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Lei Jun's fifth annual speech opened in Beijing on July 19. Like the past four annual speeches, Lei Jun spent more than an hour giving a speech and also spent more than an hour explaining a number of new products.

If we only focus on the car-related content, apart from the Xiaomi SU7 Ultra prototype that was announced at the end, the only thing that really arouses our interest is the more than one-hour speech session. Different from the Xiaomi Automobile Technology Conference and the Xiaomi SU7 Launch Conference, Lei Jun mainly reviewed his three years of car-making experience and mental journey this time.

It is certain that every car company that occupies a certain market share has a hard time and has its own car-making story, but they rarely disclose it. On the other hand, Xiaomi Auto has only been officially announcing its car-making for more than three years, but it has disclosed its journey so early. Is this necessary? And what effect can such a speech have?

"Passion" is the underlying logic of Xiaomi, and car manufacturing is no exception

Lei Jun said that on January 15, 2021, Xiaomi encountered "US sanctions", and the most critical issue at the time was: If Xiaomi cannot make mobile phones, what will be Xiaomi's next move?

existNIOFounder Li Bin andXpeng MotorsAfter the strong persuasion of founder He Xiaopeng, Xiaomi's car manufacturing was put on the agenda.Lei Jun said frankly that if faced with the huge impact of "US sanctions", Xiaomi would not have rashly entered the automotive industry, and there would be no Xiaomi SU7 today.

In March 2021, Lei Jun announced that Xiaomi would build a car, and Lei Jun personally led the team to invest $10 billion to fight for Xiaomi Automobile. Once the news was announced, netizens were looking forward to it - "I will definitely win the battle against Xiaomi in the future."Tesla"Of course, there are also voices of doubt and complaints."Apple has failed to make cars in ten years, so why can Xiaomi do it in three years?" "Let alone compared with traditional brands, Xiaomi is now six or seven years behind new car manufacturers. Will the cars it makes by then be able to sell well? Moreover, different industries are like different mountains. Can Lei Jun, who has no experience in car manufacturing, make a good car?"

In response to such doubts, Lei Jun said that the automobile industry is a century-long race, and as long as you really want to do it, any time is the best time to start. However, Xiaomi is different from other new brands. It does not raise funds independently or go public independently, but chooses to take all risks on its own.

At the most difficult R&D stage, Lei Jun decided to build the more difficult pure electric sedan first.At the Xiaomi Auto Technology Conference at the end of last year, Lei Jun spent an hour and a half talking about technologies such as motors, large-scale die-casting, intelligent driving, and battery packs. However, the essence of this hour and a half is the proof of Xiaomi Auto's firm investment. Although the shipment speed is not as fast as finding a OEM, at least all the core technologies are in their own hands.

What impressed Xiaotong the most was that Lei Jun often test-drove vehicles in order to enrich his car knowledge and driving experience, and even passed the racing license test and learned how to drift. At the key points of car development, Lei Jun said he would personally participate in winter testing, summer testing, and long-distance testing.

The automobile market has long been full of extremely powerful players. In the three years since Xiaomi started making cars, the domestic automobile market has changed many times. Many new forces and even traditional brands have withdrawn from the market one after another, leaving Xiaomi Automobile with fewer and fewer opportunities.

If other people were to lead Xiaomi Auto, they would most likely choose the path of quickly recovering funds. There would be no need to rely on the racetrack and personally participate in the testing of car research and development. However, it was Lei Jun's willingness to experience these seemingly unnecessary links that allowed Xiaomi SU7 to have not only the advantages of performance parameters, but also sufficient driving pleasure. This subjective feeling cannot be experienced if you do not have the experience of intense driving.

In fact, Lei Jun spent more than an hour talking about his "love" for the automotive industry, car-making projects, and even cars themselves. Outsiders may wonder, is it really worth it to go to such great lengths to talk about such a simple thing?

There is no doubt that this is very important. When Xiaomi launched its smartphone at the beginning of its business, its slogan at the time was "Born for Enthusiasts", which was also an alternative interpretation of Lei Jun's love for the smartphone industry. From the perspective of a "fundamentalist",For Lei Jun, making cars is as much a primal impulse as making mobile phones. Only by emphasizing this can Lei Jun make the outside world believe that Xiaomi can make good cars.。

From the results, the orders of Xiaomi SU7 exceeded expectations, and the reputation also surpassed most products of the same price. This is also the best compliment of Lei Jun's "passion" from the market feedback. From another perspective, it is natural to understand why other car companies rarely "tell stories" in public. After years of development and mature products, they have enough persuasiveness in the market and can gain the basic trust of the market without telling stories.

Xiaomi is not the only one telling stories, but there are not many car companies that can tell stories.

Looking at other domestic car companies, there are almost no car companies like Lei Jun who are willing to spend a lot of time telling brand stories. Every new product launch conference will focus on the product's technology and competitiveness.

According to Xiaotong's experience of attending multiple car launch conferences, Xiaomi Auto is not the only one willing to tell stories, but executives of other companies do not spend as much time telling stories, or only say a few simple sentences.

Obviously, no matter which company's press conference it is, the speech script is not Freestyle. It has to go through layers of screening and multiple revisions before it becomes a speech script. The reason why other car companies deliberately reduce the length of the car-making story is actually very simple: once the scale of the story is not well grasped, it is easy for consumers to think that it is "official selling of misery", which will affect the brand's market reputation and even make the efforts of the new product go to waste.

RememberZhiji L6During the pre-sale conference, the official made a critical labeling error. The official apologized to Xiaomi several times that night, but in Xiaotong's opinion,Zhiji AutoWhat has caught the whirlpool of public opinion is not this point, but the official "car-making story".

"Some of our classmates even missed the birth of their own children." "One of our friends tested positive four times in a short period of time, but he still stayed at the front line of work." "Some of our classmates sent their children to boarding schools and only saw them once a week."

Such words of sacrificing one's life to build a car will indeed move the employees within the brand, but unfortunately it did not resonate with the majority of consumers. After a whirlpool of public opinion, Zhiji L6 stopped telling stories and benchmarking against Xiaomi during the launch conference.

To be fair, the product strength of Zhiji L6 is not weak. The necessary safety and comfort configurations have been standard for the entire series, and the entry-level version has come standard with a high-end intelligent driving system for highways and urban roads. More importantly, solid-state batteries are mass-produced for the first time. It is not an exaggeration to describe Zhiji L6 as "bringing a technological turning point to the pure electric vehicle market."However, there are too many products to choose from in the current mainstream market segments, and consumers tend to choose models with stronger brand power. Once car companies are trapped in the vortex of public opinion, they may have to spend several times more energy and financial resources to break through the difficulties.

Lei Jun has given five annual speeches. Why is it that the Internet does not generally believe that Lei Jun's "three years of hard work in building a car" is "selling misery"? Obviously, this is mainly due to Lei Jun's high popularity. His entrepreneurial story in the field of science and technology is well known to many users, especially when he first entered the mobile phone field, he attracted a large number of fans with the high cost-effectiveness of 1999 yuan.

In Xiaotong's opinion, the "summary-style miserable selling" is the main reason why Lei Jun's annual speech was not criticized but attracted fans.Take the 2024 annual speech as an example. From the official announcement of Xiaomi's car manufacturing at the end of March 2021 to the present, Lei Jun has basically not revealed the difficulties of car manufacturing. It was not until Xiaomi SU7 was recognized by the market that he summarized the experience of the past three years. If Lei Jun spent a long time explaining the difficulties of Xiaomi's car manufacturing at the Xiaomi Auto Technology Conference or the Xiaomi SU7 launch conference, the market performance would probably be greatly reduced.

Farewell to the era of "low-key car manufacturing"

In the more than half a year since the Xiaomi Automobile Technology Conference was held, Lei Jun has been very active in marketing in the automotive field. From the "billionaire CEO opened the door for me" when the product was delivered, to the "visit" at the Beijing Auto Show, to the live broadcast of the Xiaomi SU7 Pro's smart driving and endurance test, Lei Jun quickly attracted extremely high traffic for Xiaomi Automobile.

This time, the keynote speech was ostensibly about Lei Jun's three-year experience in car manufacturing, but in essence it was still a marketing activity. In terms of sales, Xiaomi Auto has achieved outstanding results, but due to limited production capacity, users who have locked orders now still need to wait half a year to pick up the car. Xiaotong recently visited Xiaomi Auto's direct stores and found that the offline popularity of Xiaomi Auto is indeed not as high as before. Even a strong company like Xiaomi Auto needs marketing to maintain market popularity.

If you think about it carefully, since new brands such as NIO, Xpeng and Li Auto have gradually established a foothold in the domestic new energy market, the number of marketing events in which executives of car companies have personally participated has gradually increased. For example, Li Bin personally tested the battery life of a large battery, He Xiaopeng went to the United States to experience Tesla's FSD, and Wei Jianjun also created the "Wei Jianjun's Weekend" live broadcast column... With many executives personally participating, the automotive industry is no longer low-key.

To outsiders, it may seem that the automotive industry is gradually pursuing "traffic is king", but in fact, car companies are gradually getting rid of the role of "pure science and engineering men", which is more conducive to resolving consumers' doubts about brands and products, and can also increase the stickiness between car companies and users.

At the same time, we need to realize that "marketing" will be the biggest difference between Xiaomi and other car companies. It's not that other car companies don't have marketing departments, but they don't have a top figure like "Lei Jun". Through my personal speech on July 19, I have realized that Xiaomi-style marketing built around Lei Jun will be the biggest advantage of Xiaomi cars besides products. Lei Jun's good Internet image and excellent speaking ability are almost impossible for other car companies to copy. This is why other car companies have always imitated Xiaomi SU7 intentionally or unintentionally since it became popular in the market, but in the end they can only end up with a poor imitation.

With the combination of "marketing" and "products", we can no longer view Xiaomi Auto as a "dark horse". It will be a very formidable opponent for the entire industry. Although Xiaomi Auto's current market position is still a long way from Lei Jun's claim of "entering the top five in the industry", it does have the potential to compete for such a title.