Since the official announcement of the car on March 30 last year, Xiaomi has indeed not been idle at all in order to build a car. 85 industry visits in 75 days, in-depth exchanges between more than 200 automotive experts, 4 management seminars, 2 formal board meetings... This is only the data of last year's official announcement of the car.
Subsequently, on September 1 last year, Xiaomi Automobile Co., Ltd. was formally established, and on November 18, Xiaomi Automobile Technology Co., Ltd. was formally established, and the legal representatives of these two companies were Lei Jun, chairman and CEO of Xiaomi. On November 27, the Administrative Committee of Beijing Economic and Technological Development Zone signed a contract with Xiaomi Technology to officially announce the settlement of Xiaomi Automobile in Beijing Economic and Technological Development Zone.
Entering 2022, Xiaomi car projects are fully supported by the "official", on January 6, at the fifth session of the 15th People's Congress of Beijing, it was clearly mentioned that Beijing will promote the start of xiaomi cars within this year, accurately support the development of innovative enterprises, and cultivate more hard technology unicorns.
On April 6, it is not only the 12th anniversary of the establishment of Xiaomi Group, but also the 372nd day after Xiaomi's official announcement of the car, and at this moment, the location of Xiaomi Automobile's Beijing factory has been in full swing. According to the plan, the Xiaomi Automobile Headquarters Base, sales headquarters, and R&D headquarters will be built in two phases, with an annual output of 300,000 vehicles, and the production capacity of the first and second phases will be 150,000 units, and the first vehicle is expected to roll off the production line and achieve mass production in 2024.
According to anecdotal rumors, Xiaomi's first model or pure electric four-door coupe Xiaomi car 1, WTLC endurance of 800 kilometers, priced at 149,900 yuan; the other is Xiaomi car 1 pro version, using four-wheel drive dual motor mode, WTLC endurance of 700 kilometers, 100 kilometers acceleration of 4.5 seconds, priced at 179,900 yuan; in addition, there are Xiaomi car 1 Ultra, Ultra Sport version, of which the most outstanding performance is the Ultra Sport version, Priced at 299,900, 2.9 seconds of acceleration per 100 kilometers, the WTLC has a range of 650 kilometers, far exceeding the Tesla Model 3 in terms of performance alone.
Although Xiaomi Automobile, which entered the game late, has lost its first-mover advantage on the new energy vehicle track, it has also missed the dividend period of national policies. Some netizens even expressed their concerns about Xiaomi's entry into the automotive field: "I have been driving electric vehicles for six years, why did Xiaomi go earlier?" They are all divided almost before they enter the game, how to seize the market in the future? "But compared with Apple's car after several twists and turns, Huawei insists on not building cars, xiaomi's speed of cross-border car building is really amazing."
In fact, the threshold for cross-border car manufacturing in China is not high, as long as there is money to buy technology, factories, with the world's top three mobile phone business, Xiaomi is "not bad money" in terms of funds, according to its financial report: 2021 total revenue of 328.3 billion yuan, an increase of 33.5%; net profit of 22 billion yuan, an increase of 69.5%.
After the official announcement of the car, although Xiaomi Automobile did not see half a wheel, with its strong financial strength, its layout in the automotive-related field was getting bigger and bigger. According to incomplete statistics, since last year, Xiaomi Capital has invested in about 40 companies in the automotive industry chain, especially in the fields of automatic driving, on-board chips, and power batteries.
For example, it not only invested in 8 chip companies such as Yunyinggu Technology, BYD Semiconductor, and Brite Semiconductor; it also invested in Longitudinal Technology and Love Parking on the intelligent transportation ecological chain, as well as Hesai Technology and Geometry Partners in the autonomous driving supply chain of Tire 1; at the same time, it did not forget to focus on the layout of honeycomb energy and Ganfeng Lithium in the energy supply chain; and finally bought DeepMotion, which focused on perception, map and positioning modules.
It can be seen that Xiaomi's second pulse in batteries, chips, and automatic driving has been basically opened. It is particularly worth mentioning that in order to quickly make up for the shortcomings in automatic driving, DeepMotion is also the only company in the Xiaomi car-making ecological chain to reach through mergers and acquisitions, because autonomous driving technology is the core of smart cars, and Xiaomi Automobile wants to firmly grasp this part of its capabilities in its own hands.
Such a layout is also in line with Lei Jun's judgment of the future automobile industry, "The most difficult thing is the battery and automatic driving, and after four years, the advantages of electric vehicles for traditional fuel vehicles will be more and more reflected, and Xiaomi will cut into the right time." "From smart phones to smart homes, smart offices, and then to the fully intelligent ecology, if they can be integrated with electric vehicles next, they will form a strong expansion, which may be the business logic of cross-border car manufacturing of mobile phone companies."
Only in the field of car manufacturing, Xiaomi is still a "little white" after all, and it is not easy to build a complete set of automobile research and development systems. After all, the use of cars is more complex than mobile phones, which also determines that consumers need to consider more factors when buying a car, and safety is a very important factor. When the phone crashes, it may be solved by restarting it, but if the car crashes on the road, it is not just as simple as restarting, and even life is dangerous.