Foreign media pay close attention to Xiaomi Automobile, saying that China’s technology giants have achieved results.

On the eve of New Year’s Day in 2024, the three-hour press conference of Xiaomi Automobile wrote a strong footnote for the automobile industry in China in 2023. Just like many press conferences in the Internet age, a series of classic quotations from Lei Jun, founder, chairman and CEO of Xiaomi Group, broke through one community after another and spread faster than technology and product content. Subsequently, all kinds of analytical articles are flying like snowflakes. However, how did the foreign media, which have been paying close attention to the development of electric vehicles in China in recent years, focus on the Xiaomi auto conference? What do they all pay attention to?

China’s technology giants want to enter the top five in the global car industry.

First of all, foreign media pay special attention to Xiaomi’s goal of "becoming one of the top five automakers in the world". In his report, Reuters used the word "quickly" for Xiaomi’s goal immediately after the release of the first electric car. CNN reported that Lei Jun announced that he hoped to achieve this goal in 15-20 years.

Why did Lei Jun put forward this goal? Why are foreign media so sensitive to Xiaomi’s vow to enter the "top five"? Lei Jun once said that the top five brands in the world will hold more than 80% of the shares when summing up Xiaomi’s entrepreneurial thinking. That is to say, it will only make sense if they finally enter the top five in the global industry and ship more than 10 million units a year. "This will be extremely cruel competition." Bloomberg commented that Lei Jun believes that Xiaomi can shake the transportation industry just like shaking the smartphone market ten years ago.

Secondly, the foreign media will also focus on the entry of electric vehicles by China technology enterprises. The Wall Street Journal reported: "Apple is being overtaken by China’s smartphone competitors in the automotive field. Huawei and Xiaomi have launched electric vehicles for use with mobile phones. " CNN wrote at the beginning of the article, "Just a few days after Huawei launched another electric car, Xiaomi launched its first electric car, which shows that the efforts of China technology giants to join the electric car competition have begun to bear fruit."

At the press conference, Lei Jun didn’t start talking about the "operating system" and ecological concepts that technology companies are good at. Instead, what people see is a "good student" Lei Jun, who talks about motor, battery and die casting. I have to say that this is very "millet" in itself. Because the development of Xiaomi itself is an exploration of "manufacturing industry in internet plus", whether it is a smart phone or a smart car, Lei Jun emphasizes the need to adhere to the "triathlon"-hardware, software and Internet services simultaneously. This is also the capability characteristic of China technology enterprises compared with foreign technology companies, which can integrate upstream and downstream industrial chains, quickly and massively transform technology into actual products, and achieve a good customer experience. Therefore, it is understandable that foreign media pay close attention to the electric vehicle manufacturing of China science and technology enterprises.

In addition, foreign media naturally have a good understanding of the natural advantages of Xiaomi’s car. Reuters noticed that SU7, Xiaomi’s first electric car, would share the operating system with Xiaomi’s mobile phone and other electronic devices, and thought it would be an advantage for Xiaomi to attract customers. The US Consumer News and Business Channel (CNBC) reported that Xiaomi is famous for its smart phones and household appliances, which is a potential advantage area for Xiaomi, and Xiaomi wants to create a "full ecology of people, cars and homes".

Hard-core technology shapes game breakers.

Reuters also mentioned the "super motor" technology introduced by Xiaomi Automobile, which can provide faster acceleration speed than Tesla and Porsche electric vehicles. At the press conference, Lei Jun said that the goal is to create a beautiful, easy-to-open, comfortable and safe mobile smart space, and to be a dream cars comparable to Porsche and Tesla. In the era of always expecting subversion, Xiaomi has found two benchmarking targets, which at first sounds like nothing new. However, it is not easy to do. This means that Xiaomi should make progress in major technologies that can be intuitively experienced by the market.

In the complex automobile research and development and production, Xiaomi first solved some core problems of electric vehicles and made breakthroughs in key technologies with suppliers. For example, accelerate performance. Among the five core technologies released by Xiaomi Automobile this time, the first one is the super motor developed by Xiaomi. The motor has three generations of synchronous operation, mature generation, research and development generation and pre-research generation. Among them, the V6/V6s motor with a speed of 21,000 rpm has been mass-produced, and the V8s motor with a speed of 27,200 rpm has been mass-produced. It will be put on the bus in 2025, and the Xiaomi next-generation super motor with a pre-research speed of 35,000 rpm has applied for a patent. Xiaomi SU7 is equipped with V6/V6s super motor, of which SU7 Max version adopts dual-motor all-wheel drive, and the zero-speed acceleration is as fast as 2.78 seconds.

Another example is the battery, the core component of electric vehicles. Xiaomi CTB integrated battery technology integration efficiency will reach 77.8%, which is the first battery cell inversion design with better safety system and endurance. The cruising range of the two versions of Xiaomi SU7 under CLTC condition is 668km and 800km respectively. Lei Jun said at the press conference that as an automobile manufacturer with a factory in the north, Xiaomi Automobile will challenge the winter battery life.

In addition, another technology that has been in the forefront of the world is the 9100t integrated large die-casting equipment cluster independently designed by Xiaomi and its Titan alloy independently developed. This high-end manufacturing will help Xiaomi Automobile to improve manufacturing efficiency and quickly occupy the market in the future.

Halfway through the conference, the release of intelligent driving and intelligent cockpit technology began slowly. Lei Jun once again mentioned the strategy of building a "full ecological scene of people and cars", and said that the essence of intelligent driving is artificial intelligence. In 2016, Xiaomi began to invest in artificial intelligence and proposed that perception is the foundation. Therefore, the self-developed adaptive zoom BEV technology, large road model and super-resolution occupation network technology adopted by Xiaomi SU7 are all aimed at improving the visibility accuracy, perception accuracy and control accuracy in different driving scenarios.

On the smart cockpit, based on Xiaomi 澎湃 OS operating system, Xiaomi SU7 has realized the comprehensive sharing ecology from hardware to software, which not only can realize the five-screen linkage in the car, but also can realize the seamless connection of the mobile phone and the deep adaptation of the car.

Xiaomi builds a car and takes advantage of China’s talent development.

From March 30, 2021, Lei Jun announced to build a car to Xiaomi Auto Conference, which lasted for 1003 days. Lei Jun promised that Xiaomi would invest 10 billion US dollars to build cars in the next decade, with an initial investment of 10 billion yuan, and repeatedly stressed that it would invest ten times in research and development. At present, Xiaomi Automobile has more than 3,400 engineers and thousands of first-class technical experts at home and abroad in key fields. This practice of concentrating first-class talents in the industry and quickly achieving key technological breakthroughs is also very small.

Among them, Lei Jun introduced the Xiaomi design team at the press conference, which was composed of Li Tianyuan, the world’s first China designer of BMW, Qiu Zhen, a former senior foreign affairs designer of Mercedes-Benz German headquarters, and Shin, a former senior interior designer of BMW. The average industry working experience of the team is over 10 years, young and with ideas. Xiaomi’s body design, wind resistance solution and laser radar design scheme come from the team’s pursuit of natural inspiration, and the low-carbon and environmental protection travel concept has been considered since the beginning of the car. At the same time, it reflects that China automobile industry has participated in the development of global automobile industry for many years, providing opportunities and soil for the global development of outstanding automobile talents. Now, these talents will also become a new generation of trendsetters, seize domestic opportunities and better realize their ambition to build cars.

It is understood that Xiaomi SU7 is expected to be mass-produced in the first half of 2024. Lei Jun said that with the comprehensive empowerment of industrial hard technology, intelligent soft technology and artificial intelligence, Xiaomi Automobile will completely redefine the technology stack of the automobile industry. At the same time, we will also pay attention to what changes will take place in people’s travel life with the listing of Xiaomi Automobile. It remains to be seen how Xiaomi will enable the Internet to empower automobile manufacturing.

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Audit | Lu Changyin

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