Not building a car is really not in line with Lei Jun’s character.
Editor’s note: This article is from the micro-channel public number “uncrowned Finance” (ID: wumiancaijing), Author: Chen Lang, Editor: Chen Jian, Design: Winter cloth.
Wei Lai and Xiaopeng “learned” from Xiaomi’s early community operation experience and fought fiercely with fans. Lei Jun, who is about to build a car in person, would regret being the “master” of Li Bin and He Xiaopeng?
Rumors of Xiaomi making cars are rampant.
On February 19th, Latepost said in a conclusive statement that Xiaomi had decided to build a car and regarded it as a strategic decision or led by Lei Jun himself. In this regard, Xiaomi did not resolutely deny, and the ambiguous response to “read the announcement later” further intensified people’s suspicion.
Although in the latest announcement, Xiaomi will respond to everyone with “the electric vehicle manufacturing business has not yet reached the formal project stage”, but everyone knows that Xiaomi cars are coming to us quickly.
The first car for young people?
Six years ago, there was a wave of high-tech companies building cars in China. With high oil prices, environmental pressures, and the pursuit of capital, countless entrepreneurs flocked to the new energy vehicle track. Weilai and Xiaopeng were both established in 2014. Jia Yueting also introduced the LeEco supercar concept in December of that year. Weimar Motors was established in 2015.
According to incomplete statistics, there were more than 500 new car-building competitors. After experiencing the big waves and scouring the sand, only a handful of survivors such as “Wei Xiaoli” and Weimar have been listed.
In recent years, another wave of technology companies building cars has quietly risen, and they are all heavyweights. Apple, Huawei, Ali, Foxconn, and Baidu are all on the list. For the time being, Xiaomi denies that it has built a car. In fact, as a major investor in Xiaopeng Automobile’s Series C financing in July 2019, it has already achieved curve-making cars as a major investor. Lei Jun’s Shunwei Capital also has a partial investment in Weilai strong>.
However, the status of a minority shareholder cannot satisfy his appetite, and Lei Jun has always wanted to build a car himself. It is reported that he visited Tesla CEO Musk twice in the United States in 2013. Before investing in Weilai, Lei Jun met at least 20 entrepreneurs who wanted to build cars.
After Xiaomi landed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, Lei Jun initiated a car-building plan called “micar” internally to conduct preliminary research. The Tianyancha APP shows that Lei Jun has reserved more than 800 automotive-related patents, as early as the middle of this year, and at the latest in the first half of next year.
Not building a car is really not in line with Lei Jun’s character. Before founding Xiaomi, Lei Jun’s business basically stayed on the unsatisfactory WPS, challenging MicrosoftQuan has remained on the fringe for many years. After the founding of Xiaomi, this evergreen tree in the Internet industry quickly became an octopus with tentacles everywhere.
Today, no one knows where the real boundaries of the Xiaomi line are, from mobile phones, power banks, watches, power strips, scooters, weight scales to luggage, mosquito repellents, even sports shoes, mattresses, pillows, Towels, Lei Jun’s commercial territory is all-encompassing.
▲The business layout of Xiaomi Group.
For a period of time, Xiaomi’s stock price was sluggish, and Lei Jun had to keep a low profile. Last year, under the stimulation of the technology stock bubble, Xiaomi also started to turn around. The stock price has risen about three times. Still imaginary fire.
What’s more, the popularity of new energy vehicles in the capital market makes Lei Jun unable to calm down what is hot and what to do.
Tesla and NIO’s stock prices have risen more than ten times in a year. In terms of market value, they rank respectively as the world’s largest and third-largest auto companies. The total market value of several listed companies is about US$1 trillion. The stock prices of some companies that haven’t produced a production car are also skyrocketing.
But is it really a good idea to go from “young people’s first smartphone” to “young people’s first car”?
How much pressure is Lei Jun to open the bow left and right?
Once the car is built, it means Lei Jun has opened a Pandora’s Box.
On the surface, every car company has a huge volume and is extremely glamorous, but from another perspective, the volume is based on investment. Before the improvement, Tesla lost billions of dollars, and A new domestic force, Weilai, is also not inferior. He once created the myth that he lost 40 billion yuan in three and a half years. Jia Yueting had to travel far away after LeTV was dragged down because of the black hole of car building.
Xiaomi will not be a fuel-efficient lamp. It is impossible to build a car with less money than competitors. A huge hole is inevitable.
In the third quarter of 2020, Xiaomi achieved revenue of 72.2 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 34.5%, adjusted net profit of 4.1 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 18.9%, and book cash and cash equivalents of 30.3 billion yuan. It looks pretty good, in fact, Xiaomi is still a serious player, smartphones are the absolute big head, IoT and consumer products that Lei Jun once placed aspirations, Internet services continue to be in the role of filling vacancies.
▲The revenue structure of Xiaomi.
Counterpoint data shows that from July to September last year, Xiaomi reached its highest ever shipment volume of 46.2 million, a surge of 75% from the previous month. After six years, it will return to the third position in the world. Lei Jun chanted “excited.” However, the report card is very watery. It is more accurate to say that Xiaomi has obtained it by strength, but it is more accurate to say that the sky is falling. At that time, Huawei was troubled by the supply chain, resulting in limited production capacity, continued decline in overseas sales, and continued to give up the market. Space, this has allowed Xiaomi, OPPO, vivo and other competitors to take advantage, especially Xiaomi.
With the independence of Honor phones and the restoration of Huawei’s supply chain, Xiaomi’s good fortune may soon be over. In the past, in order to avoid impact on the main brand, Honor will deliberately differentiate from Huawei in terms of product positioning and price strategy. After the two are separated, Huawei does not have to worry about Honor, Honor can also let go of its hands and feet, and the future mobile phone market may be even more bloody. wind. On the eve of the Internet of Everything era, the Internet of Things is also in the stage of massive investment.
Lei Jun is fighting in both the mobile phone and car manufacturing fields at the same time, and the pressure can be imagined.
When entering the mobile phone market, Xiaomi cut into Internet marketing with low prices or so-called cost-effectiveness, which hit many consumers’ pain points, but new energy vehicles did not leave Lei Jun with such opportunities.
BYD, GAC New Energy, BAIC and even Wuling firmly dominate the low-end market. In the mid-range market, Li Bin and He Xiaopeng again “learned” from Lei Jun’s experience, and played well. It is said that these were taught by Lei Jun himself. In the development process of Weilai and Xiaopeng Motors, he was deeply involved as an investor, especially the early Weilai copied Xiaomi’s community operation experience and gradually explored on this basis Show your own way of fan operation.
The challenge of latecomers
Compared with the two-line combat, it is even more difficult that Xiaomi also faces internal and external challenges.
In the past, Lei Jun always played the role of a crab eater. In terms of office software, Kingsoft WPS is the first batch of players in China, and Xiaomi is the first batch of Internet mobile phone brands in the mobile phone market. But when it comes to making cars, Xiaomi is an out-and-out latecomer.
Compared with Weilai, Xiaopeng, and Ideal, Lei Jun has lost all first-mover advantages. Even Huawei, Alibaba, Foxconn, and Baidu that entered the game almost at the same time are more terrifying. At the same time, the long-sleeping Volkswagen, General Motors, Ford When the traditional car giants have also woken up, they are all in all in new energy vehicles.
▲Global sales of electric vehicles.
What does Lei Jun use to compete with these competitors?
In 2015, the ambitious Xiaomi planned to complete the sales target of 80 million, but it suffered a severe setback and its morale plummeted. The main reason was that it had some trouble in the supply chain. The Xiaomi Mi 5, which Lei Jun highly valued, was dragged to February of the following year. It’s only on the market. Even if the new product is released, it will take a few months to get the goods. In the end, I have to replace a few veterans and reorganize them to gradually get back on track.
Compared to mobile phones, building a car is more difficult. Lei Jun must first pass the gate of the supply chain. There are as many as 100,000 components for traditional fuel vehicles, while electric vehicles are reduced to about 10,000. This is still a grand project.
Quality control is another insurmountable mountain.
From a new domestic car maker Wei to Xiaopeng and Ideal, each family has experienced spontaneous combustion and other crises, and Tesla is no exception. Not to mention that the recall of a model has caused a cliff-like decline in word-of-mouth, and the economic loss caused by it is also in the billions. At the end of 2019 and early 2020, Li Bin was once in desperation.
After the stock price rose sharply, the falsely high market value temporarily concealed the crisis of several major new energy vehicle brands, but it did not mean that it was completely resolved. As long as there is no major innovation in the current battery technology, this crater will always be there, and it may erupt at any time. All practitioners know this well. In this past winter, many electric car users have experienced a nightmare. The battery life was cut in half, the car broke down halfway, and wandered in the streets of minus ten degrees and twenty degrees. Many people vowed to return to the embrace of fuel vehicles.
No one can deny that new energy vehicles are the general trend, but no one knows when the new energy vehicles will usher in the real spring. Today, apart from Tesla, it can be said that it has achieved initial success. No other brands dare to say that they have gone ashore. Let’s sell sales to the break-even line.
Xiaomi ZhunAre you ready to face these?