Dear Mr. Lei Jun,
Shouldn't you learn from Ren Zhengfei and let Xiaomi have a firewall between its various businesses? Otherwise, an accident may lead to the "fire of the company" of this brand.
The world is sober and righteous
On April 26, 2024, on the Xia County Expressway in Yuncheng, Shanxi, a Wenjie M7 was involved in a rear-end accident, and three people on board were unfortunately killed. Subsequently, "Wenjie" immediately rushed to the hot search on multiple platforms.
Although some people think that Wenjie is Huawei, because Ren Zhengfei has always prohibited Wenjie from using Huawei's trademark, it is "Wenjie" instead of Huawei that is on the hot search.
In November 2020, Ren Zhengfei issued a document emphasizing that "Huawei does not make cars". The article emphasized: "In the future, whoever makes suggestions to build a car and interfere with the company can be transferred from the post and look for another job." In March 2023, Ren Zhengfei once again reiterated that Huawei does not make cars, and all the stores that have been labeled with the slogan "HAWEI Wenjie" have been removed.
On April 25, 2024, the day before the M7 Yuncheng accident, there was no "Huawei" booth at the Beijing Auto Show, which opened on the same day. Wenjie appeared in the two booths of Cialis and Hongmeng Zhixuan.
The world is sober and righteous. It was Ren Zhengfei who consistently and resolutely refused to allow cars to use the "Huawei" trademark, and promptly stopped the press conference and repeatedly emphasized that he was "far ahead", which prevented "Huawei" from rushing to the hot search this time.
Multi-service operations can form a combined fleet, which is more powerful, but if "isolation" is not done, once a fire breaks out, it may "burn down the company camp."
Hot sales can't hide the danger
Both Wenjie and Xiaomi have been popular among consumers, and the rate of sales growth can be described as "far ahead" in new energy vehicles. But just because it's selling well doesn't mean it's risk-free.
If you look back at the history of automobile development, you will see that hot-selling models will also have problems or even be withdrawn from the market. In 1971, Ford produced the first low-cost compact car in North America, the Pinto. The car had a beautiful appearance and a cheap price ($2,000 each), and it was an instant hit with consumers: it was released on September 11, 1970, and sold more than 100,000 units in January 1971, compared to 350,000 units that year.
In 1972, a pinto car suddenly slowed down on the highway, causing a deflagration immediately after a rear-end collision with the rear car. The driver died on the spot, and the 13-year-old boy of the neighbor in the passenger seat survived, but up to 90% of his body was burned. Over the next six years, the boy underwent more than 60 surgeries.
The child's parents questioned Pinto's violent burning after being hit as a design flaw and began to resort to law. Ford hired the best team of lawyers to respond to the lawsuit. The lawsuit has been protracted, but it is not an isolated case. In the seven years since Pinto's inception, there have been nearly 50 lawsuits related to the rear of the car being hit and exploded.
In 1977, a report called "Crazy Pinto" was published. The report revealed the truth about the Pinto: the reason why the Pinto is prone to rear-end deflagration is the combination of its compact design and the rear of the engine tank. Ford, eager to resist the invasion of Japanese automobiles, gave the engineers a death order with a deadline, and the American engineers apparently had no experience in designing compact models.
In the end, the court awarded Ford Motor Company $11.6 billion in compensation to the families of the victims of the crash. Ford was forced to recall all of its vehicles and promised to install stronger safety devices.
In 1981, Pinto discontinued production, and with 12.5 million units sold in 10 years, it was definitely a bestseller, but the car was named one of the 50 worst cars of all time by Time magazine.
Although Pinto has been discontinued, history tells us that cool looks, cheap prices, and brand new models may bring best-selling, but best-selling cars definitely don't equal good cars.
A good car needs to be fault-tolerant
For a car, even if there are no defects, it is not a complete job. A good car also needs to be fault-tolerant. In the M7 Yuncheng accident, even if the design of the vehicle is not flawed, it will make people doubt its fault tolerance.
With tens of thousands of consumers and various application scenarios, it is inevitable that there will be times when things go wrong. A good product must have strong fault tolerance: the electric kettle has an anti-dry boiling function, the gas stove has an anti-overflow function, the electric blanket and electric iron have an anti-overheating function, and even the place where the ticket machine puts the documents is designed as a ramp to prevent someone from forgetting.
And cars, compared to any other goods from Xiaomi and Huawei, require more fault tolerance. Other products, such as mobile phones, are damaged by design problems or due to the user's own reasons, and the result is nothing more than repair or replacement. But once the car fails, it endangers life.
As the saying goes, nine out of ten accidents are fast, and driving at high speeds will magnify all kinds of dangers. Because of this, the probationary period is one year after obtaining the driver's license, and the driver cannot drive alone on the highway during the probationary period. A new platform, or even a new brand, if it encounters a "rookie" and encounters misoperation, for example, using the accelerator as a brake and using a car without intelligent driving function to drive intelligently, there will be huge safety risks, especially when driving at high speeds, any "mistake" - whether caused by the vehicle or the consumer itself, will be magnified.
In the course of more than 100 years of development, automobiles have formed many designs to prevent misoperation, such as manual transmission to be pressed to hang reverse gear, automatic transmission to step on the brake to start, etc. Even though the current new energy and intelligent driving vehicles have many powerful functions, if they cannot prevent misoperation, if they cannot ensure the safety of drivers and passengers to the greatest extent in various extreme emergency situations, then what is "far ahead"? What is "the best within 500,000" or "the best within 5 million"?
Good sales mean that a thrilling jump from product to product has been completed, but for a commodity like a car, the bigger test is still to come.
"Burning the company camp" is terrible
Apple, Huawei, and Xiaomi are all smartphone giants, Apple started the car project the first in 2014, but stopped 10 years later in 2024, while Huawei insists on not building cars in person, but cooperating with car companies through different business models. Xiaomi is the only mobile phone brand that has built a car and brought it to the market.
From now on, Xiaomi has achieved great success in making cars, not only harvesting the largest traffic in the automotive industry, but also harvesting huge orders, becoming the fastest growing brand in the automotive industry, and SU7 is also the fastest growing model.
But traffic can either boost or backfire a brand. In 2023, there will be a total of 1.75 million road traffic accidents in the mainland, with 500,000 deaths, with an average of 4,795 accidents and 1,370 deaths in a single day. With so many motor vehicle accidents, why is the M7 Yuncheng accident alone on so many hot searches? This is because there is too much attention in the world: the world is related to Huawei, the world is a hot-selling model, and the world is far ahead.
Xiaomi's current popularity is greater than that of the world. 28 days after the official release of the Xiaomi SU7, 75,723 units were locked and 5,781 units were delivered, setting a new record for the delivery volume of the first model of a new brand in the industry.
The car accident rate is objective, and Xiaomi's premium is more expensive than a car of the same price, which is an assessment made by the insurance company for its own risk. Cars need to be insured, so do companies that make cars also need to be more "insured"? Xiaomi, should we also learn a lesson from the M7 accident and set up firewalls for Xiaomi's various businesses to prevent Xiaomi cars from encountering accidents that will affect other Xiaomi brands and even other products?
Yao Wei: Fangde Automobile
2024-5-3