Xiaomi has just held its spring press conference in the past two days. I won’t mention new mobile phones and MIX products. There are two things that attract the most attention.
The first is Xiaomi’s new logo;
Except for a square and a circle...
Can you see any other differences?
It is said that Xiaomi spent two million and specially invited Kenya Hara, a professor at Musashino Art University, to design it personally. It has the mathematical beauty of "super ellipse".
According to the official statement, although the new logo looks like it has changed from a square to a circle, it is not an ordinary circle...
This is a logo from multiple versions. A "circle" derived from precise calculations.
To put it more clearly, it is the “circle” that looks the most comfortable.
Second, Xiaomi builds cars.
On the evening of the 30th, at the end of Xiaomi’s spring press conference, Lei Jun announced a piece of blockbuster news - Xiaomi officially entered the smart electric vehicle industry.
Not long after, Xiaomi Group issued an announcement announcing the formal establishment of Xiaomi’s smart car business.
Putting aside everything else, Chai Mei smiled when she saw this announcement.
Why do today’s entrepreneurs like to slap people in the face?
Huawei said it did not apply for a payment license, but ended up buying Xunlian Pay; Xiaomi said it did not build cars, but now it has openly announced that it will start building cars...
In fact, it is related Rumors of Xiaomi building a car started vaguely as early as 2013.
At that time, a car poster with the Xiaomi logo was widely circulated on the Internet, and everyone speculated whether Xiaomi would enter the car field.
Furthermore, Xiaomi applied for about ten automobile-related patents at that time, and the message revealed to the public was obviously that it was building cars.
However, Xiaomi denied this and stated that the car has nothing to do with Xiaomi.
In 2017, Xiaomi signed a cooperation agreement with BAIC Group, and Xiaomi's car-making controversy resumed.
But then nothing happened.
In 2020, Xiaomi Mall suddenly released a poster, which clearly showed the shadow of a car, and officially announced "Building cars? We are serious."
Now that the official blog has posted in person, you can’t still deny it, right?
Well, I really denied it.
Xiaomi’s official blog was suddenly deleted from Weibo, and then the general manager of Xiaomi’s public relations department came out and made it clear that Xiaomi would not build a car.
He also emphasized that any news that Xiaomi builds cars is fake news.
And that car shadow is a smart remote control car made by Xiaomi...
In 2021, some time ago, some people in the industry said that Xiaomi was negotiating with Great Wall and wanted to Use Great Wall's factories to manufacture electric vehicles.
Afterwards, Xiaomi directly issued an announcement, stating that Xiaomi’s electric car business has not yet disappeared.
Oh, not a shadow yet.
But it has only been a few days, and the wholly-owned subsidiary has been established, the business has been established, and the money has been spent?
Even though Lei Jun tortured me thousands of times, I treated Lei Jun like my first love.
Although he denied it time and time again and treated us like monkeys...but he was originally the Thunder Monkey King and was the best at playing monkeys.
So what is the car-making business that Xiaomi has officially announced this time with the greatest momentum?
Xiaomi revealed two pieces of information in the announcement.
One is that Xiaomi plans to invest 10 billion yuan in the first phase and 10 billion US dollars in the next ten years; the other is that Lei Jun will personally serve as the CEO of this business.
In this regard, Thunder Monkey King also shouted the slogan "This is the last major entrepreneurial project in my life."
At this moment, Chai Mei really wanted to mention the words Zhang Yiming said at the company meeting: "Just come all in, sometimes it's a kind of laziness."
Give it to Lei Jun.
According to the industry’s statement that “20 billion yuan is the threshold for building a car,” Xiaomi’s current investment is more like expressing its determination to build a car.
However, car manufacturing is an asset-heavy industry with a long industrial chain, and success cannot be achieved by sheer passion.
Little did they know that the cars that Jia Yueting and Evergrande have been building for so long are still in the concept car stage, and countless companies that want to build cars fail on the road every year.
In this case, why does Xiaomi want to wade into this muddy water?
I still remember Lei Jun once said a famous saying when he founded Xiaomi in 2010: "Standing on the wind, even pigs can fly."
The smart electric vehicle industry is today’s hot spot.
Many people only see the eye-catching financial report released by Xiaomi.
According to statistics from Canalys, in the fourth quarter of 2020, Xiaomi ranked third in global smartphone shipments, with a market share of 12.1.
However, smartphone operating income accounts for 60% of Xiaomi's total revenue. Once the smartphone market reaches saturation, Xiaomi will need new growth points.
Data show that the shipments of mainland China's smartphone market in 2020 fell by 1.1 to 330 million units year-on-year;
The total shipments of smartphones in 2020 were 12.94 1.387 billion units in 2019, a year-on-year decrease of 6.7%.
Did you find it?
The smartphone market is now approaching saturation, and the ceiling is as far as the eye can reach.
In this case, smartphone-based companies must find new outlets, and they must be big outlets.
Therefore, Xiaomi chose the smart electric vehicle industry.
In fact, from the rumors about Xiaomi’s car manufacturing we have listed in the previous article, we can find that Lei Jun has long seen this industry, but he has never made up his mind.
Since 2013, Xiaomi has invested in a number of new energy vehicle companies.
In 2019, a Xiaomi executive advised Lei Jun that the end of 2019 to the beginning of 2020 was the best time for Xiaomi to build a car.
We don’t know why Lei Jun didn’t take this advice, but it makes sense.
At the end of 2019, the Model 3 that made Tesla popular had not yet been launched, and other domestic new energy car companies such as Weilai and Ideal were simply in disarray.
And at that time, the state also provided various subsidies to this industry.
If Xiaomi announced to build a car at that time, with Xiaomi’s extremely cost-effective positioning, there would definitely be many people saving money to wait for the birth of Xiaomi’s car.
But Xiaomi does not.
Xiaomi only announced the production of cars in 2021.
The overall situation of the current new energy industry has already been determined. Mid-to-high-end cars include Tesla, Weilai, Ideal, etc., and low-end cars include the Wuling Hongguang mini, which is popular among young people.
There is really no way to question this. The best-selling cars today are the two extremes - the "high-end" Tesla and the "low-end" Wuling Hongguang.
Don’t Xiaomi think it’s too late to enter the game now?
We can analyze it carefully. The biggest label of Xiaomi is cost-effectiveness, so the audience of Xiaomi Auto is unlikely to be high-net-worth people.
.....It can only be ordinary people like us who have no money.
That is to seize Wuling Hongguang’s market.
Fans believe in Lei Jun and Xiaomi, and have shouted slogans such as "99,000 cars per car" and "Young people's first car".
But one thing you need to know is that the profit from building cars is only 5-10%.
If Xiaomi Auto sets the price at such a low level, when will the tens of billions invested be earned back?
At this point, there is no comparison between Xiaomi Auto and Wuling Hongguang Mini.
After all, the size and configuration of the latter are very different from ordinary cars, and the price gap is naturally also very large.
When Chai Mei was discussing with Lao Chai, he mentioned Internet thinking. Maybe Xiaomi Auto does not make money on hardware?
Just like Lao Luo, don’t make money, just make friends.
Speaking of this, I have to mention the original Xiaomi TV.
You must know that before this, TV did not have start-up advertisements, and they were all turned on directly. Why do you need to watch the advertisements before turning on the TV?
But Xiaomi TV wanted to maintain its price-performance ratio and make money at the same time, so it created boot-up advertising, not only making money from users, but also from advertisers.
But cars can’t let users watch dozens of seconds of ads before they step on the accelerator, right?
And no matter how good Xiaomi’s performance is in the mobile phone field, the fact is that it has no foundation in the automotive field.
Chai Mei gives another example. To build a smart electric car, autonomous driving is essential.
Do you know why stock prices soar whenever a company announces it will build a car?
Because it is not the stock price that is rising, but the expectation for autonomous driving in the future.
Nowadays, the competition on the autonomous driving track has become very fierce. Chai Mei can’t help but talk about Baidu. Baidu has been researching autonomous driving for so many years. Does Baidu have any products now?
And Tesla’s autonomous driving has been causing accidents.
It is so difficult for these companies with development experience in autonomous driving to do well, let alone Xiaomi, which has no experience in related fields.
Xiaomi should also know this. Judging from the patents it has applied for, its main focus is roughly on smart cockpits, rather than autonomous driving, which is currently hot.
But this is embarrassing. The market is now more optimistic about autonomous driving and millimeter-wave radar. It is difficult for unpopular technologies such as smart cockpits to gain recognition and financing from investors.
What’s more, as a smart car built by an Internet company, it is simply unjustifiable without autonomous driving.
Therefore, Xiaomi, which has no experience and foundation in autonomous driving, must cooperate with other companies.
It is definitely not possible to look for Baidu, Huawei and the like, otherwise Xiaomi will be slaughtered.
Who else can I turn to?
As we mentioned earlier, Xiaomi and BAIC reached cooperation in 2017.
But BAIC itself is not a good partner.
As the first person to try new energy in China, BAIC has been severely beaten by the market after its backdoor listing.
Although BAIC New Energy focuses on the low-end market, it basically has no other advantages except low price.
Tell me something funny.
Before it cooperated with BAIC, Mercedes-Benz was a well-known global brand, not to mention its quality, right?
But after Mercedes-Benz cooperated with BAIC, they launched Beijing Benz. Since then, accidents with this car have continued to occur.
It’s really hard to figure out what magic power BAIC has?
And what can such a new energy car company that has too much time to take care of itself bring to Xiaomi?
Of course, Xiaomi’s car-making is not without its advantages. After all, it has a huge ecosystem.
But building a car is not another extension of Xiaomi’s ecological chain logic.
In other words, it is difficult to directly apply the successful experience of Xiaomi’s ecological chain to building cars.
The reason why Lei Jun entered the smart electric vehicle industry is because he considered the risk of Xiaomi retreating if it does not advance, but entering this industry does not mean that the risk is reduced.
On the contrary, what Lei Jun and Xiaomi are about to face are the dual risks of the mobile phone market and the new energy market.
As for the young people of our generation, don’t think of Xiaomi as your first car. When Xiaomi cars come out, maybe we will all be old...
Main writer | Xiao Lu
Editor | Four Young Masters