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Since the Xiaomi SU7 was launched on March 28, it has been less than 2 months, and related topics have been hotly searched. According to Lei Jun, founder of Xiaomi Group, chairman and CEO, as of April 24, Xiaomi SU7 locked orders exceeded 75723 units, from 20-24, 4 days of new lock orders of nearly 6000 units; The Xiaomi SU7 was released 28 days ago, with a total of 5,781 units delivered. As of 24:00 on April 30, the cumulative number of Xiaomi SU7 locked orders reached 88,063 units. On May 9th, the well-known car blogger @Sun Shaojun 09 broke the news that the number of Xiaomi SU7 lock orders has officially exceeded 100,000.
On May 15, Xiaomi Auto officially announced: Just now, we have completed the delivery of the 10,000th Xiaomi SU7. Subsequently, Lei Jun posted on Weibo that 10,000 vehicles have been delivered in 43 days since the first delivery on April 3. This is a major milestone for Xiaomi. The company is continuing to expand its production capacity to deliver 100,000 units this year.
On May 15, the Financial Associated Press learned from multiple sources that in order to increase production capacity and shorten delivery time, Xiaomi Auto's Beijing factory plans to open a "double shift mode" in June, and the daily production time will be increased from 8 hours to 16 hours. Lei Jun, chairman of Xiaomi Group, has said that the Xiaomi car factory can produce 40 Xiaomi SU7s per hour, and a new car can roll off the assembly line every 76 seconds. Based on this calculation, the monthly production capacity of the company is expected to increase to nearly 20,000 units after the start of double-shift production.
Looking back at Xiaomi's car-making business from "Xiaomi SU7 deliveries exceeded 10,000 units":
——Manufacturing has not started, investment first
In 2021, Lei Jun, chairman of Xiaomi, announced his entry into the car-making industry, but at this time, domestic new energy vehicles already have leading players such as BYD and Tesla and emerging players such as "Wei Xiaoli", and Xiaomi has become a late enterprise to participate in the new energy vehicle industry. In addition, Xiaomi's car manufacturing is a cross-border behavior and lacks experience in the car-making supply chain and core technology, so in order to successfully realize the planned car listing, it needs to exchange investment and acquisition for technology and time.
Therefore, before Xiaomi announced the construction of cars, Xiaomi's Xiaomi Yangtze River Industry Fund, Shunwei Capital and Xiaomi Private Equity Fund Management Co., Ltd. have begun to make a lot of investment and layout in the automotive industry chain, and even participated in Weilai's A round of financing in 2015 and Xiaopeng Motors' A+ round of financing in 2017.
Judging from the investment data of Xiaomi Group, Xiaomi Yangtze River Industry Fund, Shunwei Capital and other Xiaomi investment entities, Xiaomi has been laying out the automotive field since 2011, and has completed 52 investment events in the automotive field before announcing in 2021, with a cumulative investment of 26.227 billion yuan. After the announcement of the construction of the car, the amount and number of Xiaomi investments from 2021 to 2022 reached a new high, reaching a maximum investment of 29.988 billion yuan in 2021 and 26 in 2022.
——Three paths to help Xiaomi build an industrial chain ecosystem in an all-round way
On March 28, 2024, Xiaomi officially announced its first mass-produced smart electric vehicle, Xiaomi SU7, at the car press conference, which also marks the official entry of Xiaomi Group from an "investor" to a "competitor". Looking back at the layout of Xiaomi's smart car business, it can be found that Xiaomi's entry into the field of smart cars is not a whim, but by investing in industrial chain start-ups, focusing on core technologies, and deepening cooperation with supply chain enterprises, it has gradually entered the game to build an ecosystem covering the entire smart car industry chain.
Xiaomi's construction of the whole industry chain ecosystem of smart cars is mainly divided into three paths: first, investment first, through investment in start-ups, etc., to build an industrial chain ecology in an all-round way; Second, through the company's self-research, it has strongly cut into the core technology links such as motors, batteries, large die-casting, intelligent driving, and intelligent cockpits; The third is to deepen cooperation and adopt the method of direct cooperation with suppliers to empower the smart car business. From the perspective of link characteristics, Xiaomi's investment and self-research are mainly focused on core links such as electrification and intelligence, and cooperation is mainly focused on electrical and electronics, chassis/body interior and exterior decoration.
Through the three major paths, the upstream of Xiaomi Auto has covered battery materials, semiconductors and other related fields, the midstream has covered the core links such as electrification system components, intelligent cockpit systems, and intelligent driving systems, and the downstream has laid out the automotive after-sales service market to build an industrial chain ecosystem in an all-round way.
From the perspective of the main suppliers of Xiaomi Auto SU7, Xiaomi's investment company Zejing Electronics AR-HUD products have been supplied to Xiaomi SU7 models, and Xiaomi SU7 Pro and Xiaomi SU7Max are equipped with Hesai ultra-high-definition long-range lidar AT128, with high-end intelligent driving functions, and will be delivered in April and May 2024 respectively.
According to the analysis of economic research expert Xiao Xinjian, China's new energy vehicle market still has huge growth potential, from the replacement of half of the traditional fuel vehicles, the new energy vehicle market still has 150 million to 160 million growth space. With the progress of the country's economy and the improvement of people's quality of life, this growth space will become very large in the future.
Industry insiders believe that the current new energy vehicles have entered a critical period of intelligent networked industrial layout. Low-end intelligent driving functions have basically become the standard configuration of domestic models, and high-end intelligent driving covers almost 80% of the models of new power enterprises. Wang Yao, deputy chief engineer of the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, said that the intelligence of new energy vehicles will lead the automobile industry to a new height, and have a far-reaching impact on the technological progress, market competition and environmental protection of the automobile industry in China and even the world.
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