supply chains quickly, and finalized the factory settlement in the Beijing Economic and Technological Development Zone, and all the details of Lei Jun, a veteran of entrepreneurship, have been magnified into the spotlight without exception.

However, this year, xiaomi officials revealed very little information to the outside world, which formed a sharp contrast with the thunderclap when Lei Jun announced the car. At the end of 2021, Lei Jun said in a summary Weibo that the past year can be described as "both good and bad", and the automobile business has opened a "new journey in the new decade", but at the same time "experienced unprecedented tribulations and tests".

Therefore, standing at the special time node of the first anniversary, it is of great significance to look back and summarize all the details since Xiaomi built the car. How is the factory of Xiaomi Cars built? Which suppliers have tens of billions of cash on Xiaomi's account? Who is helping Lei Jun build the car? Why is Lei Jun anxious and in pain?

While the author is trying to answer these questions, all the details related to Xiaomi's car are also put on the table one by one.

An automobile factory built on ridge ditches and sorting centers

It is an indisputable fact that Xiaomi Automobile Factory has settled in the Majuqiao Intelligent Manufacturing Base in Beijing Economic Development Zone. The specific locations of the two phases of the factory are located in the southwest corner of the intelligent manufacturing base, on the south side of the Hopson Industrial Center, and in the middle are divided into two by the north-south Direction Xinfang Road.

According to the recent announcement of the listing and supply of land in the Beijing Economic Development Zone, the first phase of the Xiaomi factory will open bidding on April 6. Combined with the previous plan to start construction of the first phase of the factory in April, it can be said that the factory construction of Xiaomi Automobile is still in an orderly manner.

Field investigation found that the land in the first phase of the factory was divided into two plots of land in the north and south by a narrow east-west lane, and the vacation work has been completed. On the plot on the north side, several small green flags for project identification can also be seen.

The shape of the ridge ditch where the first phase of the land was once used for agricultural cultivation is very obvious. Some rutted marks left by the tracks can also be seen on the ground, and the small potholes lined up neatly on the middle dirt road are also traces of the original planting fence.

According to people familiar with the matter, the land was a privately contracted greenhouse more than a decade ago, and later flowers were planted. Before the arrival of the millet factory, the surrounding farmers planted green onions and cabbage here. Although it has been a winter, you can still see the traces of last year's planting of cabbage, as well as the sprouts of cabbage that have just sprouted this spring.

If it weren't for the xiaomi factory officially starting construction in April, you might be able to see more lush cabbage break through the ground.

On the side of the lane, a randomly scattered sign clearly reads "Archaeological Exploration of the 1150-mu Area in the Western Part of the Majuqiao Intelligent Manufacturing Base Land First-class Development Project". According to the regulations, at the beginning of the construction and design of large-scale projects, the local cultural relics bureau often has to conduct archaeological surveys and other related work on the land in advance.

On the west side of the first phase of the factory, there is also a ditch called "Maju Bridge and a Ditch", which belongs to the Fenghe River Basin, with a total length of 5.37 kilometers, and is still dry. For xiaomi factories, the "Maju Bridge Ditch" may become an excellent drainage site after being transformed.

On the plot on the south side of the first phase of the factory, there is currently a medium-sized excavator that is burying water pipes. In addition, there is no trace of any construction in the first phase of the Xiaomi factory.

A large number of vacating signs can still be seen on the land of Xiaomi Phase II factory, and the overall vacating work has not yet begun. The largest building on the plot of the second phase of the factory is the Beijing Tongzhou Sorting Center, with large freight trucks coming in and out at all times. According to people familiar with the matter, every year on Double Eleven, this place will be blocked by traffic problems.

From this point of view, in addition to considering the construction of the factory, Xiaomi must also plan the surrounding traffic problems in the future.

Along with the construction of the Millet factory, there are also rising prices and house prices. On the dining car outside the gate of the sorting center, a drawer of 7 small dumplings has been sold for 8 yuan. According to Xiao Zhang, a real estate agent, compared with last year, the house price in the Majuqiao area has completed a new round of increases, and the average price of a two-bedroom second-hand house is about 200,000.

With the upcoming construction of the S6 line and the favorable policy of double purchase restriction or will be lifted, the old "border town" of Maju Bridge has long been different.

To build a supply chain, Lei Jun must be fast and stable

Xiaomi's earliest investment in the automotive sector dates back to 2014. Before announcing the car, Xiaomi Capital began a wide layout in the pan-automotive industry chain, such as Momenta, an autonomous driving solution company, Xiaopeng Automobile and Weilai Automobile in the vehicle field.

However, the outside world is more inclined to interpret Xiaomi's investment in this period as financial investment, rather than to build a supply chain. Since the official announcement of the car in March last year, Xiaomi Capital has invested more strongly in the automotive industry chain and has a wider investment scope, which is more like Lei Jun carefully selecting upstream and downstream suppliers for Xiaomi automobiles.

According to incomplete statistics, since the date of the author's publication in March last year, Xiaomi Capital has invested in more than 40 enterprises in the pan-automotive industry chain. Among them, Xiaomi's investment in autonomous driving, in-vehicle chips and power batteries can be called the most in the circle.

Let's start with the field of autonomous driving. Whether it is a supplier of external sensors, a company that provides software and algorithmic autonomous driving solutions, or a manufacturer that provides autonomous driving chips and platforms located at the bottom, Xiaomi is involved.

(Table 1: Xiaomi's supply chain investment in the field of autonomous driving)

On the external sensor of lidar alone, Xiaomi has invested in four companies: Hesai Technology, Tudtong, Lice Technology and Beixing Photon.

Hesai Technology can be said to be a leading enterprise in domestic lidar, customers in 23 countries around the world, its release of long-range hybrid solid-state lidar AT128, has been included ideal, extreme, Gaohe, Lotus and other car companies including a number of OEMs orders, the recent fire of the ideal L9 equipped with this lidar.

Tutton is NIO's lidar supplier. The UP ET7, which will soon open for delivery, is equipped with the Innovusion Falcon lidar from Tuduit.

At the software and algorithm level, self-driving solution manufacturers such as Longitudinal Technology, Deepmotion, and Geometric Partners can all rely on Xiaomi to do what they want.

Zhongmu Technology focuses on the L4 level of autonomous parking system, and Changan Automobile, FAW Hongqi, Dongfeng Lantu and other OEMs have cooperation projects; Deepmotion is the only autonomous driving company that Xiaomi chooses to merge, Xiaomi said in its 2021 financial report that Deepmotion can provide full-stack autonomous driving solutions including perception, positioning, planning and control.

Geometry Partner energy can provide 4D millimeter wave imaging radar as the main sensing, with visible light and infrared imaging and other sensing fusion of autonomous driving hardware and software integration system. SAIC's upcoming model in 2023 will adopt this plan.

At the hardware level, Xiaomi has chosen the exclusive beast of the automatic driving chip track - Black Sesame Intelligence, and its Huashan series chips can support the L2-L4 level of automatic driving scenarios, with a computing power of up to 196TOPS, and will achieve mass production in 2022, and its customers are mainly based on FAW and SAIC's own brands.

The second is the field of power batteries. Xiaomi has invested in Honeycomb Energy, Ganfeng Lithium Battery, Zhongxin Airlines, Zhuhai Guanyu, Weilan New Energy and Fute Technology.

(Table 2: Xiaomi's supply chain of investment in the field of power batteries)

In addition to the Great Wall System's Euler brand, The main customers of Hive Energy also involve many brands such as Geely, Lynk & Co, Xilis, Nezha and so on. At present, The second generation of Hive Energy's L600 lithium iron phosphate battery has completed development, and the energy density has been increased to 185wh/kg, and it is expected to be officially mass-produced in the third quarter of this year.

At present, the customers of Zhongxin Airlines mainly come from the new domestic car-making forces and the new energy brands of traditional car companies. Aian Y, Xiaopeng P7 and Wuling Hongguang MINI EV are all part of The Company's customer category.

It is worth noting that according to the data of the China Power Battery Industry Innovation Alliance, from January to February this year, Hive Energy and Zhongxin Airlines ranked third and fifth in the domestic power battery companies with 2.35GWh and 0.77GWh respectively, only behind ningde times and BYD.

In addition, Ganfeng Lithium Battery, Zhuhai Guanyu and Weilan New Energy mainly focus on the research and development of solid-state batteries. Ganfeng Lithium Battery has now obtained the Dongfeng E70 model solid-state battery mass production fixed-point project; Zhuhai Guanyu announced during the IPO last year that it can independently develop solid-state battery samples with energy densities of up to 350Wh/Kg; Weilan New Energy is the semi-solid-state battery supplier of Weilai Automobile.

Let's look at the field of car chips. The xiaomi layout is broader and more complex. For example, Yutai Microelectronics' Ethernet chip, Eurotronics' OLED display driver chip, Yuntu Semiconductor's vehicle-grade MCU and Aison Nordair's safety control chip.

(Table 3: Xiaomi's supply chain of investment in the field of automotive chips)

In addition, Xiaomi has also laid out enterprises that are mainly engaged in semiconductor production equipment. Jingyan Intelligent provides semiconductor, integrated circuit intelligent test equipment, while Laser laser provides semiconductor silicon wafer cutting equipment.

In other parts, Xiaomi also invested in Kong Hui Automobile, which focuses on the electronic control suspension of passenger cars, and the air suspension of Lantu FREE is provided by this company; Zhilu Technology focuses on the high-voltage electrical and equipment management of new energy vehicles, and the MSD (manual maintenance switch) on the M5 battery pack comes from this company.

Previously, the outside world generally interpreted Lei Jun's investment in the pan-automotive industry chain as his desire to assist his successful experience in the field of mobile phones in the past by deeply controlling the supply chain. However, it is not difficult to find that the enterprises invested by Xiaomi are not the absolute leaders on various tracks, but on the contrary, they are enterprises with great room for growth and will gradually emerge in the next 3-5 years.

It is worth noting that this time node is also in line with the time of mass production of Xiaomi's first new car.

On December 21 last year, on the eve of the release of Xiaomi's new products, Lei Jun also said emotionally on Weibo, "In the past, what we advocated was that the world's martial arts were only fast and not broken. Today, what we pursue is not only fast, but also stable, steady word, steady and far-reaching. ”

Lei Jun also said that this is not only the company's overall strategy, but also at the product level. Therefore, the enterprises invested by Xiaomi have another common feature, that is, they generally have relatively stable customer relationships and mature landing products, which can be used by Xiaomi to achieve rapid migration of supplier products while ensuring sufficient competitiveness.

The initial stages of a new brand are often a projection of the founder's personality, especially the leader who carries the halo.

The people who helped Lei Jun build the car were both dr. returnees and engineering academicians

After talking about the supply chain, let's take a look at Lei Jun's reserves in terms of talents.

Compared with the mobile phone industry that Lei Jun is familiar with, the technical threshold and technology content of the automotive industry are higher, and those twisting and turning Know-How can only obtain the "true scriptures" from the words and deeds of the teacher; the supply chain of the automotive industry is complex and lengthy, and for Some "layman" Lei Jun, there is also an urgent need for someone to do management business for it.

First of all, it is the "soul figure" of each supplier that Lei Jun has made friends through the construction of the supply chain, and this type of person can also be roughly subdivided into two types of portraits. First, young talents from China's top universities generally have experience in studying and working abroad, and basically hold important positions in leading enterprises in their industries before starting a business.

(Table 4: From left to right, from top to bottom, Yang Yuxin, Li Yifan, Cao Xudong, Cai Rui)

Li Yifan, the founder of Hesai Technology, graduated from Tsinghua University and later went to the United States to study and obtain a doctorate degree from the University of Illinois, and is an expert in the field of intelligent robotics. Prior to founding Hesai Technology, he was the chief engineer of Western Digital Group.

Yang Yuxin, CMO of Black Sesame Intelligence, graduated from Tsinghua University, served as a senior market development and sales engineer of Panasonic Electromechanical, a mobile computing marketing manager in Asia Pacific, and was a vice president of Zhongke Chuangda Software Co., Ltd. before joining Black Sesame Intelligence.

DeepMotion CEO Rui Cai, CTO Li Zhiwei, Chief Scientist Yang Kuiyuan and R&D Director Zhang Chi, all from Microsoft Research Asia, have been responsible for deep learning and stereo vision research. At that time, Cai Rui and Li Zhiwei, who were in charge of the research institute, also published more than 50 international papers and had more than 20 international patents.

Tutton's founder, Juwei Bao, graduated from Peking University in 1996 and received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley in 2003, where he managed the sensor team in Baidu's Autonomous Driving Division before founding Tutton.

Momenta's founder, Cao Xudong, graduated from Tsinghua University and has worked in Microsoft Research Asia and SenseTime, with nearly 100 R&D team management experience and product landing experience.

(Table 4: From left to right, from top to bottom, Guo Konghui, Chen Liquan, Li Hong, Zhang Quanhui)

Second, the older generation of academicians and scientists of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, who have decades of experience in the industry, are all Taishan Beidou-like figures in their respective fields, and some of them also have experience in traditional OEMs.

Guo Konghui, the founder of Kong Hui Automobile, was born in 1935, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, who served as a senior engineer at the Changchun Automobile Research Institute and also served as vice president of Jilin University; Chen Liquan, the founder of Weilan New Energy, was also an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, and Li Hong was the chief scientist of the Institute of Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Zhang Quanhui, CEO of Haizhibo Electronics, also has a resume in Brilliance Automotive and the well-known Tier One; Xue Dan, the founder of Geometry Partners, is also a member of the National and Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Expert Committee, and once served as the chief engineer of an aerospace institute.

Secondly, it is the backbone personnel drawn by Lei Jun from within Xiaomi to form the core management of Xiaomi Automobile.

Lei Jun decided to personally take command as early as the announcement of the car, concurrently serving as the CEO of Xiaomi's automobile business, and handed over the specific execution of the company to Wang Chuan, co-founder of Xiaomi Group.

(Table 5: Xiaomi Automobile Core Management List)

In September last year, after Xiaomi Automobile Co., Ltd. completed its industrial and commercial registration, Lei Jun posted a large group photo of 17 people on Weibo, which is the core management of Xiaomi Automobile in the future.

In addition to Lei Jun himself, Xiaomi co-founder Liu De, Xiaomi co-founder Hong Feng, as well as Qin Zhifan, Liu Anyu, Yu Kai, Chen Jinhong, fan Jialin are all veteran figures who have accompanied Lei Jun since the beginning of Xiaomi's establishment; Zhang Feng, Qi Yan, Li Xiaoshuang, Ye Hangjun and other people in the photo are also core members who joined xiaomi before facing major difficulties around 2017.

In addition, there is the backbone of Xiaomi in the next decade. Xiaomi partner Wang Xiang, Xiaomi vice president Lin Shiwei and Xiaomi senior vice president Lu Weibing are also the hottest executive groups in Xiaomi.

In October last year, Xiaomi announced the adjustment of its organizational structure and the appointment of cadres. Li Xiaoshuang, the former general manager of the major appliances department in the photo, was appointed as the vice president of Xiaomi Automobile, responsible for product, supply chain and market-related work, and directly reported to Lei Jun; Liu Anyu, a former MIX series mobile phone research and development engineer, was appointed as the political commissar of Xiaomi Automobile Shanghai team and reported to Liu De, director of the group organization department.

It is worth noting that the core management of Xiaomi Automobile that appears in the photo, only Li Tianyuan is a professional talent related to the automotive industry. Prior to joining Xiaomi Motors, Lee Servedral held a number of design jobs at BMW And was involved in the exterior design of BMW's ix series models.

Due to the lack of professional talents, Xiaomi also "invited" two heavyweights from other car companies. One is Hu Zhengnan, the former president of the Geely Research Institute.

In September last year, Hu Zhengnan announced that he had joined Shunwei Capital as an investment partner. The reason why Hu Zhengnan joined Shunwei Capital instead of directly entering the Xiaomi car-making team is because Hu Zhengnan is still in the non-compete period, and joining Shunwei Capital can also help Xiaomi quickly build a supply chain in the early stage of car manufacturing.

The second is Yu Liguo, the former president of Jihu Automobile, one of the main founders of the BAIC Jihu brand. In January this year, Xiaomi announced the appointment of Yu Liguo as vice president of Xiaomi Automobile and political commissar of Xiaomi Automobile Beijing Headquarters, responsible for coordinating the comprehensive management of Xiaomi Automobile and the organization and talent construction of Beijing headquarters. At this point, the lineup of "18+1" of the core management of Xiaomi Automobile is officially formed.

Finally, xiaomi has a large number of auto-related talents through a series of social recruitment and campus recruitment.

In June last year, Xiaomi took the lead in releasing a number of recruitment information on its official website for autonomous driving positions, involving data platforms, on-board architecture basics, decision planning, millimeter wave algorithms, development tools, front-end platform development, embedded software, and high-precision maps. At that time, the recruitment locations for these positions were located in Haidian District, Beijing.

In July last year, Lei Jun also personally joined the "robbery war", posting a recruitment advertisement for Xiaomi's auto autonomous driving department on Weibo, saying that "the first batch of 500 self-driving technology elites were recruited, and the industry's leading L4 intelligent driving ability was developed", and the office location was expanded from the previous Haidian District of Beijing to many places across the country.

The speed of the xiaomi car team can be seen from its financial report. In November last year, Xiaomi revealed in its third-quarter financial report that there were more than 500 members of the smart electric vehicle business team, and this data was still 300 in September last year; in March this year, Xiaomi said in the 2021 annual financial report that the size of its automotive business team has exceeded 1,000 people.

That is to say, Xiaomi has expanded the team by more than 700 people in only half a year. That is to say, almost 4 new employees join Xiaomi's car team every day. At present, searching for positions related to Xiaomi Automobile on the xiaomi recruitment official website, you can still see a full 6-page recruitment list, and many of them are marked with a big "urgent" word, and the focus of recruitment is also shifting from the field of automatic driving to software development and testing positions related to smart cockpits.

On March 24, with the introduction of further equity incentive plans by Xiaomi, Lei Jun also said that Xiaomi will still maintain the recruitment scale of 5,000 outstanding engineers this year. It is foreseeable that with the official opening of the factory in April this year and the further advancement of automobile-related business, Xiaomi will continue to network talents in intelligent manufacturing, sales delivery and related functional departments in the next few years.

Xiaomi's team building is only the tip of the iceberg.

The "last battle" of Lei Jun's career

Compared with the founders of wei xiaoli three families, Lei Jun, who just started building cars, seems to have no shortage of anything. Lei Jun said in a speech a year ago that Xiaomi is already one of the world's top 500 companies, with a research and development team of more than 10,000 people, a steady growth of the world's third mobile phone business, the best intelligent ecology, and 108 billion cash reserves on the company's books.

In this year, Lei Jun has also built the upstream and downstream supply chains through continuous "buying, buying and buying", "investing and investing", and has built the upstream and downstream supply chains, and the core management is the most powerful cadre of Lei Jun in the past, and the R&D team of more than a thousand people is no less than other friends.

So what exactly is Lei Jun worried about? Where did his pain and anxiety come from?

Let's look at external factors first. 2021 is known as the first year of smart cars, and the entire track has shown an unprecedented blowout. Tesla's annual sales in 2021 are already close to 1 million vehicles, and with the Berlin factory and the Texas factory in production, Tesla is expected to reach an annual production capacity of 2 million vehicles in 2022, and sales are likely to double.

The annual sales of domestic enterprises and new car-making forces have reached about 100,000 vehicles this year, completing the process from 0-1, and the power pattern of cross-border car-making by Internet and technology companies has basically been fixed; even some automobile companies have also reversed output, "killing" into the hinterland of Xiaomi's main business by making mobile phones.

There are also a series of "black swans" and "gray rhinos" such as the fierce turmoil of the geopolitical situation, the lack of core under the shroud of the new crown epidemic, and the soaring prices of raw materials...

But for Lei Jun and Xiaomi, external factors are not the biggest challenge. Lei Jun said as early as when deciding to build a car, the Xiaomi team is much stronger today than when it first entered the smartphone industry with nothing and strong forests. Since Xiaomi has been able to perform miracles in the past decade, why not today?

Lei Jun said that in fact, there is only one real difficulty, that is, whether Xiaomi dares to do it, and whether it still has the same courage as ten years ago, whether it still has the same determination as ten years ago, and whether it still has the same physical strength as ten years ago.

Lei Jun's actions tell everyone that Xiaomi has "brightened its sword" in the face of difficulties, but for Lei Jun, who is about to turn 53 this year, he is no longer young. This can be seen from Lei Jun's successive steps as legal persons and chairmen of a number of companies. Relevant people within Xiaomi also said that Lei Jun's approach is to "concentrate on building cars".

(Lei Jun and Ice Pier)

So why did Lei Jun build a car? Lei Jun once admitted that in the period before deciding to build a car, "every morning I would think of 10 reasons that must be done, but in the evening I could list 10 reasons that could not be done."

The reason why the tangled Lei Jun finally decided to build a car, Lin Shiwei, vice president of Xiaomi Group, once revealed, "Lei always originally held the mentality of xiaomi not doing cars to investigate, and after a round of investigation, it was found that if Xiaomi's future product composition is still only mobile phones and smart home appliances, then Xiaomi has become a traditional enterprise." ”

How to make Xiaomi still lead the development of the world in the next 10 years, rather than being forced to become a traditional enterprise, so that it will eventually fall to the point of being eliminated, so Lei Jun needs to be responsible for his "children".

However, according to Xiaomi's recently released 2021 annual financial report, Xiaomi has been carrying out product high-end road for up to two years seems to have encountered a bottleneck, although Xiaomi's mobile phone shipments of more than 3,000 yuan are as high as 24 million units, but the average price of Xiaomi mobile phones has not increased significantly. Professionals interpret that Xiaomi's high-end mobile phones are actually driving sales through price reductions.

The matter of the "younger son" has not yet been solved, and the seemingly stable "eldest son" still has to worry about people.

For ordinary people, 53 years old is already an age that can prepare for retirement, and for Lei Jun, there is no need to use any more dazzling medals to prove anything. Even if Lei Jun chooses to retire, he is still one of China's greatest entrepreneurs in the past 20 years.

However, since it has decided to build a car for the future of Xiaomi, Lei Jun's past glory will not allow this re-entrepreneurship to be worse than any previous one. In other words, Xiaomi cars are only allowed to succeed, not to fail. Therefore, Lei Jun will resolutely announce at the press conference that he is willing to press all the reputation accumulated so far in his life, and once again put on the battlefield and fight for xiaomi cars!" ”

"I am ready to sprint for at least 5 to 10 years, and we will face this new journey with great dedication, great awe and enduring patience."

Lei Jun, 53, still needs more time and energy.