Recently, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology disclosed the appearance and series configuration of Xiaomi first electric car SU7. It is positioned as a pure electric coupe and is divided into two models: standard version and high-end version. The high-end version is further divided into Pro and Max models. Among them, the standard version is equipped with lithium iron phosphate batteries produced by BYD Fudi Battery, and the high-end version is equipped with ternary lithium batteries produced by CATL.
It is worth noting that Xiaomi has taken over the assembly process of the standard version of the battery pack, while for the high-end version of the battery pack, CATL is responsible for everything from monomer production to assembly production.
“Assembly” is the general term for a system of parts and components that form a series of products into a whole to achieve a specific function. Automotive industry analyst Lin Song pointed out to Alphabet Analysis that this may mean that Xiaomi has carried out extensive customization work in the process of cooperating with BYD Fudi batteries. “It is not ruled out that Xiaomi will increase its charging rate in the field of mobile phone batteries.”, thermal management and other experiences can be transferred to the car battery to improve the cruising range of the standard version.”
Along with the appearance, Xiaomi Auto’s OEM issues were also disclosed. Although foreign media broke the news in August this year that Xiaomi had successfully obtained the qualification to produce electric vehicles, according to information disclosed by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, Xiaomi is still taking the OEM route at this stage. The OEM is BAIC Group Off-Road Vehicle Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of BAIC. company. Based on this, the logo on the left side of the Xiaomi car is “Beijing Xiaomi” instead of directly stamping the word “Xiaomi” like Li Auto.
However, the difference from Weilai seeking JAC OEM is that Xiaomi first electric car SU7 is produced by Xiaomi’s factory. Lin Song said that the main reason for this situation may be that Xiaomi’s automobile production qualifications have not yet been approved. “When the (production) qualifications are approved, the word Beijing will disappear from the car tail emblems, similar to Leap motor and Yangtze River.” cooperate.”
After lifting the veil above, Xiaomi Motors still has many questions to answer.
The pricing issue that the outside world is most concerned about is still full of variables at the moment – whether it will be as high as 300,000 yuan or more, as disclosed by former car circle bloggers, or whether it will be controlled by 200,000 yuan or even 200,000 yuan to make friends with young people. the following?
Compared with Wei Xiaoli’s tens of billions of financing, how can Xiaomi Motors, which relies solely on Xiaomi’s blood transfusions, ensure a steady flow of capital investment? Especially considering that the global smartphone market is in a continued downturn. Counterpoint data report shows that in the third quarter of 2023, global smartphone sales fell by 8% year-on-year, hitting the lowest level in the third quarter in ten years and marking the ninth consecutive quarter of decline.
When the main business of mobile phones reaches the bottleneck of revenue growth, Lei Jun, as the CEO of a listed company, inevitably has to find a balance between meeting the expectations of the capital market and continuing to invest in automobiles.
The above-unanswered questions all point to one issue in the final analysis, namely scale, which will test whether Xiaomi first electric car SU7 can become a hit.
In the field of sedans, the majority of sales come from models priced below 300,000 yuan. In the first 10 months of this year, the sales volume of cars with a price of more than 300,000 yuan was 793,000 units, accounting for 4.6%; the sales volume of cars with a price of less than 300,000 yuan was 7.354 million units, accounting for 42.6%.
Exchanging sales volume at low prices or even losses has become one of the main competitive strategies of current car companies. When the Zhijie S7 was unveiled in early November, Yu Chengdong said that the pre-sale price of 258,000 yuan was still a loss after multiple rounds of internal cost accounting. The team planned to “turn losses into profits as the scale later increases.”
If he doesn’t want to sell cars at a loss through price wars like Yu Chengdong, there is now a clearer hot-selling methodology in front of Lei Jun, which is to learn from Li Xiang and create extended-range models.
One
After crossing over into the automotive field, among the electric car companies that can currently make money, there are only three that Lei Jun can learn from – Tesla, BYD, and Ideal. Lei Jun has missed the best opportunity to learn from Tesla’s brand first-mover advantage; BYD’s vertical integration model will be difficult for Lei Jun to imitate for a while. In comparison, only the ideal extended-range route can be put into practice directly by Lei Jun now.
It is by fully betting on the range extension route that Ideal’s gross profit margin reached 22% in the third quarter, second only to BYD’s 22.1% in the same period, and far exceeding Tesla’s 17.9% in the same period.
Before 2023, the outside world often questioned the backward extended-range technology. With the sales of a number of extended-range models headed by Ideal, the rapidly growing market share has gradually overshadowed all doubts.
According to data from the Passenger Car Association, since 2021, the growth rate of hybrid models, including extended-range products, has begun to exceed that of pure electric models, and has continued to this day. From January to October 2023, the sales of hybrid models increased by 79.5% year-on-year, much higher than the 17.3% of pure electric models in the same period.
The outbreak of Huawei’s new M7 has undoubtedly added fuel to the promising prospects of the extended range route. Since its launch on September 12, the cumulative number of Wenjie’s new M7 has exceeded 90,000 units so far. Compared with Wenjie’s plummeting monthly sales of 3,000 to 5,000 vehicles this year, Yu Chengdong couldn’t help but sigh that the new M7 is bringing Wenjie back to life.
In addition to taking the route of extending the distance, Yu Chengdong also prepared cost-effective trump cards in advance . The starting price of Wenjie’s new M7 is 249,800 yuan, which is 40,000 yuan lower than the old model. It also comes with a 33,000 yuan car purchase right. When combined, its starting price is 70,000 yuan and 14,000 yuan lower than the best-selling five-seater SUVs on the market, the Ideal L7 and Tesla Model Y, respectively.
More and more car companies are beginning to regard extended-range models as a good way to rejuvenate brand sales. Outside the industry, new forces such as Leapmotor have also launched extended-range products. Changan and Geely, among traditional car companies, have also launched extended-range products. It has also developed extended-range versions of its electric brands Deep Blue and Galaxy.
After more and more car companies turn to the range-extended route, Li Xiang recently stated that those independent brands that “still insist on multi-speed plug-in hybrids will all switch to the range-extended technical route in the next one or two years.
Two
With extended-range models, while Li hopes to achieve multiple quarterly profits through scale, those start-up car companies that insist on skipping the extended-range transition route and focusing on pure electric vehicles are all still struggling with losses without exception.
Although the sales of car companies such as Weilai and Xiaopeng that are betting on the pure electric route are also rising month by month, along with the growth in scale are the further expansion of losses of these car companies. As of the first half of this year, NIO’s net loss exceeded 10 billion yuan, reaching 10.93 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 139.1%. Xpeng’s net loss in the first half of the year was 5.14 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 16.82%. In contrast, Ideal made a huge profit of 3.24 billion yuan in the first half of the year.
The former “Wei Xiaoli” has been replaced by “Li Xiaowei” in terms of sales volume and market value. In the recently updated October sales, the sales of Lideal, Xpeng and NIO were 40,422, 20,002 and 16,074 respectively. As of the close of U.S. stocks on November 16, the market values of Ideal, Xpeng, and NIO were US$41.2 billion, US$14.5 billion, and US$13.2 billion respectively.
The “scale effect” that played a role in Ideal did not appear simultaneously in Weilai and Xiaopeng in the same period. The latter two even fell into the vicious circle of “diseconomies of scale” – as car models increased and sales increased, Not only were costs not reduced, but losses were further expanded.
Jiang Yi, an investor who pays attention to new energy vehicles, told Alphabet that the early construction, operation and maintenance of infrastructure such as charging piles has become one of the factors that widens the profit gap between Ideal, Weilai and Xiaopeng. This is one of the reasons why Li Xiang gave up the pure electric version at the beginning and only made extended-range models. Ideal ONE was initially planned to have two versions: extended range and pure electric. However, after a comprehensive evaluation, faced with the two major problems of difficulty in charging pure electric models and high battery costs, Li Xiang decisively bet on the extended range route.
Under the pressure of continuous losses, entering 2023, Weilai and Xiaopeng have launched new rounds of financing. In June this year, Weilai received a strategic investment of approximately US$1.1 billion from CYVH Holding, an investment institution in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. In July, Xpeng Motors received an investment of approximately US$700 million from Volkswagen.
In addition to seeking external financing to strengthen cash flow, NIO and Xiaopeng are also strengthening cost reduction control and taking the lead in the direct operation model.
In September this year, “Late Auto” broke the news that in addition to insisting on the direct sales model of NIO’s main brand, it is trying to introduce a dealer model for its sub-brand Alps to share store construction and operating costs. Xiaopeng even took the initiative to close some inefficient direct-operated stores, reopened the franchise authorization of dealers, and turned to vigorously develop the dealer system.
If we insist on taking the pure electric route, Lei Jun does not see any possibility of avoiding the loss-making path that Weilai and Xiaopeng have gone through in the early stage of infrastructure construction. Especially considering that Xiaomi set the iron rule that the net profit margin of comprehensive hardware should not exceed 5% as early as 2018, the investment pressure Lei Jun will face by then will only be a lot more.
Three
As one of the representative players of the new forces, Lei Jun showed signs of researching his ideals when he officially announced the construction of a car in 2021.
Ideal is positioned as an SUV. In addition to the extended-range model, it has also pioneered interior interiors such as four-screen interaction and in-car refrigerators. It has even attracted external ridicule: What Ideal sells is not cars, but refrigerators, color TVs, and large sofas.
Installing home appliances in the car is also what Lei Jun dreams of Xiaomi cars being like. In a live broadcast one month after announcing the creation of a car, in April 2021, Lei Jun gave a set of examples: Why can’t today’s cars integrate a fresh air air-conditioning function to avoid carbon monoxide poisoning in the car? Why can’t I install a humidifier to solve the problem of dry air? Why can’t air conditioners integrate air purifier functions to solve smog? Why can’t we just drink a glass of ice water in the summer?
“Many companies are thinking about how to put these things into cars, and Xiaomi plans to put them directly into cars…” Lei Jun was high-spirited at the time, saying, “Our first battle will be the decisive battle. When Xiaomi releases a car (in 2024), it will be It represents the cutting-edge technology and cutting-edge level at that time.”
As the sales and profits of Ideal have increased simultaneously with the support of the extended program, Lei Jun has taken another step forward in his research on Ideal. In October this year, 36Kr PowerOn broke the news that Xiaomi Motors has decided to develop extended-range electric vehicles, and on its official website, Xiaomi has released recruitment requirements for extended-range system design and development engineers and other related positions.
In addition to pure electric vehicles, the addition of extended-range routes may also be related to Lei Jun’s hope to achieve scale as soon as possible. Lei Jun previously set a sales target for Xiaomi Motors of 100,000 units in the first year and a cumulative delivery of 900,000 units in the next three years.
According to predictions by Tianfeng International Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, after Xiaomi’s first model is Xiaomi first electric car SU7 launched on the market in 2024, shipments are expected to be 50,000-60,000 units. The remaining 40,000-unit difference may need to be made up by extended-range products.
However, in the face of increasingly fierce competition in the new energy vehicle market, Lei Jun, who wants to get a share of the extended-range market, may have to speed up his pace.
When He Xiaopeng made the “painful choice” to abandon the range extension route in 2020, the reason He Xiaopeng gave was that it would take at least three years for Xiaopeng to make achievements in the hybrid field, and it would need to wait until around 2023. The dynamic value is still very strong, but “it’s not necessarily true if you look back, it will gradually fade in 2024 and 2025. At the same time, it will also bring different challenges due to different technical routes.”
If he wants to embark on this gradually narrowing and extended route, Lei Jun still needs to race against time.
See More:
Tesla Unveils Wireless Home Charger; A-Share Companies Join the Race
Honda e:NS2 Redefines Imagination as Dongfeng Powers into the “Pure Electric Era”
New Honda Prologue Makes Its Debut: Is It Over Before It Even Begins
2025 Volvo EX30 Best SUV: Announces Pricing for Starting Within 300,000
