Baker Street Detective
Author: Che Xingyun
Apart from the cost, what are the limitations of the SU7 ultra-low price?
On the evening of March 28, Xiaomi officially announced the price of SU7, the standard version, Pro, and Max versions, with prices of 215,900 yuan, 245,900 yuan, and 299,900 yuan respectively. The race for price in electric vehicles has officially entered the second half today.
Since 2024, the price war of new energy vehicles has intensified, and the outside world has attributed it to Xiaomi's end of making cars, worried that the first generation of Xiaomi cars will be the same as the first generation of Xiaomi mobile phones, and use ultra-high "cost performance" to reshuffle the industry, so they have reduced prices to prepare for the impact of Xiaomi cars.
But at the first Xiaomi car press conference, Lei Jun, the founder of Xiaomi, said "respect technology" and "expensive truth", so that a large number of netizens worried about Lei Jun's pricing is too high, and they have persuaded him to set the price a little lower, which led to Lei Jun personally ending the game, emphasizing on social media that the first Xiaomi car "SU7" configuration far exceeds Model 3, with solid materials, high procurement costs, and pressure on pricing, I hope you understand.
I understand the truth, but buying a car is real money after all. For Xiaomi, the label of "cost-effective" has not been completely torn off at all. And Lei Jun once said at the press conference, "Xiaomi SU7 does not have an accurate benchmark vehicle." In terms of drivability and other mechanical qualities, we hope to be comparable to the Porsche Taycan Turbo, and in terms of intelligence, we hope to be comparable to the Tesla Model S. ”
Regardless of how high the intelligence rate of the Model S is, whether it can brake the car, just look at the Taycan Turbo price of 1.51 million yuan, Model S price adjustment of 700,000 yuan, you know that SU7 "ambition is not small", but in the context of the current price war, SU7 can gain a foothold in this increasingly volatile new energy market?
01 Can popularity be exchanged for sales?
Since last year, there has been a lot of discussion around Xiaomi cars, and on March 25, Xiaomi SU7 officially opened static tasting in 60 stores in 29 cities across the country. Although you can only look at the physical appearance, you can't look at the interior, and you can't test drive, but the popularity of Xiaomi cars is really not to be underestimated.
According to a Shanghai Xiaomi car salesperson publicly said,Since March 12th, Lei Jun released the "open Xiaomi SU7 tasting registration" Weibo, the average daily appointment of more than 100,000 people, he also said that every day to make 200 calls to the appointment customer, originally 18 o'clock off work was also postponed to 20 o'clock, and even the 28th has been ready to stay overnight.
But back to the business itself, how to convert this traffic into "delivery volume" for Xiaomi cars with its own traffic is still a difficult problem in front of Xiaomi. According to a survey launched by social media, netizens' biggest expectations for Xiaomi cars are focused on the price, and they are even curious about whether the price of new energy vehicles can be lowered.
It can be seen that the traffic of Xiaomi automobiles is still focused on "lowering the price of the industry", and there are generally two ways to achieve this result, one is that Xiaomi takes the initiative to reduce prices, driving other car companies to be forced to reduce prices to accompany them; At present, it is clear that this is the second way.
First of all, BYD, which has the highest car sales, will directly reduce the price of the original main sales model "BYD Qin" to 5 digits this year, with a starting price of 79,800 yuan for the plug-in hybrid version, a starting price of 125,600 yuan for the pure electric version, and a starting price of 135,900 yuan for Changan Qiyuan A07, even Xiaopeng Motors, which has been positioned as a high-end pure electric vehicle, Chairman He Xiaopeng also said that it will "launch a 10-150,000 yuan level A-class car".
In the mid-to-high-end market of Xiaomi SU7, the main sales models of new energy vehicle companies such as Tesla, Wenjie, and Zeekr are between 200,000 and 500,000 yuan.
Among them, the guide price of the M7 is 249,800-329,800 yuan, the guide price of the M9 is 469,800-569,800 yuan, the guide price of Tesla Model 3 is 245,900-285,900 yuan, the guide price of Model Y is 258,900-363,900 yuan, and the guide price of Zeekr 001 is 269,000-329,000 yuan.
In the face of the imminent price war, Lei Jun has long publicly stated that "the current industry competition is very fierce, does Xiaomi Auto have the confidence to open the market? Of course, we are confident, because we are Xiaomi Automobile, and we are fully prepared." ”
Perhaps the "preparation" that Mr. Lei refers to is the press conference, capacity delivery, etc., but judging from the survey results of social platforms and market feedback, the best preparation is "low prices that exceed expectations".
02 Who is Xiaomi Auto competing with?
On the surface, if Xiaomi Auto wants to achieve ultra-low prices, it has to compare with its friends. In fact, whether the ultra-low price can be achieved depends on the procurement cost of SU7, as well as the company's strategic positioning of SU7, or Xiaomi's positioning of its car business, that is, if you want to meet the expectations of netizens and bring down the price of electric vehicles, Xiaomi must pass this level first.
In 2011, Xiaomi mobile phones seized the market with "extreme cost performance", and in 2023, it will top the first domestic mobile phone shipments, these 12 years of development history, it is also the bitter history of Xiaomi to get rid of the "low-end machine" impact "high-end machine", in this 12-year period, Xiaomi mobile phones have used high-end machine chips for a long time, but they have always been labeled as "low-end machines".
Looking back on the beginning of Xiaomi's mobile phone, the company's first three generations of flagship machines with the same Qualcomm high-end chips and "1999" prices as friends, continued to impact the mobile phone market, compared with the market environment of five or six thousand mobile phones at that time, Xiaomi's first three generations of machines, with the "ultimate cost performance" quickly seized market share, to 2013, Xiaomi mobile phone sales ranked fifth in the world, with a shipment of 18 million units, and a market share of about 1.5% This market share, no matter which industry has just been established for three years, is an unattainable achievement.
Subsequently, Xiaomi began to try to transform into the high-end phone market, and it was not until 2022 that Xiaomi made achievements in the high-end phone market, and in 2023, Xiaomi's mobile phone shipments reached 146.4 million units, ranking first in the world of domestic mobile phones.
Now, Xiaomi has completed the layout of the high-end machine market with a "Xiaomi 14 Ultra", the price of the 256GB version of the mobile phone is 6499 yuan, and the price of the titanium special edition is 8499 yuan, which is more than 225% higher than the price of the first generation of mobile phones.
Perhaps, Xiaomi Auto wants to use Xiaomi mobile phones to complete the high-end layout, and directly skip the stage of climbing from the bottom.
There are many reasons for this situation,First of all, Xiaomi was not a listed company,R & D output is not responsible for so many investors,Lei always only needs to do the right thing,And do this well,Now Xiaomi is a listed company,Lei always in addition to doing the right thing,But also to ensure the rights and interests of shareholders,Bring returns to the enterprise。
First of all, a rough economic account for Xiaomi. It is not difficult to find that Xiaomi officially announced the construction of cars on March 30, 2021, and is expected to invest $10 billion in the next ten years. In September of that year, Xiaomi Auto Co., Ltd. was established, announcing that it had established a car-making team of 300 people, and the 2021 financial report showed that the R&D team had more than 1,000 people.
To the 2022 financial report, Xiaomi announced that the R&D team has more than 2,300 people, and the R&D investment has reached 3.1 billion yuan, and the 2023 financial report shows that the innovation business expenses have increased to 6.7 billion yuan, and the R&D expenditure has increased from 16 billion yuan in 2022 to 19.1 billion yuan, the company said that the 19.2% increase in R&D investment is mainly due to the increase in R&D expenses related to the smart electric vehicle business and other innovative businesses.
During this period, Lei Jun publicly stated in the CCTV "Face to Face" program broadcast on December 17 that Xiaomi Auto's first car as a whole invested 3,400 engineers, and the R&D cost exceeded 10 billion yuan, and emphasized that other car companies have a car R&D team of three or four hundred people, with a total investment of 10-2 billion, and Xiaomi is ten times the investment, so making a car is "determined to win".
In this context, Xiaomi's first car SU7 is advertised as the main "five core technologies", including the V8s super motor, which reaches the industry's highest speed of 27,200rpm, the CTB integrated battery technology, which has the highest volume efficiency of 77.8% in the world, the 9,100t super large die-casting cluster, which reduces the number of welding points by 840 and the weight by 17%, and the full-stack self-developed intelligent assisted driving, equipped with two NV DRIVEs The Orin chip has a comprehensive computing power of 508 TOPS, an intelligent cockpit based on the 8295 cockpit chip, and a Hesai AT 128 lidar.
With this set of parameter information, referring to the current models, the B-class sedan, which also uses the NV DRIVE Orin intelligent driving chip and the 8295 cockpit chip, the price of NIO's 2024 ET5T and 2024 ET5 starts at 298,000, while the price of the Zeekrypton 007 released last year starts at 209,900.
Source: Pacific Securities
Under normal circumstances, the SU7 price of this set of configuration parameters has a certain market competitiveness from 209,900 yuan, so as to ensure the company's shareholder returns to a greater extent, and for the "price of electric vehicles down" that netizens are looking forward to, it is naturally not the primary consideration of the company.
In fact, long before the survey launched by the social platform, the well-known entrepreneur Li Guoqing shouted to Lei Jun on the social platform at the beginning of this month, "Adhere to the cost performance for 50 million rice noodles to the end, don't talk about emotional value, don't talk about asset value...... I'll give you a price, 15-200,000, don't think about 400,000, 500,000. ”
As for how the Xiaomi SU7 will be delivered after it goes on the market, let's wait and see.
© THE END
This article is for sharing and learning only and does not constitute any investment advice.
This article was originally written by Detective Baker Street and should not be reproduced without permission.