It's not that Porsche can't afford it, but Lei Jun makes a car more cost-effective

Xiaomi SU7 pricing is not difficult, and it is difficult to play a card in Lei Jun only once.

From March 30, 2021, when the car was officially announced, to December 28, 2023, when the first car product was officially announced, Xiaomi only took 1,003 days, once again refreshing the car manufacturing record of a new energy vehicle startup.

Prior to this, it took Tesla five years from the establishment of the company to the official release of its first product, the Roadster, in 2014, NIO and Xpeng, which started building cars at about the same time, took 3 years and 4 months on this figure, and the ideal was established one year later It also took 3 years and 3 months.

With the continuous tightening of the "dual qualifications" for the production of new energy vehicles, Xiaomi is likely to be the last new player in this wave of Internet car manufacturing, but the fiercely competitive market atmosphere will never be patient with any latecomer. Although Xiaomi only took 1003 days, many people still question Lei Jun whether Xiaomi is too slow to build cars.

For Lei Jun and Xiaomi, it is not difficult to build a car, only a team of 300-400 people, invest more than a billion in research and development, and then find a car to do reverse engineering. However, in today's environment, the market cannot tolerate the slow pace of car manufacturing, let alone allow substandard products to appear.

Therefore, Xiaomi only has one way to go, and that is to benchmark and surpass the benchmark.

Lei Jun's object of choice is Porsche, and more specifically, the Porsche Taycan Turbo. Xiaomi's first car product, the Xiaomi SU7, is positioned similarly to the former, and is also a C-class pure electric sedan, which means that Xiaomi has to make up for its homework in the areas that Porsche is good at, as well as the design, performance and mechanical quality of the vehicle.

In order to create a design that "will still look good after ten years", Xiaomi introduced Li Tianyuan, a language designer of the i series, Qiu Zhen, an exterior designer of Mercedes-Benz EQXX, and Shin Muto, an interior designer of BMW Z4 sports cars, from BMW to overturn the design of three versions before the appearance of Xiaomi SU7 was finalized.

These designers have also incorporated their personal style into the Xiaomi SU7, giving it the sporty proportions of a sports car, a clean and minimalist interior, and the world's lowest drag coefficient for a production car.

Xiaomi, which has no experience in car manufacturing, also discussed internally buying other people's vehicle platforms at the beginning, which can not only save an objective R&D cost, but also save a lot of detours. But in the end, Xiaomi still made up its mind to develop its own platform architecture in the future.

Lei Jun put forward very strict R&D standards for the team, and the Xiaomi Modena platform must achieve at least 100 "firsts", "uniques" and "most" in the industry. Although Lei Jun did not disclose the specific development cost of the Modena platform, it will not be less than the $7 billion that Volkswagen spent on the development of the MEB platform.

R&D investment at any cost has made Xiaomi SU7 lead the industry in a number of core data.

In terms of performance, Xiaomi SU7 surpasses Porsche Taycan Turbo and Tesla Model S, accelerating to 100 kilometers in only 2.78 seconds; in terms of cruising range, Xiaomi SU7 dual-motor version surpasses Mercedes-Benz EQS, reaching 800 kilometers under CLTC conditions; in terms of safety, Xiaomi SU7 has a torsional rigidity of 51000N·m/deg, surpassing Ford Raptor F150.

In the field of intelligence, which international manufacturers such as Porsche are not good at, Xiaomi is more about completing self-revolution.

In the field of smart cabins, Xiaomi's surging OS, which has been developed by more than 5,000 engineers after 7 years of research and development, has officially been launched. With the blessing of surging OS, Xiaomi has become the only company in China's new energy vehicle market that has a complete set of intelligent terminal interconnection ecology for people, vehicles and homes.

In the field of intelligent driving, Xiaomi's investment in the first phase has increased to 4.7 billion, with a R&D team of more than 1,000 people, self-developed a number of core technologies for perception and decision-making, and has planned a clear pilot assisted driving opening plan, which will cover 100 cities across the country by the end of 2024.

In Lei Jun's eyes, Xiaomi SU7, which surpasses ten times the industry's R&D investment, has no reason not to be successful. But what kind of price to set made Lei Jun difficult.

According to the law of business, a product with ten times the input should be sold at a more expensive price. However, Xiaomi SU7 was born in the most brutal stage of China's new energy vehicle price war, and even the most advanced products are difficult to support high premiums.

But the pricing of Xiaomi SU7 will never be unreasonable, and the cost of the CATL battery pack equipped with Xiaomi SU7 alone will cost more than 100,000 yuan.

When the product technology is disclosed to this extent, the price becomes the only excitement left for the Xiaomi SU7 to the market. The price is not difficult, and the difficulty is that Lei Jun has only one chance to play the card.

Based on Xiaomi's self-developed Modena platform, Xiaomi announced its R&D achievements in five core technology areas: motor, battery, large die-casting, intelligent driving and intelligent cockpit.

In the field of motors, Xiaomi has established the Xiaomi super motor project from the beginning of car manufacturing, recruited a team of 100 experts, and selected UMC and Inovance as suppliers, with the goal of making the world's fastest motor, and completely self-developed and self-produced.

Xiaomi has laid out a total of three generations of motor technology, of which the first two generations can reach 21,000 and 27,000 rpm respectively, and are expected to be officially launched in 2024 and 2025, while the third generation of the motor has an unprecedented speed of 35,000 rpm, but it is still in the research and development stage.

Xiaomi's first-generation super motor technology is subdivided into two products, namely V6 and V6S, which are adapted to the 400V and 800V platforms of Xiaomi SU7 respectively, which are roughly equivalent to the power level of 6-cylinder and large 6-cylinder engines in the era of fuel vehicles.

In terms of rpm, Xiaomi is already completely ahead of the 16,000 rpm of the Porsche Taycan Turbo and the 20,000 rpm of the Tesla Model S Plaid. In the domestic market, Xiaomi has no shortage of rivals, the hurricane motor equipped with the Zhiji LS6 and the new Huawei DriveONE motor equipped with the Zhijie S7, which can reach 21,000 rpm and 22,000 rpm respectively.

Xiaomi's second-generation super motor, named V8S, uses silicon steel materials and two-way three-dimensional oil cooling technology jointly created by Xiaomi's material team and suppliers, and has made new breakthroughs in rotor strength and temperature control.

Xiaomi's third-generation super motor uses a carbon fiber laser winding process, and compared with the wet winding method that Tesla has already mass-produced on the Model S Plaid, the yield and preload of Xiaomi's third-generation super motor have been further improved.

In the field of power batteries, Xiaomi does not make battery cells, but it has jointly dispatched thousands of engineers with CATL, completed the self-research of a number of battery technologies in two years, and built its own factory for production.

Xiaomi's self-developed 800V silicon carbide high-voltage platform has a peak voltage of up to 871V, and Xiaomi's self-developed CTB battery-body integration technology makes the thickness of the battery pack only 120mm.

Xiaomi has also developed its own cell inversion technology, so that the pressure relief valve on the surface of the battery cell is facing the chassis instead of the cockpit, even if the battery cell encounters thermal runaway, the pressure released will not face the occupants.

Xiaomi's power battery technology is also unmatched. In terms of battery pack thickness, the 800V giant whale battery pack jointly built by Huawei and CATL is only 117mm thick, and in terms of peak voltage, the peak power of NIO's self-developed large cylindrical battery can reach 925V.

But Xiaomi's advantage is that among the products based on Kirin batteries, which are also based on CATL, the cost of Xiaomi's battery pack and the final product price of Xiaomi's SU7 may be the lowest.

Based on cost considerations, Xiaomi's battery does not pursue large capacity and ultra-long battery life too much. Under the mature chemical system, Xiaomi's solution can reach a battery capacity of 132kWh and provide a range of more than 1,000 kilometers.

In comparison, the ZEEKR 001 1000-mile endurance package and the ZEEKR 009ME version are both equipped with more expensive 140kWh battery packs, priced at 372,000 and 588,000 respectively, and the ideal MEGA is going to come to the 600,000 level, so Xiaomi is likely to take the lead in completing the cost reduction of Kirin battery technology.

In order to bet on the industry's leading technology trend, Xiaomi decided to build its own factory in the field of large die-casting, and in the full set of die-casting lines and die-casting materials on the die-casting island, Xiaomi is all self-developed.

Colleagues in Xiaomi's car-making team initially presented three sets of die-casting solutions to Lei Jun, but in the end, based on cost considerations, they were cut to two, and now they are large die-casting A and large die-casting B in Xiaomi's automobile factory.

Xiaomi has also fully learned the lessons of Tesla, and has also laid out the traditional stamping scheme while developing its own large die-casting technology, just to avoid the large die-casting technology dragging its feet in the ramp-up stage of the factory's production capacity.

Since the die casting designed by Xiaomi is 17% larger than that of Tesla, Xiaomi finally set the clamping force of the die casting machine at 9,100 tons.

In comparison, Tesla's die-casting machine used to produce the rear floor of the Model 3 and Model Y at its Shanghai factory can provide 6,000 tons of clamping force, while Tesla's die-casting machine used to produce the rear floor of the Cybertruck at its Texas factory in the United States provides 9,000 tons of clamping force, both of which are lower than Xiaomi.

In order to reduce the maintenance cost of die castings after collision, Xiaomi also designed a medium and high-speed collapse zone for the rear bottom plate, forming a three-stage structure. Similarly, a similar design is applied to the rear floor of the Ideal MEGA, which is based on one-piece die-casting.

Intelligent driving is the most intensive area for Xiaomi.

Up to now, Xiaomi's first phase of investment in intelligent driving has increased from 3.3 billion to 4.7 billion, with a team size of more than 1,000 people and more than 200 test vehicles. Even in order to develop its own intelligent driving technology, Xiaomi spent about $77.37 million to acquire an autonomous driving company called Deepmotion in 2021.

By comparison, NIO had about 1,300 employees in its autonomous driving team before layoffs in November, and about 900 employees in its ideal autonomous driving division.

Xiaomi has brought three core technologies to the intelligent driving link this time.

The first is zoom BEV technology. Traditional BEV technology cannot freely adjust the perceptual pixel grid size according to a specific scene, while Xiaomi's zoom BEV can dynamically adjust the perceptual range and pixel grid size according to three different scenes: parking, urban and highway, so that the vehicle can see clearly when it should be clear, and see far when it should be far.

The second is the super-resolution occupancy network. Traditional occupancy grid networks describe obstacles as squares, each with an accuracy of 0.2-0.3 meters, so the identification of small objects is often wrong.

On the one hand, Xiaomi continued to improve the accuracy of the grid, achieving 0.1 meters, far exceeding Tesla's 0.32 meters and the domestic leading level of 0.2 meters;

On the other hand, Xiaomi's self-developed super-resolution vector algorithm describes the object as a cube composed of continuous surfaces, rather than a single abrupt square, which has a better recognition effect on opposite-sex obstacles such as poles and temporary traffic lights in front of toll stations.

Third, Xiaomi has applied large-scale model technology to multiple technical modules on the vehicle side.

Xiaomi's intelligent driving does not rely on high-precision maps, but generates road topology in real time through large models, similar technologies in the industry include Huawei's RCR road topology network and Xpeng's static BEV;

Xiaomi has also applied the first end-to-end perception model in the car, integrating the small models that were scattered in the perception and decision-making modules in the past.

In terms of the application dimension of large models, Xiaomi is currently second only to Tesla V12, which has all end-to-end intelligent driving systems, and Xnet2.0+Xplanner, which is modeled by Xpeng in perception and regulation modules.

The smart cockpit is what Xiaomi is best at, and it is also the core advantage of mobile phone manufacturers in making cars. Xiaomi and Huawei are currently the only companies in the industry that share a set of operating systems for mobile phones, car machines, and smart homes, so they can bring a good linkage experience.

Similar to Huawei's MagLink function on the new M7, Xiaomi's tablet can also be connected to the cockpit surging OS operating system through the front seat interface, so that the car can be controlled with a tablet. The surging OS also gives the car machine a smoother operation experience, the OTA time is greatly shortened, and the software and hardware ecology is extensive.

But Xiaomi is a little different from Huawei,Compared to Huawei, many functions of Huawei's Hongmeng cockpit can only be used for Huawei mobile phone users,Xiaomi has also additionally adapted to the Apple system,Even if the iPad is connected to the front seat interface, it can also control the car,It is more friendly to Apple users。

In the field of cockpit chips and screens, Xiaomi is also at the forefront of the industry. Xiaomi SU7 is equipped with Qualcomm 8295 chip, its computing power level is 8 times that of the current 8155 chip, Xiaomi SU7 also has a 56-inch large head-up display, its frame size is second only to the M9 and the 75-inch AR-HUD on the U8.

The 1003 days that Xiaomi has built a car also means continuous growth for Lei Jun himself.

The well-known story is that the United States included Xiaomi in the early morning of January 15, 2021, and announced that it would sanction Xiaomi.

A director of Xiaomi suggested that Lei Jun think seriously about building a car, but Lei Jun, who had already planned a clear retirement time at that time, was undoubtedly resistant in his heart.

This means that Rebus, who once called the wind and rain in the field of smartphones, has to learn from scratch and start all over again like a primary school student in an unfamiliar field.

With the idea of dissuading the board of directors, Xiaomi urgently set up a preparatory team of 10 people to start researching and building cars, and in just 75 days, almost all domestic automakers were run, participated in 85 visits and communication meetings, and conducted in-depth exchanges with more than 200 industry veterans.

But in the end, the results of the investigation made Lei Jun feel "extremely painful" and "unbelievable":

Smartphones, which have been at the forefront of the past decade, have now been completely replaced by smart electric vehicles.

If Xiaomi decides not to build a car, then the talent resources of the former will be plundered by the latter in the foreseeable future between smartphones and smart cars, and Xiaomi is destined to become a traditional company.

Therefore, Lei Jun came to the conclusion that smart cars are the future outlet, and they can get enough attention from the outside world, extremely cheap capital and enough talents.

As a result, on March 30, 2021, Xiaomi officially announced its entry into the smart electric vehicle industry and put forward three specific implementation plans:

First, Xiaomi will invest $10 billion in the smart electric vehicle industry in the next 10 years;

Second, unlike the early Internet financing from large capital institutions to build cars, Xiaomi decided to adopt a wholly-owned model, and all the money for building cars was paid by itself;

Third, Lei Jun personally served as the CEO of Xiaomi's smart car business, and announced that this would be the last major venture in his life.

Subsequently, Xiaomi Capital, Xiaomi Group, Shunwei Capital and Xiaomi Yangtze River Industry Fund began to rapidly lay out the smart car industry chain through financing and acquisitions, and concentrated on core areas such as autonomous driving, power batteries and on-board chips.

In terms of talents, Lei Jun has transferred a number of core backbones from within Xiaomi to form the core leadership of Xiaomi car manufacturing, including co-founder Liu De and co-founder Hong Feng, who have drunk Xiaomi porridge with Lei Jun;

Externally, Xiaomi recruited Li Tianyuan, the former BMW iX series exterior designer, who took the initiative to ask Lei Jun after watching Xiaomi's decision to build a car, and moved his family back to China from Germany.

In the next two years, in the face of the fierce changes in the smart electric vehicle market, as well as all kinds of speculation and chasing after the wind about Xiaomi's car, Lei Jun and Xiaomi have chosen to remain silent.

In addition to the annual speech in August last year, Lei Jun reported the latest progress made by Xiaomi in the field of autonomous driving, and it was this time that Lei Jun brought this Xiaomi SU7, which has achieved "leapfrogging" in multiple core technologies, into the public eye.

But not saying it doesn't mean it's easy to build a car. On the eve of the release of Xiaomi SU7, Lei Jun also complained to He Xiaopeng, chairman of Xiaopeng Motors, at a party, saying that after several years of car manufacturing practice, he found that building a car was ten times more difficult than imagined.

But there is also an unknown side to the story, Lei Jun's thinking and decision on Xiaomi's car building is not only from the cognitive innovation in the 1003 days after deciding to build a car, but throughout his more than 30 years of entrepreneurial career.

Lei Jun did not know at the beginning that he wanted to "follow the trend" in several ventures.

In 1991, after graduating from university, Lei Jun and his friends founded Kingsoft Company. Lei Jun's idea at that time was very simple, the business that Jinshan wanted to do was either what he was interested in, or what the market urgently needed.

Therefore, in the more than 10 years of his career at Kingsoft, although Lei Jun became famous, he also missed the golden period of the first wave of China's Internet development. This experience has taught Lei Jun the importance of seizing the timing.

Lei Jun later said in an interview, "Entrepreneurship is not only about burying your head in the car, but also looking up at the road." This kind of thinking is of key guiding significance for Lei Jun to establish Xiaomi mobile phones in the future and enter the smart electric vehicle industry.

The core technology must be independent and controllable, which is another history of blood and tears that Lei Jun has shed with his own experience.

In 2016, Xiaomi 5th generation suffered a serious shortage of production capacity, a large number of customers have refunded orders, coupled with the upstream core suppliers are too strong, Xiaomi once suffered the most gloomy time since its establishment.

In order to save Xiaomi from the building, Lei Jun not only took over every product line of the mobile phone department, but also made the company's most critical strategic transformation in the same year, cultivating hard technology at any cost, and in 2020, Xiaomi took a step forward in research and development, announcing that it would become the world's leader in a new generation of hard-core technology in the next 10 years.

All of the above has laid the entrepreneurial background of Xiaomi when it decided to build a car: Lei Jun and Xiaomi's core management personally led Xiaomi's car-making business, and resolutely pursued the core principle of "self-manufacturing, no mergers and acquisitions, and no OEM".

Lei Jun is not afraid to learn from scratch. As the leader of Xiaomi's car-making business, Lei Jun, who used to laugh at himself as a layman, has deeply experienced more than 150 cars in the 1003 days after Xiaomi decided to build a car.

Sometimes when he sees a car in the company's basement that he has not driven, Lei Jun will ask in the group which colleague the car belongs to and if he can borrow him to drive it for a few days;

In the research and development of the first model, Lei Jun deeply practiced the principle of "war of annihilation", concentrated superior resources and invested a total of 3,400 engineers and 10 billion R&D funds with a R&D level that exceeded that of traditional car companies by 10 times;

Xiaomi personally spent billions of yuan to buy land and build a factory at the Jinqiao Intelligent Manufacturing Base in Beijing, just to take the full set of manufacturing links into its own hands.

But for such a level of investment, Lei Jun still can't be absolutely confident. In an interview, Lei Jun said that he was particularly worried that after the Xiaomi SU7 was launched, everyone would not buy it;

In the technology conference, Xiaomi also invited a team composed of a number of industry experts in a number of core process links, just to endorse the leading technology of Xiaomi SU7.

But in fact, Xiaomi and Lei Jun have long summed up the key indicators of selling products well through years of experience in attacking the high-end mobile phone market-

The praise rate of the first month of listing must reach 99%, that is, 100 people bought it, if 99 of them said it was good, the product will definitely sell well, and the success of Xiaomi 14 is the best verification.

Knowing what your destination is, Xiaomi still has too much room to move around in the next car sales process.

Write at the end:

Regardless of success or not, and how the outside world evaluates it, with the release of Xiaomi SU7, entrepreneur Lei Jun and hard technology Xiaomi have opened a new chapter in the next 10-20 years.

Lei Jun said that the Xiaomi SU7 will not be able to meet you for a few months later, and although the factory is already in small batches, there is still a lot of testing work to complete.

Then wait a little longer, wait for a representative pure electric vehicle product, and wait for a new round of China's new energy vehicle market.