Xiaomi's road to making cars: from exploration to investment to practice
In fact, as early as 20 13, Lei Jun intended to move closer to the field of electric vehicles. In the book Iron Man in Silicon Valley, we can learn that Lei Jun visited Musk twice. Lei Jun asked Musk: "Three years ago, when you planned to be an electric car, it was not so hot now. How did you see this opportunity? " Musk said that he never thought it was a good opportunity. The failure rate of this event is far greater than the success rate. He just thought it was the right thing to do and didn't want to wait for others to realize it.
Although many people in the industry later expressed that they were not optimistic about the field of new energy vehicles in their communication with Lei Jun, on 20 15 and 20 16, Lei Jun successively invested in Weilai Automobile and Xpeng Automobile through Shunwei Capital. At present, this choice is quite wise and correct.
By 20 18, Xiaomi Group successfully went public, began to explore the business content in all directions, and launched a car-making research project called "micar" internally. On 20 19, Xiaomi's decision-making layer made a car-making speech at the board meeting. The results of its research project show that the period from 20 19 to 2020 will be the best time to start the car-making plan, but Lei Jun still has concerns, and the car-making is put on hold, probably because he is worried about the tenth anniversary of Xiaomi in 2020 and missed the opportunity to enter the Red Sea.
20 19, 1 1, Xpeng Motors made a series C financing, and Xiaomi invested 50 million US dollars, but the car-making project is still on hold. In 2020, various new energy automobile companies made rapid progress. Tesla's market value once exceeded $700 billion, but Tucki, Weilai and Ideality, the three giants of new energy vehicles in China, are not to be outdone. Among them, Weilai's highest share price in 2020 once surpassed Xiaomi's, with an excellent increase, and was even dubbed by many netizens as "Three British Wars against Lu Bu". At the end of 2020, SAIC, Pudong New Area and Alibaba Group announced on the 26th that they would jointly build a brand-new smart electric vehicle brand "Smart Car", adding another point to the competition in the field of new energy vehicles. By 20021,although the date of Jia Yueting's return is still unknown, the FF car founded by him has gained 2 billion yuan of investment abroad. At the same time, Baidu is not to be outdone. In June this year, 65438+1October 1 1 announced the establishment of a smart car company and entered the car-making industry. Although Huawei helped enterprises build good cars before, among the major mobile phone companies in China, only Xiaomi is really planning to build a car.
Can building a car become the core business supporting Xiaomi?
I believe that at this time, many spectators have been able to understand that new energy vehicles are a hot field at present, but why Xiaomi chose to build cars is still unclear. For Huawei, in the face of the heavy blockade of the entity list, building a car may be a way out; For Apple, the car is a product that its former CEO Steve Jobs has long wanted to subvert; For Jia Yueting, successfully building FF cars and listing them is its only hope to pay off debts; For Xiaomi, building a car will be a major change, even a leap to change the business form.
In my opinion, although the development of Xiaomi is gratifying at present, and excellent products such as Xiaomi 10 Supreme Commemorative Edition and Xiaomi 1 1 are also emerging one after another, it is an indisputable fact that the development of the mobile phone industry is declining. The current mobile phone market is not like the past, and it has its own characteristics. Instead, it has begun to move closer to the barrel machine like Xiaomi 10 speed commemorative edition: the weight is more than 200g, and the screen is almost monopolized by Samsung. No matter how good the processor is, it still can't run Protogod on the mobile phone, and the problem of fever and frame dropping is everywhere. It can be said that the current mobile phone has reached a bottleneck period, and most mobile phones can meet daily needs. So what's the point of pursuing a higher level of breakthrough? Although mobile phone manufacturers are constantly looking for innovations and breakthroughs, such as retractable folding screen mobile phones and ring screen mobile phones, most of them are still on the road, and it is difficult to subvert the mobile phone industry simply by changing the form.
In my opinion, building a car has never been smooth sailing, not in the past and not in the future. Nowadays, countless internet companies have joined the ranks of car manufacturers, and the Red Sea market in the field of electric vehicles has begun to take shape. At present, Tucki, Weilai and Ideality have been listed one after another, which is not a good thing for Xiaomi who wants to enter the field of car making. If Xiaomi is officially established to build a car, the author thinks that its main core idea is likely to be consistent with the mobile phone business, that is, the pursuit of the ultimate cost performance. However, in today's new energy vehicle market, BYD leads in cost performance and has great experience advantages compared with many new energy vehicle brands. Even if these competitive pressures are put aside, it is still a question whether Xiaomi has a real core patent for making cars. Although Xiaomi applies for a large number of related patents every year, most of them are mainly concentrated in wireless communication network, digital data processing, digital information transmission, image communication, traffic control system, ranging, navigation and other fields. Although the valuation has exceeded $654.38 billion, it is still a mystery how Xiaomi, who lacks core technology, builds a car and cooperates with it.
The author believes that it is impossible to build a car overnight. Even though Xiaomi has been "preparing for war" for more than five years, it is still far from enough compared with other brands that are already gearing up. Not to mention that Tesla was just a PPT company at first. Even if the stock price now exceeds $700 billion, many people in the industry still think that the valuation is artificially high. For any internet company, building a car means investing a lot of money. As an excellent example, LeTV's empire collapsed in a few days. Building a car makes LeTV heavily in debt and difficult to maintain. Although the time has reached 202 1, the risk of building an electric car is much smaller than 20 15, but in the face of so many competitive brands, the overall risk has not decreased.
Xiaomi's operating data shows that the operating cash flow in 20 19 exceeded 20 billion, but the investment cash flow also reached more than 30 billion. If estimated according to this trend, the available cash flow of Xiaomi in 2020 may still be very small, not to mention the sharp increase in sales of Xiaomi in 2020, and its R&D investment is bound to be greater. Taking FF cars in Jia Yueting as an example, only five pre-production cars were produced by financing of 65.438+0.42 billion yuan. For Xiaomi, who is still in the development stage, the pressure is enormous, so the project of building a car is delayed.
abstract
Internet companies have built cars. Whether it's good or bad for us or unknown. However, according to the author's experience, the so-called Red Sea Car will eventually evolve into a technological war. Since Huawei launched the smart car solution brand Hi on June 30th, 2008, the news about "building a car" has never stopped. Although Huawei has repeatedly stressed that it will not really build a car, it is only responsible for providing some parts, and this year, 5 million cars will be pre-installed with Huawei HiCar and the logo marked Hi, but in my opinion, it is only a matter of time before Huawei chooses to build a car. After all, President Ren also said not to make a mobile phone.
For rising stars like Ali, Baidu, Apple and Xiaomi, it is still unknown whether building a car is a new border expansion or a shift in business focus. However, the new energy vehicle industry is bound to be a hot topic in the next few years, when more Internet companies will join in, and the already bustling new energy vehicle market will become more crowded, more "lively" and crazy. As far as Xiaomi's attempt is concerned, it may be a good thing. After all, who doesn't want to have a young man's first electric car?