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Written by / Windsor

edit / Huang Da Road

design / Shi Chao

"I am also puzzled. In the 140-year history of the automotive industry, I really didn't expect such an important product point to be missed by everyone."

Lei Jun, the founder, chairman and CEO of Xiaomi, who is all in on car manufacturing, always comes up with golden quotes every time he appears in public. This time, he was talking about car sun protection.

A problem that had not been discovered for 140 years was discovered by Lei Jun, who was building a car for the first time. Such a smart man who is good at thinking and observation saw more than that.

"All car manufacturers have not considered how to install mobile phone holders," "If you buy snail noodles for breakfast, where do you put them? If you buy soy milk and fried dough sticks, where do you hang them?"

So, after only 4 months in the industryXiaomi Motors, starting the return to basics mode, three new car parts came into being: mobile phone holder, storage hook, and sun-proof coating.

Perhaps it is because the technological content of the first two points is really difficult to support, Lei Jun said more about the sun protection of Xiaomi cars. In a live broadcast in May, he mentioned, "I also respectTeslaOwner, but I think weXiaomi SU7Compared to Tesla, the best thing about it is the sun protection.”

At the Xiaomi SU7 launch event in March, he emphasized the sun protection function. "When I was doing research, a female Tesla owner said that many female owners like this feel like they are sitting in an oven because it is too sunny in the summer."

Lei Jun, who has both an engineer's and a user's mindset, wanted to solve the problem. "We made double-layer silver coating on the skylight glass, and even triple-layer silver coating on the front windshield. This is the only one in the sedan today. We made UV-IR coating on all four doors. The UV isolation rate of this coating reaches 99.9%. How much lower can it be after one and a half hours? 12 degrees Celsius lower."

Is this enough? Others may be able to do it, but Xiaomi is not. "Many people say that they feel hot as long as the skylight is on. We have specially developed it..." Mr. Lei did not continue to speak. He even laughed. "We have to develop this."

When he said this, the PPT behind the big screen showed a panoramic skylight sunshade priced at 299 yuan and a Mi front windshield parasol priced at 129 yuan.

"We provide you with 360-degree protection from all angles." Lei Jun paused and continued. Coated glass + official sunshade equipment, a problem that no one in the automotive industry has discovered for 140 years, has it been solved just like that?

A woman who loves sun protection all her life bought half of Xiaomi

Straight men may not understand that sunscreen is a necessity for girls.

"If women want to resist aging, the key is to do a good job of sun protection." "For all skin problems, the first thing to do is to protect against the sun"... I don't know which expert's words have started the girls' strict defense against ultraviolet rays. In the streets in summer, you can always see people covering their faces so that only their eyes are left, and the sun protection clothes are getting longer and longer, reaching the ankles.

In order to avoid the sun, Chinese people bought bananas and became the first outdoor stock in the Chinese market; a survey by a research institution showed that by 2026, China's sun protection clothing market will grow to nearly 100 billion yuan.

Is sun protection really that important? "Before the Industrial Revolution, we all lived outside. How did we survive the Neolithic Age without sunscreen? Actually, we survived very well." David Leffell of Yale University believes that "the cosmetics industry is now trying to sell sunscreen to people with dark skin as a marketing strategy."

Whether sunscreen is a waste of money depends on aesthetic trends and personal choice, but what is certain is that cars need it.

Researchers say that after 60 minutes of exposure to the sun, the temperature of the car cabin and dashboard will rise to 60 degrees Celsius and 90 degrees Celsius respectively; after 90 minutes, the car can cook steak. After 10 minutes of exposure to 60 degrees Celsius, the human body will suffer from high fever, heat stroke, and may also cause acute organ failure and death.

As for the interior parts of the car, especially dark plastics, dashboards, seats and interior trims, when exposed to direct sunlight and an ambient temperature of 60 degrees, the steering wheel will begin to delaminate and peel, the plastic will soften or even melt, and some will release harmful substances, the cloth seats will fade, and the leather seats will crack over time.

Most office workers spend more than an hour commuting. Whether for their own health or to protect their cars, car sunscreen is necessary. Before Lei Jun, Jack Ma had already discovered the business opportunity. Open Taobao and search for car sunscreen, parasols, sunshades, sunshades, sunshade covers, heat insulation artifacts, and so on.

Various brands have also launched official sun protection accessories, but they are a bit expensive.Tesla Model 3For example, the official price of glass roof sunshades is 695 yuan to 710 yuan.

"Lei Jun has somewhat exaggerated the user pain points. The issue of car sun protection has been discussed for many years. Ever since electric cars started to have panoramic skylights, the pain points have always been there." Zhang Xiaoliang, founder of SoCar Product Strategy Consulting, told Automotive Business Review.

Whether an advertisement is good or not depends on its effectiveness. Nearly 30% of Xiaomi SU7 buyers are women. "For the first time, such a product has been supported by a large number of female users across the country. They are impressed by its good looks, sun protection and storage." Lei Jun predicts that the proportion of female owners of Xiaomi SU7 may reach 40% or even 50% in the future.

I chose the panoramic sunroof myself, so I have to open it even if I have an umbrella.

"Mr. Lei understands user experience." Lei Jun has many supporters on the Internet.

In the era of fuel vehicles, the issue of car sun protection was rarely mentioned. The reason is that people's lives have become more and more refined. More importantly, panoramic sunroofs have become popular in the era of smart electric vehicles.

Tesla is the first in the industry to have a large panoramic sunroof that brings an unprecedented sense of transparency and a sense of luxury. After all, 10 years ago in China, only the top-of-the-line models could be equipped with a panoramic sunroof.

New Chinese brands have followed suit.NIO、Zhiji、Avita、Lantu、Xiaopeng、Zero Run... Panoramic sunroofs and panoramic skylights have become a status symbol for new cars, and consumers are rarely given many choices. For example, all of Weilai and Tesla's products have panoramic sunroofs.

People enjoy poetry and distant places in their cars, watching the stars and the moon. But in summer, everything comes to a halt. Anyone who has used it knows the sour feeling. Car owners who sit in a steamer with a mobile electric blanket on their heads begin to think about this anti-human design.

In a spirit of self-deprecation, a series of actions by car owners wearing straw hats and holding umbrellas in their cars appeared on the Internet. They have their own difficulties, but they have to use the configuration they chose even if they cry.

"Installing a panoramic sunroof is not just for a better look. The battery is placed on the chassis, which is higher than traditional fuel vehicles. Forcibly raising the roof height will bring great challenges to the body design. The panoramic sunroof is thinner, which can reduce the sense of oppression, invisibly raise the roof and save space." Zhang Xiaoliang said.

The panoramic sunroof cannot be moved, but the demand exists, and some people have already noticed the car sun protection market.

Liu Xianping, vice president of Fuyao Group's product center, once said in a forum that there are two trends for panoramic skylights: one is to use a sunshade-free and the other is to use a sunshade. How to solve the problem of heat insulation? For electric vehicles, don't think that sunshades can solve everything. Sunshades also need to find new ways to insulate. The best solution for no sunshade is to reflect more light and infrared rays with coating.

Glass manufacturers believe that a heat-insulating glass is the source of the solution. In June, Fuyao released a new generation of intelligent heat-insulating panoramic skylights, which use advanced triple-silver coating technology. The filter series skylights can block up to 99% of infrared and ultraviolet rays, and the total energy isolation rate reaches 89%.

Wang Zhirui, general manager of Shanghai Aobang Technology Co., Ltd., believes that film can also solve the problem well. "Glass area accounts for an increasingly large proportion of the entire vehicle, and the amount of heat entering the vehicle through the glass is also increasing. The visible light in the sun also has heat. Glass needs to have a high heat insulation rate and good light transmittance, which is difficult to take into account both.

Now his company is researching heat-insulating safety film using metal magnetron sputtering technology. The principle is to beat different types of precious metals into particles and attach them to the film. Through different arrangements and combinations, visible light can pass through while infrared and ultraviolet rays are blocked, and the film has low reflectivity so as not to affect driving safety.

Does the sunscreen block the signal? Mobile phones and cars battle each other remotely

Xiaomi has just discovered something that has been ignored for 140 years, and some people are already dissatisfied.

At the end of April, Richard Yu, Huawei's executive director, chairman of the Device BG, and chairman of the Intelligent Automotive Solutions BU,QJM5At the press conference, it was stated that using three layers of silver-coated glass on the car's front windshield would affect mobile phone signals, and the signals could not be affected for the sake of sun protection, so the new M5 did not adopt this design.

They are all good brothers who come together to make money in the automotive industry. In June, Lei Jun responded to this statement in a forum, "Last time, Yu Chengdong always challenged me and said that there is a problem with the signal of the three-layer silver-plated mobile phone. I guarantee that there is no problem."

Xiaomi officials are more specific, saying that for models that do not have the original three-layer silver-plated front windshield glass, when purchasing third-party thermal insulation films containing precious metal materials, due to the lack of strict testing and verification, it is indeed possible that the mobile phone signal will be affected. However, after testing Xiaomi SU7 with 15 mobile phones from 6 mainstream brands and 3 major operators, it was found that all tested mobile phones passed the test, and the navigation signal, Internet signal, communication signal, and multimedia fluency experience were not affected.

Huawei and Xiaomi both make mobile phones, so they have the most say in signal issues. Everyone has their own reasons, and the consumers have to be the referee.

At the end of June, some netizens revealed that Xiaomi Auto’s official after-sales service is providing “navigation experience technology upgrade” service to owners of the founding edition, which in layman’s terms means replacing the front windshield.

Some Xiaomi car owners have encountered the problem of "poor in-car navigation signal". Xiaomi Auto After-Sales Service has provided two solutions: one is "navigation experience technology upgrade"; the other is to install a signal amplification receiver at the ETC. A Xiaomi SU7 Genesis Edition user has completed the upgrade service of replacing the front windshield and posted a cost list of 4,359 yuan.

As online public opinion fermented, suppliers who did not want to take the blame stood up and spoke out. On July 5, Fuyao Glass officially responded: a solution had been made before, which was to perform regional laser film removal on the coated glass, reserve windows for receiving various signals such as ETC and GPS, support barrier-free recognition of electronic signals, and not affect signal transmission.

Some netizens thought about this problem in reverse. Reserving a receiving window means that the statement that the coating will isolate the signal is correct.

"In fact, sun protection is very difficult to do." Lei Jun once lamented.

Sun protection is difficult, but not difficult either. Many years ago, in order to buy an effective sunscreen for his wife, a netizen used tape to make a nine-square grid on his back and went out to be exposed to the sun. It turned out that the part with the tape had the best effect.

The most effective way to protect against the sun is physical barrier. For cars, you can use silver-plated insulation, film and sunshades on the glass. If you are really worried, just wear a sun mask.