Yesterday afternoon, Xiaomi held a Xiaomi automotive technology conference + pre-conference.
Lei Jun stood on the stage and proudly explained the Xiaomi SU7 electric car, which took 1,003 days, more than 3,400 engineers, and more than 10 billion to build.
Lei Jun said that this is "ten times the investment"
Lei Jun knows how to develop a development project, in the past, in the era of mobile phones, Lei Jun played the three elements of consumer electronics promotion: performance value, appearance, and ecology.
And in this era when electric vehicles are becoming more and more like electronic products, Lei Jun put the original gameplay into it, Xiaomi SU7 This press conference is mainly about performance values, appearance, and ecology.
Let's talk about the appearance first, the Xiaomi SU7 is really good-looking, and the roof curvature, rearview mirror shape, and even the LiDAR case have been redesigned.
Lei Jun called it "a design that stands the test of time".
Some people say that this car looks like a Porsche, and this is a matter of opinion. Xiaomi's design team includes designers for the BMW iX model, designers for the BMW family interior, designers for the Mercedes-Benz Vision EQXX, and even top car designer Chris Brown. Bangor (former Group Design Director of BMW) works as a design consultant.
This entire lineup of luxurious design teams is by no means a grass platform, so if the Xiaomi SU7 is a bit like Porsche, it may be said that the top designers sympathize with each other and end up going to the same river.
In terms of interior, Xiaomi SU7 is still not exempt from the "big color TV" in the field of electric vehicles, a large screen in the central control is placed there, and in the case of already having a HUD, an instrument screen is still added.
Even, for the sake of a sense of ceremony, the instrument screen can still be flipped:
You have to ask me what is the use of this thing?
I can't answer. Maybe it's handsome, good-looking, and has a sense of ceremony, Lei Jun understands the aesthetics of science men, just like when Xiaomi launched the "Exploration Edition" mobile phone, it deliberately made a "fake" transparent backplate.
Is this useful? It's nothing more than handsome, good-looking, and makes people feel impulsive in their sense of ceremony.
Even, in order to give this car enough sense of ceremony, Xiaomi also retains a lot of physical button design. The cancellation of the physical button design of electric vehicles is actually unacceptable to many people. After canceling the physical buttons in the car, the Volkswagen Group has now announced that it will return the physical buttons, which can be regarded as following the market demand and aesthetics.
After talking about the appearance, let's talk about the performance value.
Lei Jun moved out of the Xiaomi drive motor V6 series and V8 series jointly built by himself and Inovance and other suppliers, the former has a speed of 21,000 rpm, and the latter has a speed of 27,200 rpm, because the faster the motor at the same torque, the greater the output power, and the horsepower of the latter at high speed reaches 578 horsepower.
In addition, Lei Jun also demonstrated the technology under development in the laboratory, with a speed of up to 35,000 rpm.
Judging from the value of the Xiaomi V8s that has been mass-produced, it should be the drive motor with the highest keyboard value and the highest data that we can see in mass production now.
Lei Jun, who has always liked to pile up materials on his mobile phone, also stacked materials on the tram parameters this time.
In addition to this fierce motor, the Xiaomi SU7 also has a front double wishbone + rear multi-link, air springs + CDC electromagnetic suspension, Brembo's brake calipers, Bosch's brake control and body stability system.
In terms of post-stacking tuning, there is also adaptive road surface and curve attitude adaptation similar to the "magic carpet suspension" of the friend, and also adds catapult start and Boost mode.
In the end, the car accelerates from zero to 100 in 2.78 seconds and from zero to 200 in 10.67 seconds, both of which are already better than the Porsche Taycan.
In terms of safety, Xiaomi chose to jointly develop a battery pack with CATL, using 871 V high-voltage fast charging, using a CTB structure, and also making a "cell inversion" design, so that if the battery cell is really thermal runaway, the flames and gases emitted will also be towards the ground instead of the member cabin.
In terms of body structure, Xiaomi has also used the industry's mainstream one-piece die-casting, producing the industry's largest one-piece rear floor.
One-piece die casting has many benefits, saving production costs and making the body stronger.
The only downside is that in case of a collision, it is expensive to repair.
However, Xiaomi has added two collapse areas to prevent a lot of money from being repaired when a small building is touched, taking into account the economy.
At the end of the technical explanation, Lei Jun also mentioned the intelligent driving level of SU7, the hardware is also full of parameters, 27 perception hardware + two NVIDIA Orin X chips.
In terms of software, the industry's mainstream no-map solution is used: BEV space + Transformer + occupied network technology.
The demo video at the press conference has a lot of acceleration, so you can't see much detail, but the BEV space on the car in the video is very stable, so the technology may be okay. (Poorly skilled BEV spaces on lane lines and cars will keep shaking)
After talking about technology, let's talk about ecology.
Playing system and ecology is Xiaomi's former strength, and this time, Lei Jun played the concept of "people, cars, and home ecology".
The mobile phone and the car can be seamlessly connected, and the car can also be interconnected with various IOT devices under Xiaomi Mijia Smart.
And, considering that the owner is likely to use an iPhone, the SU7 also supports Carplay and AirPlay.
In addition to the system level,Xiaomi also supports a variety of hardware expansion,Reserved a lot of ports open to third-party devices,The physical buttons of the central control screen mentioned earlier,In fact, they are expanded,You can customize it later。
There are also interfaces to the center console and the rear seat to connect various devices:
After talking about the above appearance, performance parameters, and ecology, Lei Jun started to talk about life.
Until the end of the press conference, the most important "price" of the SU7 was never mentioned.
The only part of the press conference that touched on the price of this car was that Lei Jun said:
Don't call 90,000 9, no way. ”
The cost of the battery is more than 100,000 yuan, and the average price of the cars that can afford this battery is more than 400,000 yuan, so don't talk about 140,000 9 anymore. ”
In fact, Xiaomi's SU7 is a car with a very special positioning.
From the perspective of drive motor, body tuning, Boost mode, etc., it is undoubtedly a coupe positioning with a focus on sports.
But judging by its 3-meter wheelbase, interior space comparable to that of the BMW 5 Series, and spacious front trunk, it seems to be another family car.
There has always been a law in the Chinese market, "the better the chassis, the better the tuning, the worse the sales", that is to say, the main pure sports car, basically not sell much.
In the Chinese market, well-bought cars have always been biased towards family positioning, which is why there is a saying that "those who get SUVs win the world".
Xiaomi SU7, just sandwiched in the middle, has some sports, and some home, how many people it is targeting?
So, what is the final pricing for the SU7, very, very important.
Judging from the configuration released this time, the pricing of Xiaomi SU7 may be in the range of 25-350,000, and the top version will not be able to touch the boundary of 400,000.
In this price band, consumers can choose from a lot of cars, and once the price is slightly higher, Xiaomi will not be able to "make friends" with young people. There are also netizens on the Internet who ridiculed: "I hope Mr. Lei understands that Xiaomi users have grown up, not become rich." ”
In the case of high pricing, many potential customers may be inclined to choose models with stronger family attributes in the same price range.
The multiple-choice question of "whether the driver is cool or let the whole family be happy" is a multiple-choice question for many Chinese families, especially those who buy their first car, most likely choose the latter.
Of course, if the pricing of the Xiaomi SU7 continues to continue its style of "extreme cost performance" on mobile phones, allowing people to obtain sporty attributes at the same level as household attributes, then this car may be able to open up a whole new market, just as Ideal opened up China's six-seater car market through L8 and L9 back then.
Perhaps, there is no price this time, Xiaomi also wants to wait and see, and Lei Jun may not have a bottom in his heart.
After all, automobiles are still industrial products, not as flexible and controllable as mobile phone manufacturing, which requires long-term planning and gradual production capacity arrangement. If the price is high, no one will buy it, and the production line that has been invested heavily will be hung there, and if the price is low, they will buy it, and the production capacity will not be able to hand over the car, and the reputation will not be injured and no money will be made.
As Lei Jun once said:
"I'm worried that everyone won't buy Xiaomi cars, but I'm more worried that everyone will buy them"