Lei Jun's first departure: 1003 days of car building and his emotional and technical cards

Author: Liu Yudian

Producer: Tencent News "High Beam"

On December 28, 2023, Lei Jun, founder, chairman and CEO of Xiaomi, held a Xiaomi automotive technology conference in Beijing. This is the first official appearance of a Xiaomi car three years after Xiaomi announced its car build.

This is also the first time that Lei Jun, a company with mobile phones as its main business, has started 13 years after founding Xiaomi.

Why pay tribute to "Wei Xiaoli"?

As soon as he got on the field, Lei Jun first played the emotional card.

He said that it has been 1003 days since the official announcement to today, and many people are particularly concerned about the progress of Xiaomi cars. Many friends said, "Isn't it too slow?"

In their opinion, today's automotive industry is very, very mature. If you save a car, three or four hundred people, one billion, find a benchmarking car, reverse engineering, in fact, it is very easy to get it. But Lei Jun believes that it is still very difficult to build a good car.

"Before I made a car, I felt that it was not easy to make a car, and after three years of work, I felt that building a car was very difficult and difficult. Lei Jun said, "Not long ago, I met He Xiaopeng, I told him that I will look at Wei Xiaoli after I build a car, and I think it is not easy for you to be a good person, very remarkable, and I want to pay tribute to you in a very formal way." ”

Therefore, just one day before Xiaomi's automotive technology conference, Lei Jun posted on Weibo and wrapped several billboards to pay tribute to "Wei Xiaoli".

Lei Jun continued: "Someone asked me why you don't pay tribute to FAW, FAW, and Changan? Why don't you pay tribute to SAIC, GAC, and BAIC? And why don't you pay tribute to Changan, Great Wall, Geely, and Chery?"

"Actually, people really misunderstand, I've always been in awe of the whole automotive industry. When I decided to make a car, I immediately visited the house and expressed my respect in person. I believe that at this moment, there may be people watching the press conference from various car manufacturers, and they can really verify it. During the visit, I also asked each industry senior what kind of car is a good car in the era of smart electric vehicles, and everyone gave me very different answers. He asked himself.

Lei Jun said that the automobile industry has been developing for more than 100 years, in fact, the mechanical quality of cars has reached a very high level, and Porsche is the best benchmark, so you can also see that global car manufacturers are benchmarking Porsche. Since the beginning of the new century, Tesla has created a precedent for mobile intelligent terminals. Then, the future of new energy vehicles should be an advanced intelligent mobile space.

Lei Jun said that he hopes to build a Dream Car that can be comparable to Porsche and Tesla, and to create a good-looking, easy-to-use, comfortable, and safe mobile intelligent space.

This goal is difficult to achieve. "There are no shortcuts to the century-old track, and I knew from day one that we only have one way, which is to start from the underlying core technology, put ten times more effort into building a good car, and have to be patient. Lei Jun said that he will work hard in 15 to 20 years to become the world's top five car manufacturers.

Next year, we will enter the first echelon of autonomous driving

Next, Lei Jun began to play the technology card, introducing Xiaomi Auto's investment in various technology sectors such as motors, batteries, large die-casting, and autonomous driving one by one.

The first is the motor.

In the motor, according to Lei Jun, the current electric vehicle is mainly used with permanent magnet synchronous motors, and the whole industry is rolling at speed, because under the same torque, the higher the speed, the stronger the performance, and the faster the car will drive, so the technical direction of the global volume is speed. BBA and Porsche rolled to 16,000 rpm, and Tesla rolled up to 20,000 rpm at the end of last year in its million models. Therefore, Xiaomi Auto has set up the "Xiaomi Super Motor Project" from the very beginning, and finally achieved 21,000 rpm at the end of last year.

At present, in terms of motor technology, Xiaomi has developed three generations at the same time, 21000 rpm has been on the car, 27200 rpm is planned to be on the car the year after that, and the laboratory has achieved 35000 rpm.

The second is the battery.

In terms of batteries, Lei Jun said that the cost of battery packs accounts for about 40% or even 50% of the total cost, which directly affects battery life, power, space and vehicle safety.

According to him, Xiaomi has developed its own 800V silicon carbide high-voltage platform. The 800V high-voltage battery pack was completed in two years with the joint investment of thousands of engineers and CATL. At the same time, Xiaomi has developed its own CTB integrated battery technology, that is, the battery pack is made into a part of the body.

In addition, Xiaomi has built its own battery pack factory to ensure battery performance from the source. Lei Jun said: "As a native of the north, Xiaomi has set a small goal to become the king of winter tram range. ”

The third is large die casting.

Lei Jun said that Tesla opened the era of large die-casting, and took the lead in installing 6,000 tons of large-scale die-casting in Tesla's Shanghai factory in 2020, integrating more than 70 parts into one part for the first time. "After we finished researching, we felt that since this was an industry trend, we decided to build our own factory and do it ourselves. ”

According to him, the die-casting part designed by Xiaomi is 17% larger than Tesla, making it 9,100 tons, which is much larger than the 6,000 tons at Tesla's Shanghai factory. In addition, after Xiaomi customized the die-casting machine, it developed a full set of assembly lines for the die-casting island, with a total of 60 devices and 433 process parameters.

The fourth is autonomous driving.

Lei Jun said that in autonomous driving, Xiaomi's investment is resolute, with an investment of 3.3 billion in the first phase, which has been increased to 4.7 billion, with a team size of more than 1,000 people, more than 200 test vehicles, and a test mileage of more than 10 million kilometers.

Secondly, intelligent driving is essentially AI, Xiaomi began to be all in AI in 2016, and has invested a total of 100 billion, with a total of more than 3,000 engineers.

Lei Jun believes that although Xiaomi started late, the technology iteration of intelligent driving is fast, and "late has the benefit of being late". "The underlying technologies we use in the entire intelligent driving field are all of the latest generation, such as BEV, Transformer, occupancy network, and large model, all of which are the latest technologies. ”

Lei Jun demonstrated the functions of city pilot, valet parking, intelligent cockpit and other scenarios on the spot. Lei Jun said he called for the opening of 100 cities by the end of next year. His goal for the team is to enter the first echelon of intelligent driving in 2024.

Why was the first car a sedan?

Finally, after the technical explanation, Lei Jun began the third and most important part of the press conference - the release of Xiaomi's first car: the electric sedan SU7.

Lei Jun said that the first car was chosen because the car is the benchmark of every era of the automobile industry. "Most of the famous cars that are remembered by history are sedans. He believes that making a car has a better chance of making a masterpiece of this era.

Lei Jun said that Xiaomi SU7 users should be the elite of this era. "They should be a group of people who like advanced technology, have taste, and love life. ”

In the early stages of the design of this car, the appearance was overturned by him three times, with twists and turns. Lei Jun said that with the release of Xiaomi Automobile, the whole ecological strategy of people, cars and homes has officially closed the loop.