Since Xiaomi Group announced its entry into the field of new energy vehicles, it has attracted great attention from the market, and it only took three years to achieve a leap from zero to mass production and then to hot sales. What's more, Xiaomi does not use a foundry, but builds its own factory, all designed and produced by itself, and the speed and efficiency are really amazing.
Especially for traditional automobile companies, this speed is even more incredible, a car is composed of more than 10,000 parts, the whole design and integration is extremely complex. In addition, the process requirements in the fields of stamping, welding, assembly, painting and other fields are extremely strict. With no experience and foundation in car building at all, it is difficult to imagine how Xiaomi achieved this achievement.
Liu Tao, CEO of SAIC Group's Zhiji brand, also posted on Weibo about Xiaomi's car-making efficiency:
"The speed of Xiaomi cars is really fast, three years from the platform to do the first vehicle, from the native platform to do research and development, 2-3 years of complex vehicle and parts test and verification plan, no matter how to optimize it seems not enough to row ah, who knows how to do it so efficient and high-speed?"
Mr. Liu's words have three meanings, on the one hand, he doubts and admires how Xiaomi is efficient, on the other hand, he may wonder whether Xiaomi will outsource part of the process, and finally worry about whether there will be defects in the quality of the product due to the speed of promotion from zero to mass production at such a fast pace.
From the perspective of time, Xiaomi's efficiency does far exceed the industry average, even if some brands can achieve from project approval to mass production within three years, but it is also based on the original car-making foundation and production and supply system. As for whether Xiaomi outsources some of the processes, we don't know, but except for the large die-casting parts of the body, most of the other parts are supplied by suppliers, and the Xiaomi factory is mainly responsible for car assembly and body painting. With fewer self-developed and self-produced components, it is natural to maximize efficiency, which also benefits from a strong domestic supply chain system.
As for whether Xiaomi cars will sacrifice some of their quality due to speed, in the editor's opinion, there is no problem at least at the big level, after all, our country has strict automobile production and testing standards, which any car company must abide by. If we talk about stability and small problems, we still need to be further tested by the market, and after Xiaomi SU7 has a certain amount of ownership, the user's reputation will slowly show, and now we can't jump to conclusions.
In fact, the words of the CEO of Zhiji are more or less sour, and the Zhiji brand was founded at the end of December 2020, and it has been exactly three years since then. The first car, the L7, was launched in 2022, but it was not well received by the market, with cumulative sales of less than 5,000 units for the year, and the LS7 launched later was not optimistic. It wasn't until the launch of the LS6 in October 2023 that the Zhiji brand truly opened up the market and achieved rapid growth, with cumulative sales exceeding 40,000 units. Although this result is not bad, it was obtained by Zhiji through two years of continuous trial and error, but compared with Xiaomi's decision to achieve 100,000 units on the market, Zhiji is indeed a little embarrassed. Therefore, it is reasonable for the CEO to wonder and reflect on how Xiaomi has achieved this achievement.
On April 8th, Zhiji L6 will officially enter the market, and it is said that it will be directly benchmarked against Xiaomi SU7, and has certain advantages in performance and configuration. At present, everything is at the marketing level, but Zhiji is about to go public, and I believe that there will be an answer to the question of which of the two cars is better or worse.