Deliver 120,000 vehicles in a single year, and take the production of a car seriously.
At the ongoing "2024 Future Auto Pioneers Conference," Xiaomi founder Lei Jun took the stage to share news related to Xiaomi's car:
Xiaomi's self-developed car scorecard
Two "eye-catching points" of Xiaomi's car in the market
Integrating the mindset of consumer electronics into the automotive field
Thoughts on the development of the smart electric vehicle industry
SU7, how is it selling?On March 28, 2024, Xiaomi Group held the launch conference for the XIAOMI SU7, capturing the spotlight without peer at the time. Now, two months have passed, and "how many have been sold" has become the focus of market attention. In response, Lei Jun provided a very clear report card:
In the first month of sale, the locked order volume of Xiaomi SU7 has reached 88,200 units
Delivery volume in April reached 7,058 units
Delivery volume in May reached 8,630 units
This series of numbers also proves that Xiaomi is one of the few companies that can deliver immediately upon release and achieve volume upon delivery. In the two months since the release, Xiaomi has delivered more than 15,000 cars.
Lei Jun said: "Currently, many consumers are particularly concerned about one issue: everyone has booked so many cars, when can Xiaomi deliver the cars? In the past two months, we have indeed been extremely busy, and currently we are doing a few things. The first thing is that in June, our factory will start double shifts, and we must ensure that the delivery in June alone exceeds 10,000 units. The second thing is that we guarantee to deliver 100,000 cars for the whole year, and in addition, we are also striving for 120,000 units. It should be noted that delivering 120,000 units of a single model in 9 months is a target that has set an industry record."
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Behind the achievements: I have even thought about how to hang the soy milk
Lei Jun said that the main reasons behind Xiaomi's achievements are twofold.Firstly, Xiaomi has a profound understanding of the complexity of automobiles. Lei Jun mentioned, "We have a deep respect for the automotive industry. We have invested ten times more and focused earnestly on making a good car, while locking onto the core technology track, starting from the core technology. It is precisely these breakthroughs in core R&D that have led to the success of Xiaomi SU7 today, which I believe is the most fundamental reason for the success of Xiaomi SU7."
Secondly, Xiaomi has been in the consumer electronics industry for 14 years, putting in a lot of effort into researching and understanding users, and has developed many product features. The first product highlight is sun protection. Lei Jun said, "Sun protection is a very important product feature, but many people do not realize it. In fact, sun protection is difficult to achieve, and it is very important for female car owners. Xiaomi cars can filter 99.9% of ultraviolet rays and block 99.1% of infrared rays. The front windshield is triple silver-coated, and the four doors have UV coating."
The second product highlight is storage. Lei Jun said, "Xiaomi's car storage is the best among many vehicles in the industry. For example, Xiaomi has installed two hooks under the car's control panel, which have many uses, such as hanging breakfast like soup noodles and soy milk fried dough sticks."
In addition, Xiaomi SU7 has many thoughtful designs, such as its largest makeup mirror with color temperature, which makes the skin look good for selfies in the car. These designs have attracted half of the Xiaomi SU7 car owners to be female. As a high-performance sports sedan, having so many female car owners is far beyond Lei Jun's imagination and has surprised the market.
The essence of smart electric vehicles is cars × electric × intelligence.
At the meeting, Lei Jun also put forward three thoughts on the development of the smart electric vehicle industry from the perspective of a newcomer.
Firstly, the essence of smart electric vehicles is cars × electric × intelligence. Lei Jun said that the automotive industry has a history of 140 years and has developed very well today. Over the past decade, the entire industry has been solving the problem of electrification, and now the problem of electrification has been well resolved.
Now, the automotive industry is paying more and more attention to intelligence, including smart cockpits, intelligent driving, voice control, intelligent ecosystems, chip operating systems, and electronic architecture. These technologies are becoming increasingly complex.Lei Jun stated that Xiaomi dares to enter such a complex industry and is confident in doing a good job in the intelligence of cars. On the first day of entering the smart electric vehicle industry, Xiaomi had already decided to achieve full-stack self-research of intelligent driving technology.
What are the results of the three years of self-research? Lei Jun provided some data to prove it:
The active rate of Xiaomi's car's autonomous driving function exceeded 83% in the past two months, with a self-driving mileage of 3.62 million kilometers. In addition, various media friends have also conducted many tests on Xiaomi's car, and the results show that in the field of self-driving, Xiaomi's parking and valet parking are at the ceiling level; the high-speed pilot function also ranks in the first echelon in many test evaluations; Xiaomi is also launching 10 cities' urban NOA.
When testing the urban NOA function, Lei Jun personally drove the Xiaomi car for 3 hours from Shanghai Pudong to the Xiaomi Center in Hangzhou, and the entire process of urban NOA plus high-speed NOA was live broadcasted. Recalling this, Lei Jun said with a smile: "Dr. Ye, the person in charge of Xiaomi's self-driving technology, was sitting in the second row, sweating profusely, but I felt very relaxed. This test process surprised me very much, because I was in a zero-takeover state throughout the test."
Lei Jun said he is very confident in Xiaomi's team, and the goal he proposed three years ago was to become the first echelon in the smart car industry by the end of this year.
The second point is that smart electric vehicles are a high degree of integration of the automotive industry and consumer electronics. Lei Jun mentioned that three years ago, Xiaomi conducted a lot of research, so why did they make up their minds to make cars? The most important thing is that today's cars are completely different from the past, and most of today's cars are electronic parts. Xiaomi has been in the consumer electronics industry for 14 years, which gives them certain technical accumulation in manufacturing smart electric vehicles, and this is also a main reason why Xiaomi can build a car in three years.
The third point is that ecological opening and cooperation are very important. Lei Jun said, "After three years, we are more and more aware of the complexity of the automotive industry and the diversity of user needs. I think ecological expansion is the only way."
"Rear screen" is a vivid example given by Lei Jun. The application scenarios of the rear screen are very few, some people will particularly like it, but most people do not need the rear screen, so the cost of adding a rear screen will be relatively high. Xiaomi's solution is to plug a tablet into the rear screen. Lei Jun said, "As long as we develop the system well, your tablet can be plugged in and used like a native screen, and this problem can be easily solved." Therefore, Lei Jun suggests that the screen interface should be standardized, so that tablets from Xiaomi, Huawei, or other manufacturers can be used as rear screens in cars, and car companies do not need to compete over this small issue.
Lei Jun said that Xiaomi has developed several interface standards, and if these resources are shared, domestic cars will become more and more user-friendly, which is not only beneficial to users but also to the entire industry. Therefore, Lei Jun calls on the entire industry to unite and jointly promote and build ecological development, and Xiaomi's entry into this industry will definitely make its own contribution to the Chinese automotive industry.
At the end of the speech, Mr. Lei Jun once again expressed his high respect in a respectful manner, as a rising star in the automotive industry, to those who have led the trend of the new energy automobile era.
