I have driven a Model 3, but also driven Xiaopeng and Weilai, and my heart is full of mixed feelings, at least in 2 major technologies are not as good as Tesla.
I think it is difficult for Xiaomi cars to surpass Tesla in technology, and perhaps only BYD can compete with Tesla in technology.
Many people have a serious cognitive error about electric vehicles, believing that every company can build electric vehicles.
This idea is only half right, because it is really not difficult to build an electric car, and most electric vehicle companies are not building cars, but "assembling cars".
Exterior interior can find outsourcing companies to design, batteries, electronic control, motors can be purchased directly, and then find a foundry to assemble these parts, and finally you can sell off the line!
Good guys, in addition to the car logo is designed by themselves, there is no technology on the whole car that is developed by themselves.
You say, is it still difficult to build an electric car in this way?
Answer: There is certainly no difficulty.
It's just that such electric vehicles do not have any market competitiveness, let alone achieve curve overtaking in the field of electric vehicles, and it is even more impossible to surpass Tesla in technology.
If Xiaomi is good at assembling mobile phones, I believe very much that electric vehicles can be assembled, but electric vehicles without core technology, let alone beyond Tesla, even beyond Xiaopeng and Weilai are unknown.
I know, there must be people who will question that Tesla is just an assembly car company, and the motors, batteries, and most of the parts are purchased.
Since Tesla established a gigafactory in Shanghai, the localization of parts has become higher and higher, and it looks like an assembly plant.
However, the core "electronic control" technology is independently developed, and a large number of technology patents have been applied.
At present, in terms of electronic control technology, only BYD is at the same level as electronic control technology and Tesla, and new car-making forces such as Weilai and Xiaopeng need to continue to work hard.
Why does Tesla only pay attention to "electronic control technology"?
Mainly or electric vehicle fire accidents frequently, in 2020 there have been a total of 72 new energy vehicle fire accidents, involving 25 brand models, these new energy vehicle fire accidents, the main reason is the battery thermal management system out of control.
The key to the electronic control system is the battery thermal management system, and the difficulty of the battery thermal management system lies in the BMS system.
Battery thermal management system: accurate measurement and monitoring of battery temperature, effective heat dissipation when the battery pack temperature is too high, rapid heating under low temperature conditions, to ensure the uniform distribution of the battery pack temperature field.
To explain simply, it can play a role in rapid heat dissipation when the battery system is working, so as to avoid the battery from overheating and running out of control.
BMS system: manage and maintain the individual battery cells to prevent overcharge and overdischarge, and prevent thermal runaway of the battery pack from the source as much as possible.
It can be clearly said that the BMS system is the most important system in the era of electric vehicles, ensuring the performance and safety of electric vehicles, and its status is as important as the engine of the era of fuel vehicles, and the difficulty of research and development is not lower than that of the engine.
At present, although traditional car companies have not yet made efforts in the field of electric vehicles, they have not left behind in the technical reserves of electric vehicles.
GM released the Aoteneng platform for the production of new energy vehicles, and equipped with the wBMS system, w means wireless, which is another improvement in battery management system.
In simple terms, if the battery management system wants to monitor the temperature of each cell, it must connect each cell, which causes many wiring harnesses inside the battery.
About 50% of the batteries are on fire, and it is because of the short circuit caused by the aging of these wiring harnesses, and the wBMS system released by GM can reduce the wiring harness by more than 90%.
It not only reduces the weight of the battery, but also reduces the volume of the battery, and more importantly, reduces the probability of spontaneous combustion of electric vehicles.
Seeing this, do you still think it is easy to build electric vehicles?
If in the era of fuel vehicles, we are stuck in the neck of the engine and gearbox, then in the era of electric vehicles, the most likely card neck is the electronic control system.
At present, these traditional car companies have not yet developed electric vehicles, and when Volkswagen, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, General Motors, and Toyota all enter the field of electric vehicles, I think the competition for electric vehicles has just begun.
At present, if Xiaomi Automobile wants to build an electric vehicle, its electronic control technology can only rely on buying, and it is impossible to design and develop a "stable and reliable" electronic control technology in a short period of time.
In addition to the electronic control system, the electric drive assembly is also a difficult point
The electric drive system determines the performance, economy and durability of electric vehicles, and at present, there are very few car companies that can fully develop and produce themselves, and BYD is one of them.
I think Xiaomi must not have the ability to build an electric drive system at the beginning, it must still rely on procurement, we can see how the extreme krypton 001, which is now very hot, is done?
This car uses "Wei Rui motor" and "Japanese production motor" respectively, both permanent magnet/synchronous motors.
The efficiency of the japanese motor is 94.7%, the power of Veri motor is 97.8%, the peak torque of Thevere is 686N·m, and the output of the daily production is 768N·m.
The advantage of daily production is 10% more torque and better oil-cooled heat dissipation, and the motor demagnetization possibility is lower.
Veritas uses water cooling, heat dissipation is not as good as the daily production, in the same or close to the volume and weight, the torque is 10% lower, but the speed and efficiency are higher.
Many owners of The Krypton 001 do not know how to choose these two motors, but the focus of my attention is that The Weirui motor is domestic, and the Japanese motor is imported from Japan.
If in the future of electric vehicles, we still have to rely on imports in key technologies, I think this is not the situation we want to see.
At present, in the development of electric drive technology, BYD has been in front of Tesla, the newly released e-platform 3.0, the biggest highlight of which is the eight-in-one electric drive assembly.
We have seen other car companies advertise themselves as three-in-one motors, and BYD directly realizes the eight-in-one, including drive motors, motor controllers, reducers, car chargers, DC converters, distribution boxes, vehicle controllers and battery managers.
The advantage of this is that it can be better reduced and miniaturized, not only allowing the electric powertrain to occupy less space, making more room for the carriage or suspension system, but also enabling more efficient power transmission.
The comprehensive efficiency of this eight-in-one electric powertrain exceeds 89%, which can effectively reduce the loss of power transmission and bring better economy.
Xiaomi car wants to build a high-quality electric car, the electric drive assembly is also very important, if only through procurement, then millet car and those new car-making forces will not be any different.
Autonomous driving may be a hurdle that Xiaomi cars can't cross
Xiaomi car wants to surpass Tesla in technology, I think automatic driving is a hurdle that Xiaomi cars can't pass, Tesla's autopilot technology has got rid of the shackles of hardware, and can achieve pure visual autopilot.
Among them, the most important is the massive driving data collected by Tesla over the years, which can be optimized by algorithms to achieve the same driving attitude as human drivers, and its reaction ability exceeds that of human drivers.
This is something that Xiaomi cars can't do at the moment, and there are 2 main reasons.
1, Tesla automatic technology started early, there are massive data reserves, and Xiaomi car does not have these data, can not obtain these top-secret data, can only rely on the later slow accumulation, this will be a long process.
2. At present, the talents in domestic automatic driving are mainly concentrated in Xiaopeng, Weilai, Huawei, BYD, Baidu and other companies, and it is difficult for Xiaomi Automobile to obtain talents in this area at the first time.
If Xiaomi cars want to develop autonomous driving technology, they can only rely on themselves, the premise is to rely on heap hardware, and later rely on algorithms, but there is a drawback in doing so, and Xiaomi cars will not be cheap.
Because unmanned driving technology requires expensive accessories such as lidar, the terminal price of Xiaomi cars will not be less than 200,000 yuan, and Tesla only needs cheap cameras through pure visual driverless technology.
In this way, Tesla can realize driverless technology on an electric car of about 100,000 yuan, so what advantages does Xiaomi car have?
Therefore, Xiaomi Motors wants to surpass Tesla in technology, which is not true at present, at least none of the current new car-making forces can surpass Tesla in driverless technology.
At present, only Huawei and Baidu have driverless technology reserves, and BYD is lacking a lot!
Write at the end
I have been thinking about what kind of electric vehicle company Xiaomi Automobile wants to become, whether it is a car company that relies on hard-core technology like Tesla, or a car company that realizes self-production and self-research like BYD.
At present, Xiaomi cars are still in their infancy, everything is unknown, if you want to surpass Tesla by assembly, it is certainly impossible.
If you want to surpass Tesla, you can't repeat Tesla's old road, otherwise you can only follow Tesla forever, and only by taking the road that Tesla has not walked can you surpass Tesla.
Perhaps only by relying on cooperation, the collection of BYD Sandian technology, Huawei's driverless technology, Chery's car-making technology, and Xiaomi's ability in supply chain management.
Only by building an electric vehicle with high cost performance, high safety and high intelligence can it be possible to surpass Tesla in technology.