149 thousand. No way! The black technology of Xiaomi Automobile has come, and where is the market position？
Report from Jiwei. com (Text/Dusha) Following the official announcement of the "Xiaomi Automobile Technology Conference" on December 25th, Lei Jun has written more than one eye-catching essay a day, and on December 27th, he also published a sincere tribute blog post: "We are well aware of the complexity of the automobile industry, and we are well aware of the hard-won development, and sincerely pay tribute to pioneers such as BYD, Weilai, Tucki, Ideality and Huawei", and in Beijing and Shanghai.
At 14 o’clock on the afternoon of December 28th, 1003 days after the announcement of entering the smart electric vehicle industry, the first press conference of Xiaomi Automobile was finally grandly opened. Although as early as December 25, Xiaomi Auto officially said that this conference only talked about technology, not products. However, at the press conference site, the "pre-press conference" of Xiaomi SU7 was also held simultaneously, involving product information including appearance, interior, space, power and safety. The first car is positioned as a "C-class high-performance eco-technology car" to achieve the ultimate performance of high performance, eco-technology and smart space experience, and to build the first choice of the elite of the times and the top benchmark of science and technology and humanities.
Because the release of Xiaomi car will take several months, the price that has attracted much attention has not been announced, but according to the configuration and information disclosed intentionally or unintentionally, Lei Jun’s words are proved, "Xiaomi SU7 is indeed a bit expensive, but it makes sense", and the scene has been compared with Porsche Taycan Turbo and Tesla Model S. When talking about the configuration of power batteries at the scene, Lei Jun quipped that the cost of the 101-kilowatt-hour power batteries currently carried is more than 100,000, and the price of similar power systems on the market is more than 400,000, so 149,000 is impossible. In fact, judging from the portrait of Xiaomi SU7 configuration, its price is hard to be lower than 200,000.
Then, before the official price is further announced, let’s take a look at what black technologies Xiaomi SU7 is equipped with.
At the whole press conference, Lei Jun unveiled five core technologies, including electric drive (motor), battery, large die casting, intelligent driving and intelligent cockpit.
Xiaomi Automobile Motor overtook Tesla, and the established Xiaomi Super Motor Project has an expert team of more than 100 people, and cooperated with suppliers such as Huichuan. At the same time, by using AI technology, it successfully developed a motor with a speed of 21,000 at the end of 2022, surpassing Tesla. At this stage, the millet motors V6 and V6s have been mass-produced, and the first millet car will be equipped with the millet motors V6 and V6s, with performance comparable to Porsche and Tesla.
What’s more, Lei Jun released the third motor V8s developed by Xiaomi at the scene, with a speed of 27,200. It is also the top motor in the world at present, and its rotor is made of ultra-high strength silicon steel, which will get on the bus in 2025.
In terms of batteries, Xiaomi launched the 871V silicon carbide high-voltage battery pack jointly developed by thousands of people with Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Limited, which took two years to overcome many difficulties, and Xiaomi built its own battery pack factory. At the same time, in order to ensure battery safety and improve vehicle efficiency, we developed the world’s first CTB battery inversion technology, designed it according to the most stringent battery safety standards, and equipped it with powerful thermal management technology, with the goal of "challenging the king of batteries in winter".
Since Tesla started the large-scale die casting, this wave has quickly swept the entire automobile industry. Xiaomi Automobile also hopes to reshape automobile manufacturing with industrial behemoths, and launch super die-casting of Xiaomi, reaching the maximum locking force of 9,100 t, exceeding the locking force of 9,000 t in Tesla’s newly completed factory in the United States. The driving force of industrial behemoths often comes from the innovation of the underlying materials. Therefore, Xiaomi independently developed Titan alloy materials, which is also the only car factory in China that has mass-produced self-developed alloy materials. Based on innovative technology, it introduced the 72-in-1 integrated die-casting floor, which reduced the welding points of the whole car by 840, reduced the noise in the car by 2dB and reduced the weight by 17%.
In the field of intelligent driving, the industry is particularly involved at present. Lei Jun bluntly said that Xiaomi is not afraid of rolling, and it is from small to large. Xiaomi’s goal is to enter the first camp in the industry in 2024. Its strength stems from Xiaomi’s self-developed intelligent driving technology and three outstanding advantages. One is to insist on long-term investment. The total investment of Xiaomi in the first phase is 3.3 billion, which has been increased to 4.7 billion. The scale of the exclusive team exceeds 1,000, more than 200 vehicles have been put into test, and the test mileage exceeds 10 million kilometers. The second is the comprehensive empowerment of AI: Xiaomi AI Lab was established in 2016. After seven years of development, it currently has 3,000 AI engineers; The third is the self-developed underlying algorithm: Xiaomi’s new generation technology platform, which has BEV+Transformer+ occupation network and is fully integrated into the big model.
Perception has always been the key in intelligent driving. In order to break through the difficult problems in perception, adaptive zoom BEV technology, large road model and super-resolution occupation network technology constitute three key technologies of Xiaomi intelligent driving. These technologies can support a comprehensive leap in terms of visibility accuracy, perception accuracy and control accuracy, making cars "visible, accurate and understandable", making high-speed and urban intelligent driving more accurate and safer, and solving the existing problems of urban NOA, such as difficulty in crossing intersections.
In terms of hardware, the intelligent driving system is equipped with top-level configuration, including two NVIDIA Orin high computing power chips, with a comprehensive computing power of 508TOPS. The sensing hardware includes 1 lidar, 11 high-definition cameras, 3 millimeter-wave radars and 12 ultrasonic radars (Max version).
What’s more worth mentioning is that Xiaomi’s self-developed world’s first mass-produced end-to-end "perceptual decision-making model" has shown amazing strength in application scenarios such as mechanical warehouses. It combines perception-decision algorithm, real-time observation and dynamic adjustment of large models, which is the first time in the world to apply this technology to production vehicles.
As a field that Xiaomi is good at, the intelligent cockpit is also the last link of its strategy of "people and cars are all ecological". After 13 years of exploration, the Xiaomi 澎湃 OS developed in 7 years is highly anticipated for the first time. Based on Xiaomi 澎湃 OS, Xiaomi has built a unified visual interaction system, realizing a comprehensive sharing ecosystem from software to hardware. Through a series of bottom reconstruction such as intelligent cockpit, Xiaomi has laid a solid foundation for the evolution of cars.
Xiaomi’s intelligent cockpit adopts a "people-centered" interactive architecture, and is equipped with a 16.1-inch 3K ultra-clear central control panel, a 56-inch oversized HUD head-up display, a 7.1-inch flip instrument panel, and Xiaomi Pad, which can realize five-screen linkage. At the same time, in order to support the silky experience of the intelligent cockpit, Qualcomm Snapdragon 8295 cockpit chip is equipped.
Ecology is the key word of Xiaomi cockpit system. The intelligent cockpit has a strong application ecology, and the Xiaomi tablet application ecology can seamlessly get on the bus. At the same time, the mobile phone application Pin can be applied to the car, and the native application of the car can be changed in seconds. In addition, the Xiaomi cockpit system supports hardware ecological boarding, including the Mijia ecological non-inductive boarding, the central control large screen can be expanded, the center console can be expanded, and the seat back can be expanded.
Xiaomi also opened a unified standardized interface and enriched standard protocols, creating the strongest exclusive CarIoT ecosystem. The built-in CarIoT docking station supports the changeable access of a series of devices, including smart fragrance. Four groups of Pin point power supply communication design can expand physical keys. In order to meet the needs of Apple users, Xiaomi fully supports wireless CarPlay car, and provides exclusive accessories and exclusive applications for iPad on the rear expansion screen.
When it is about to close in 2023 and friends are fighting for the high-end smart electric market of 400,000 and above, Xiaomi Automobile will release Xiaomi SU7 real car with a vision. Lei Jun said that the automobile industry has been more than 100 years, and there is no shortcut to the track for a hundred years. Xiaomi decided to invest ten times, start with the underlying core technology, seriously build a good car, and through 15 to 20 years of efforts, become the top five automobile manufacturers in the world, and strive for the all-round rise of China’s automobile industry.
However, it is conceivable that when Xiaomi enters the automobile market, the challenges it faces are greater than those of the previous new car-making forces, and the competition in each segment of the track can be called bloody rain. In 2024, the price war is expected to continue in the industry. Therefore, when Xiaomi comes, it is bound to face the quagmire of price scuffle, and the longer-term problem for Xiaomi is, where is the market position? (Proofreading/Zhu Zhilei)
