Since the Spring Festival of the Lunar New Year, Xiaomi has completed three consecutive denials of car building.
The strengths are "wait and see, not yet", "we are paying attention to, evaluating and studying the ecology of electric vehicles, but have not yet reached the stage of formal project approval", and "completely nonsense fake news."
But on the evening of March 30, at the Xiaomi spring new product launch, Lei Jun said, "I am willing to bet on all the achievements and reputation of my life to fight for Xiaomi cars."
For those who are concerned about this matter, Xiaomi's "breaking promise" is not surprising. As companies such as Baidu, Apple, Huawei, and ZTE are working hard on the auto market, whether they are unwilling to resign or seeking transformation, new energy vehicles are a fascinating choice for Xiaomi.
01
Weakness in the smartphone market is beginning to appear
Data show that global smartphone shipments will be 1.24 billion units in 2020, a decrease of 8.8% compared with 2019. Annual shipments have almost returned to 2014 levels. This is the third consecutive year that global mobile phone shipments have declined since 2018.
It can be seen that the saturation of the mobile phone market is very obvious.
And Xiaomi’s old rival Apple Huawei, which started recruiting automotive engineers as early as 2016, has reserved a large number of related patents, and its autonomous driving technology is becoming more mature.
The other has already carried out technology research and development in areas such as operating systems, autonomous driving platforms, self-developed chips, lidar, smart cockpits, and three-electric technology. The technologies involved cover all aspects of smart electric vehicles. Can provide a complete vehicle solution.
To go all the way to the end is not a wise choice for Xiaomi, which needs to keep telling new stories.
02
Smart electric vehicles that ignite capital
In 2020, Tesla's market value will rise 7 times, with a market value of more than 800 billion U.S. dollars, once exceeding the combined market value of the world's nine largest automotive multinational companies. With annual sales of less than 50,000 vehicles, the market value of Weilai has soared 17 times a year. The market value also exceeded 100 billion U.S. dollars at one time.
Obviously, investors believe that the automotive electronics industry will become another major development opportunity for the entire industry chain after home appliances, PCs and mobile phones.
At the same time, the once conceived form of "car + Internet" has changed to "Internet + car". In the future smart electric vehicle industry, technology companies will have more and more say. Therefore, after the news of a number of technology companies building cars, stocks rose accordingly.
Baidu’s share price soared after the first report of Baidu’s car building on December 15 last year, rising 67% within one month; on March 9 Huawei announced that it would jointly build cars with GAC Group. GAC’s A-shares rose short-term in the afternoon and closed at 10.99. Yuan; On February 23, after the rumors of Xiaomi making cars, the group’s share price rose linearly, and the increase once expanded to 10%; on March 26, the news of Xiaomi and Great Wall Motors’ joint venture came to light, Great Wall Motor’s share price directly rose by the limit, Xiaomi’s share price It rose by about 9% at one time.
It can be seen that in the eyes of capital market investors, the imagination of traditional industries has gradually narrowed, and it is a realistic choice to switch to smart electric vehicles.
03
The best admission window has come
There is a saying that Lei Jun built a car because he saw that the new energy vehicle companies he invested in that year had risen more than Xiaomi, so he suddenly had the urge to end the competition.
This is of course nonsense.
As stated in the innovation diffusion theory, the maturity of new technologies will only increase after the market share of innovative products reaches a certain proportion, supply chain costs begin to fall, consumption habits are successfully cultivated, and the ecosystem of peripheral products is improved. For smartphones, this node is the launch of iPhone4 in 2010. At that time, the market share of smartphones was 4%. In 2020, the market share of new energy vehicles is 4.1%. It can be said that this is the best time window to enter the smart electric vehicle industry.
04
"New car companies" still need to accept the "big test"
The new energy vehicle industry has unlimited potential, but this track is also becoming more and more crowded. In addition to new domestic car manufacturers such as Weilai, Xiaopeng, and Ideal, traditional car companies such as Mercedes-Benz, BMW, SAIC, and Toyota have also begun to make efforts. Coupled with the impact of Tesla's localization, industry competition has become increasingly fierce.
And we know that "car making" is a very money-burning industry. It can only burn money in a short period of time. It is impossible to return the cost, let alone profit. Take Tesla, the benchmark for new energy vehicles, as an example. It took 15 years from inception to becoming a Fortune 500 in the world. And Xiaomi only used it for nine years. The payback cycles of the two industries are quite different.
In the fierce competition of research and development, production, manufacturing, marketing, and service in the automobile industry, we must innovate and seek change, break boundaries, and seize consumers. In addition to tens of billions of huge sums of money, Xiaomi also needs to invest more.
