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Production qualification is still a problem.
387 days after the official announcement of the car, Majuqiao Town, located in the south sixth ring road of Beijing, was the first to feel and record the progress and changes of Xiaomi cars.
Half a year ago, when the news of the settlement of the Xiaomi Automobile Factory with a total investment of 63 billion yuan came, it not only focused the attention of the entire automotive industry here, but also stirred the hearts of the villagers in Majuqiao Town.
People are always paying attention to the progress of Xiaomi factories. Since the start of construction in April, after digging trenches and driving piles, a worker working on the spot has now entered the leveling stage. "If you are quick, you can complete the earthwork and bulldozing work in a month, about the beginning of May." Outside the area where construction began, trucks shuttled by one after another.
As far as the eye can see, not far from the factory, a high-rise urban area contrasts with a dusty village. The old people living here still remember that before xiaomi came, the industrial land under construction was planted with radish and cabbage.
Nowadays, with the sound of "banging" to hit the pile, people seem to have seen the arrival of a new life that takes off with Xiaomi cars outside.
Inside Xiaomi Automobile, in the past year, in addition to the start of the factory and the continuous patents, Lei Jun, who claims to have gathered thousands of research and development talents, has also taken a step forward from the "car-making dream". But before achieving the goal of "mass production in 2024", Xiaomi will undoubtedly have to climb several mountains.
The factory started construction, and the production qualification is still troubled
With the announcement of Xiaomi's settlement, the "intelligent dream" of Majuqiao Town has also begun.
In 2021, the "Majuqiao Intelligent Manufacturing Base Evacuation Headquarters" was officially established, and the demolition and relocation work of non-houses and villages was also launched, and in the land acquisition and demolition of first-level development projects, 5 villages involved demolition and land acquisition. The location of Xiaomi Phase I and Phase II is located near Fangxindian Village and Xiaozhangwan Village.
Majuqiao Intelligent Manufacturing Base Retreat Headquarters Future Automotive Daily Photo
"Xiaomi Phase I is in the next village (Fangxindian Village), and the location of Xiaomi Phase II is in the south of our village", as a villager selected by Xiaomi and involved in demolition, Wu Lei, like most people here, is closely following the progress of Xiaomi cars.
On weekdays, he and the surrounding villagers would go to the construction site from time to time to watch, "just started, a while ago in the trench, this time sometimes will be stopped by a large car, not allowed to enter." ”
Xiaozhangwan Village Source: Future Auto Daily Photo
The reason why people try to find the progress of Xiaomi cars from various clues is that when this "golden phoenix" falls here, its progress directly affects the speed of prosperity of villagers. As a villager in the location of the second phase factory, Wu Lei still occasionally casts envious glances at the villagers of the first phase.
According to the plan, the first phase of the Xiaomi factory is scheduled to start construction in April 2022 and be completed in June 2023, and the second phase of the Xiaomi plant is scheduled to start construction in March 2024 and be completed in March 2025.
This means that some villagers in Fangxindian Village will receive the demolition money faster, "Listen to the people in the next village, now the demolition does not involve housing, and the demolition money for one acre of land is still too cheap, and a certain place is about tens of thousands of yuan." ”
However, from the perspective of the automotive industry, "the speed of the Millet factory has been very fast", Li Wen, an employee of a new car factory, said that from earthwork to official production, "generally two years, the fastest one and a half years.". In contrast, the first phase of Tesla's Shanghai factory, which created The Chinese speed, took only 8 months.
Source: WeChat public account "Tongzhou Little Soldier"
According to the announcement on March 17, the Xiaomi Automobile Factory covers an area of 718,000 square meters, which is roughly equivalent to the size of 10 standard football fields, and will build a vehicle factory with an annual output of 300,000 vehicles in two phases, of which the first and second phases of production capacity are 150,000 units, and the first car is expected to roll off the production line and achieve mass production in 2024. The starting price of the land is 6.1 billion yuan, with a total investment of 63 billion yuan in the next few years.
Not far from Xiaomi, there are already production bases such as Beijing Benz and BAIC, and dozens of supporting enterprises, including ZF and Delphi, have already gathered. Wu Lei also saw that "SMIC's building has generally risen", which is still attracting more and more enterprises.
In Li Wen's view, once the factory is put into operation, it is not difficult to increase production capacity by working overtime or increasing the frequency, and the first big mountain in front of Xiaomi Automobile is how to solve the problem of production qualification.
"Now that auto plants need dual qualifications, the management of the NDRC qualification has been delegated to the local government, and obtaining this qualification may be relatively easy for Xiaomi Automobile, but it is not easy to obtain the management qualification of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, and it is necessary to conduct a comprehensive assessment of production capacity, product consistency, after-sales and other aspects."
Where has the technology gone?
The start of the factory is only a microcosm of the progress of Xiaomi cars.
"In the whole year of 2021, Xiaomi Automobile is becoming clearer and clearer from investing in power battery companies, making up for shortcomings in the field of automatic driving, and then building a talent team." Wang Min, an analyst in the automotive industry, believes that Xiaomi Auto is currently focusing on making up for the shortcomings of technology and talents, which is the two key puzzles of Xiaomi car manufacturing, "but the action should be faster, because time is not waiting for people." ”
An autonomous driving practitioner who has interviewed Xiaomi Automobile said that compared with other new car manufacturers, the salary given by Xiaomi is not too attractive, "but compared to traditional car companies, it is already high." ”
On August 25, 2021, Xiaomi acquired Shendong Technology, an autonomous driving technology company, for 500 million yuan. Prior to this, Xiaomi also invested in longitudinal technology and geometric partners.
At present, Xiaomi's investment in the field of automatic driving has covered key sensor suppliers, automatic driving solution providers and automatic parking solution providers, basically forming a complete automatic driving technology chain. In addition to automatic driving, Xiaomi has also invested in power batteries, including Hive Energy and Ganfeng Lithium.
"It is hoped that through the acquisition, Xiaomi's research and development in autonomous driving technology will be accelerated and the time for Xiaomi's self-driving cars to be listed will be shortened." In August 2021, Wang Xiang, president of Xiaomi Group, responded in this way on social platforms.
After a series of acquisitions, Xiaomi Automobile recently issued seven patents in one go, involving automotive motors, electronic controls, vehicle driving, software and other fields.
"Some are unexpected", in the view of automotive engineer Wang Meng, such as "vehicle control methods, vehicles, smart wearable devices and readable storage media" This patent, from the description point of view, not only can be pre-started through wearable devices such as smart watches, but also according to the target location sent by smart wearable devices to claim the navigation route, automatically follow the navigation route to the destination. "In a certain area, let the car automatically find people, rather than people looking for cars, can be regarded as L4 level automatic driving."
In the view of another automotive industry person, Xiaomi's advantage is that it can migrate the accumulation of existing software technology to the automotive field, but the essence of automatic driving is still inseparable from machine learning, computer vision, SLAM (real-time positioning and map construction) and so on.
"Patents are only one aspect of judging the progress of car manufacturing, and Xiaomi also has to accelerate the development of its own electronic and electrical architecture, conduct a large number of software and hardware tests, and so on." Wang Meng said.
Fast, or slow?
In the eyes of Xiaomi Auto employee Bei Weiwei, since she transferred from Xiaomi to the automobile business, "every day is a race against time".
Bei Weiwei frankly said that unlike Internet products to achieve a function, the industrial chain of smart cars is very long, requiring any function to consider multiple factors, including software and hardware. After entering the new business, "there are many meetings a day to connect with colleagues from various backgrounds." ”
Xiaomi Auto has recruited a lot of employees with OEMs background in Shanghai, "they are very familiar with software and hardware", in order to keep up with the rhythm, even on weekends, BeiWeiwei also used to make up for relevant knowledge, "the pressure is very large".
Xiaomi's talent team seems to be growing rapidly. In March 2022, Xiaomi said that the size of the automotive business research and development team has exceeded 1,000 people. In the third quarter of last year, the number of Xiaomi's entire team was only more than 500 people.
Even so, in the fiercely competitive car-making industry, there are still other players competing with "cross-border students" Xiaomi to compete in the progress of car-making.
On March 22, the day before Xiaomi released its financial report, Luo Baojun, general manager of Xiaomi's Beijing-Tianjin branch, revealed to the outside world that Xiaomi Automobile's engineering prototype will be officially unveiled in the third quarter of this year. He said that as the last link of Xiaomi's ecological closed loop, "the engineering prototype car will break through everyone's imagination."
On the other hand, in the same year, the Jidu Automobile, which was officially announced to have built a car, has also set up a team of 1,000 people, and when it was established 10 months ago, the official announcement completed the integration of high-speed and urban dual-domain intelligent driving, and verified the safety of the mass production L4 level automatic driving ability in advance. According to the plan, in June this year, Jidu will also release Jidu's first automotive robot concept car.
In terms of mass production time, Xiaomi Auto gave the time for the first half of 2024, and the set degree is 2023.
"The speed of Internet companies to build cars has been very fast", a car company engineer told future auto daily, a car from concept to SOP mass production development cycle, before the vehicle research and development cycle is 48 months, Internet car manufacturing from project establishment to SOP the fastest 24 months. "Baidu has accumulated autonomous driving technology before, Xiaomi has to start from scratch, and the acquisition of autonomous driving companies can speed up the pace, but it also faces the problem of team integration."
Lei Jun once revealed, "Xiaomi's first car is either a sedan or an SUV, with a price range of 100,000-300,000 yuan, positioning in the middle and high-end." "However, at present, the competition in the domestic new energy vehicle market is glued, the track is gradually crowded, and the iteration of products and technologies is also fierce."
In the current mainstream new energy market of 100,000-300,000 yuan, many car companies, including Tesla, Xiaopeng and BYD, have gained a firm foothold. According to the data of the Association of Automobile Associations, in March this year, Tesla's sales in China reached 65,814 units; BYD topped the list of new energy passenger car sales with a record of 104,300 units. Among them, bydir Han EV product sales of more than 10,000 vehicles.
Waiting for the expected mass production time in 2024, what are the chances of Xiaomi winning?
"In fact, you can enter the game at any time", Zhang Junyi, managing partner of Oliver Wilmar Consulting, believes that the key lies in whether Xiaomi can create some explosive models. "Now it is not the case that everyone started to build cars a few years ago, the test is not whether there is a car, but to choose the best, how to consider differentiation and user experience, to have their own characteristics."
Judging from Xiaomi's current progress, from solving the problem of car-making qualifications, software and hardware testing, safety testing, etc., in the process of mass production of a car from scratch, it is still necessary to overcome layers of difficulties. Xia Yiping, CEO of Jidu Automobile, previously sighed in an exclusive interview with Future Automobile Daily, "Building a car from 0 to 1 is just the tip of the iceberg." ”
(Note: Wu Lei, Li Wen and Pei Weiwei are pseudonyms in the text)
The author | Wu Xiaoyu
Edit the | Wang Yan