It has been a year since Xiaomi officially announced the car, and finally ushered in new progress in recent days. According to Luo Baojun, general manager of Xiaomi's Beijing-Tianjin branch, the third quarter of this year can see the engineering prototype.
Since the official announcement of the car, Millet began to closely plan in the field of automobiles, not only a large number of recruits, registered companies, but also built their own factories, build a car-making framework, it can be said that in the cross-border car-making matter, no other company has Millet so vigorous, even Lei Jun personally said: Xiaomi's car-making progress exceeded everyone's expectations.
According to Xiaomi's planning, the first model is positioned as a mid-to-high-end model, priced between 150,000 and 300,000 yuan, and it is expected to achieve mass production of the first car in 2024. Four new models will be introduced, including two models each for the A+ and B-class cars.
Xiaomi as an Internet mobile phone company, from the moment of announcing the car manufacturing outside is not optimistic, no one will believe that Millet can have any new progress in a year, after all, to know that since 2014, the technology giant Apple began to prepare for the car, but today Apple's car project has been promoted in a wave of twists and turns, and even not long ago, the Internet also reported that the Apple car-making team was disbanded.
On the other hand, Xiaomi, in terms of technology and resources is not as advantageous as Apple, coupled with the cross-border technology enterprises to the new energy automobile industry is a "money-burning game", tens of billions of investment in the most basic "threshold", and millet car manufacturing initial start-up capital of only 10 billion. Although there is no strong strength and financial resources, the speed of growth of Xiaomi cars is surprising.
Of course, this is also inseparable from Xiaomi's firm determination to build a car. In order to create a car product that is more in line with, or exclusive to the current young consumers, as early as last April, that is, a month after Xiaomi announced the car, Lei Jun solicited the expectations of the majority of netizens for Xiaomi's car through 3 votes on the Weibo platform, including:
What car do you want Xiaomi Cars to be?
Regarding the brand of Xiaomi car, use the "Xiaomi" brand or take a new brand?
What do you want the first car of Xiaomi car to cost?
These three questions cover the type of vehicle, brand tonality and product price point, which are the most concerned aspects of young consumers today when buying a car. According to the voting results, most netizens hope that Xiaomi's first product is a car, positioned in the middle and high-end, with a price of between 100,000 and 300,000 yuan. However, in the three rounds of voting, netizens have the highest voice for models below 100,000 yuan, but this price point is not only inconsistent with the brand strategy of Xiaomi Automobile, but also does not conform to the positioning of the middle and high-end.
In order to focus more on the mass market and attract a wider range of young consumer groups in the market with higher cost performance, Xiaomi decided to focus on 150,000 yuan to 300,000 yuan models, of which the price of A+ class cars in the middle range is 150,000-200,000 yuan, and may be equipped with L2+ automatic driving in the future; the price of high-end B-class cars is between 200,000 and 300,000 yuan, and the future will be equipped with L3 level automatic driving technology.
But at the same time, Xiaomi will face a more fierce market competition environment. According to the data of the Association of Automobile Associations, models with prices in the range of 80,000-250,000 yuan account for more than 70% of the sales volume of the mainland's new energy vehicle market in 2021. From this data, it can be seen that in the domestic automobile market, whether it is traditional car companies or new car-making forces, almost all of them are developing in the high-end direction, and the main attack is also the market of 100,000-300,000 yuan, and there will be more and more car companies to launch attacks to this price segment in the future, and it is not easy for Xiaomi to "survive" in it.
For a new car company like Xiaomi Automobile, there is a lack of experience in automobile manufacturing, and the technology of automobile research and development and production is not mature enough... Will face all kinds of tests and difficulties; if a car does not have excellent product strength as a prerequisite, even if your reputation in the industry is mostly loud, the brand influence obtained after the cross-border is not enough to support the sales of a model, and huawei can not support the Xilix SF5 is not a living example? Therefore, in the face of many powerful and experienced opponents, can Xiaomi Cars break through? We'll see.