Xiaomi builds a car: I had a long dream and caught a late episode.

Xiaomi, who didn't catch up with the early collection, is not easy to occupy a place in the market in the face of many competitors.

On 2021February 19, a news that Xiaomi decided to build a car triggered fluctuations in the capital market. The share price of Xiaomi Group (stock code: HK0 18 1) once rose by more than 12% in intraday trading, with a closing increase of 6.42%.

In fact, it is not the first time that the rumor about Xiaomi building a car is not groundless. Previously, Xiaomi had repeatedly made it clear that "Xiaomi has no plan to build a car". "Everything that Xiaomi wants to build a car is fake news." Looking at this statement and reaction, there are some expectations and imaginations.

Lei Junren's Complex

As the founder of Xiaomi, Lei Jun, everyone is no stranger. A skilled person, a venture capitalist, he has advanced ideas, first-class vision and innovative spirit.

Lei Jun's complex about cars began many years ago. As early as 20 14 1 1 seven years ago, Shunwei Capital founded by Lei Jun invested in Weilai Automobile. It is said that he also visited Musk in Silicon Valley at that time, which shows that he was really forward-looking. Since then, he has also invested in another car company, Xpeng Motors.

Building a car is not a unique business activity of a technology company. In recent years, many technology giants have entered. There was LeTV that had been planned for several years before, followed by mobile phone giants such as Apple, Samsung and Huawei, as well as Internet giants BTA (Ali, Tencent and Baidu), as well as Sony and Foxconn.

It can be said that in the automotive field, Xiaomi had a foresight, just waiting and seeing, and did not really set foot in it. Lei Jun, the founder of Xiaomi, is only involved in the automobile industry as a strategic investor.

Why do technology companies love to build cars and cross the border?

A recent news cannot but arouse our deep thought and vigilance.

Lifan's first "Production and Marketing Express" this year shows that in June this year, Lifan produced 105 new energy vehicles, up 600% year-on-year; Sales 107 vehicles, up 6 13.33% year-on-year. In sharp contrast, traditional passenger cars 12 were produced in June 5438+ 10, a year-on-year decrease of 91.6%; Sold 1 car. It decreased by 98. 18% compared with the same period of last year.

In a month, the ratio of 107 to 1 is amazing. This trade-off also reflects a current situation in the automobile market: smart cars have a strong momentum, while the sales of traditional cars have fallen sharply. Therefore, Lifan leans towards the new energy electric vehicle industry through restructuring.

"Smart cars are another epoch-making subversion after smart phones, but their scale influence and market increment will far exceed that of mobile phones. In the context of the new' new four modernizations', the upgrade of EE architecture will drive the value focus of the automobile industry from hardware to software, and the rules of the industry game will be redefined, which will bring epic opportunities. " This is a passage in the investment report of Anxin Securities.

"The development of smart cars and smart phones is very similar. They are all epoch-making products under the wave of mobile internet, and they all follow the development path of' interactive change-architecture upgrade-ecological evolution'. The smart phone subverts the traditional function machine key interaction mode, gives users a brand-new touch experience, and realizes a gorgeous turn from communication tools to universal "scene tools"; Smart cars have also recreated this path, taking the car cockpit as a breakthrough. Through the reform of intelligent instruments and automatic driving, the role of car driving has changed from a traditional means of travel to a' mobile third space' enjoyed by * * *. " This is how the report describes it.

It is not difficult to understand why technology giants like Lei Jun, especially the winners of the smart phone revolution such as Apple, Samsung, Huawei and Xiaomi, should actively deploy and cross the border into the smart car industry. There is no doubt that perhaps the backward pace will make the development opportunities of the industry miss. After all, the market is big enough and the future is bright.

A new force in making cars.

There are certain similarities in history. Apple, a rising star in the mobile phone industry, killed the old overlord Nokia. Today, this iteration and change may be taking place in the automotive industry.

"The transformation of the automobile industry has opened a time window for the adjustment of the automobile industry chain and the expansion of the ecological circle. A new track has been set up and a new marathon has begun. " On February 20th, Li Shufu said in an internal speech of Geely Group.

"The traditional automobile industrial chain is an industrial chain with electromechanical integration as the core; The new automobile industry chain is an ecosystem industry chain formed by the integration of information, communication technology and mechatronics. In this sense, car companies are transforming into software companies. "

From this passage, it is not difficult to see Geely's sense of crisis as a member of traditional car companies.

"The new force must be the future. The new force to build a car is Apple, and the traditional car is Nokia. " It is still too early to say this, but Xiaomi has to talk about its competitors if he wants to build a car.

Let's start with Baidu, which entered the automobile industry as a vehicle manufacturer. In June this year, 65438+ 101,Baidu and Geely Holding held hands to jointly set up a smart electric vehicle company, aiming at the passenger car market. Baidu held 5 1% and Geely held 49%. On February 18, Li Yanhong said that he has completed the formation of a new brand and the first executive, and will launch a brand-new intelligent electric vehicle within three years.

As we all know, Baidu, as a search engine, has accumulated a lot in cloud computing and search, and has been deeply involved in the fields of autonomous driving, car networking and high-precision maps for many years. In the future, Baidu will apply intelligent technologies such as artificial intelligence, APOLLO autopilot, Baidu map, and small cars to smart electric vehicles.

Let's talk about apples. On February 3rd, according to South Korea's East Asia Daily, Apple will invest 4 trillion won (about 3.6 billion US dollars) in Kia Motors and cooperate with Kia in its Georgia factory to produce electric vehicles.

In addition, Ali, SAIC and Zhangjiang Hi-Tech jointly built Zhi Zhi Automobile; Huawei joins hands with Changan and Contemporary Ampere Technology Co., Ltd..

Of course, the most worth mentioning is Tesla. Tesla built an epoch-making smart car with a business model similar to "Apple". Li Xiang, the founder of Li, once commented that "Tesla is the only smart car in the world." Because it is based on software+hardware, with the OTA of the whole vehicle as the bridge, it realizes the continuous upgrading and common use of the car, and really upgrades the car from a "function machine" to a "smart machine".

Using software, Tesla realizes the update of in-vehicle infotainment system, and extends it to FOTA upgrade in core areas such as automatic driving, body control and battery management, thus improving the vehicle's own performance. More importantly, the profit model of software service charging is realized, that is, software application store and advanced connection service charging.

It is Tesla's success that makes the outside world see the hope of software-defined smart cars, which is also an important reason why the capital market spares no effort to give new forces to build cars a super high premium.

In 2020, the market value of Tesla increased by 7 times, and the highest increase of Weilai Automobile was as high as 14 times. Even the shares of Xpeng Motors and Li, which went public in 2020, have soared, with the highest increase of 300% compared with IPO. It can be seen that the outside world has given great affirmation to the future of the new energy automobile industry.

What are the advantages of Xiaomi?

On the 10th anniversary of Xiaomi, Lei Jun proposed to upgrade the "mobile phone AIOT" strategy, and intelligent electric vehicles are undoubtedly the next growth pole.

Of course, technology companies have their advantages in the cross-border car market, which refers to software rather than hardware. For example, Tencent is a supplier of smart car networking solutions. Huawei provides "three electricity" and chips for car companies.

In fact, the automotive software market is huge. According to McKinsey's forecast, the scale of the automotive software market will climb from $34 billion in 2020 to $84 billion in 2030, during which the CAGR will be 9%, exceeding the overall compound growth rate of the software market.

If Xiaomi builds a car, its resources are mainly in the following aspects:

According to the industry forecast, by 2025, many automobile OEMs are likely to sell cars at a price close to the cost price, mainly providing users with value through software.

Can smart cars be reduced to 65,438+10,000 yuan? Maybe not too far. On February 14, the media reported that Zhu Xiaotong, president of Tesla China, said that he was developing a cheaper model for the public, and the estimated retail price was only160,000 yuan. However, this statement has not been officially recognized by Tesla. However, securities analysts believe that Tesla still has a strong room to reduce orders by taking advantage of the superior cost control ability of the China factory, and the price of 6.5438+10,000 yuan is not nonsense.

Of course, Tesla will not hesitate to cut prices. Its intention is to grab market share and rely on software to make money. Since the release of 20 19, Tesla's autopilot software has obtained more than 3 billion miles of road data, which supports its fully automatic driving option package (FSD), and its price has also been rising all the way, from $5,000 to $ 1000, with an increase of 100%.

Back to the topic, what would happen if Xiaomi made a car? At present, new technology giants cross-border cars, mainly using the mode of alliance with old players.

"Huawei+Changan, Baidu+Geely, Ali +SAIC, Foxconn+Baiteng, Apple+Kia" are the alliance targets of the most active technology giants, namely technology giants+traditional car companies.

Although Xiaomi had experience in cost control and industry integration when making mobile phones before, the net profit rate was not high. In the third quarter of 2020, its net profit margin was 5.7%. It can be seen that if Xiaomi builds a car across borders, it does not have an advantage in hardware. It is the strength and accumulation of technology enterprises to seize the incremental markets such as intelligent car association, automatic driving and intelligent transportation.

At present, in Xiaomi's smart car map, Kailide, Weilai, Xpeng Motors and Taber have invested in the establishment of the "Xiaomi Automobile Alliance" to lay out car networking projects. If Xiaomi really wants to be in the smart car industry, it is not easy to catch up with the early collection and face many competitors and want to occupy a place in the market.