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「Core Tips」
Xiaomi Motors SU7 delivered a good result, and Lei Jun became known as the "God of Marketing". Looking back, was Xiaomi Motors' first victory due to Lei Jun's marketing, or something else?

Author | Wang Shan

Editor | Xing Yun

Lei Jun loves running. He gets up at 6 o'clock every morning and walks and jogs 10 kilometers. At one point, he ran 300 kilometers a month. Even after he injured his knee, Lei Jun still kept running every day.

Recently, Lei Jun talked with Li Xiang for three hours about the details of car manufacturing. Lei Jun started by talking about his running habits. He said frankly,I am a long-distance runner. I am very focused on what I do and I stick to it until the end., but "today everyone thinks I'm an opportunist."

Lei Jun's label of "opportunist" started with his "windfall theory" when he left Kingsoft in 2007. At that time, he said, "Kingsoft is like growing grass in saline-alkali land. Why not fly a kite in the wind's eye? Standing in the wind's eye, even pigs can fly into the sky." Although Xiaomi has achieved great commercial success in the field of smartphones since then, "copycat" and "assembly plant" are still topics that Lei Jun and Xiaomi cannot avoid.

What’s interesting is that Xiaomi caught the early train when it came to making mobile phones. When Lei Jun started his second business, making cars, it went from being a “late train” to being a “last train”, and the market was in a state of pessimism. “Making cars” has become a touchstone for “opportunists”.

Finally, when Lei Jun said to Li Xiang, "In the century-old automobile race, any time is the best time to start,"To a certain extent, it also brought the script of changing one's destiny against all odds to the market.

1. Can’t build a good car? Stick to the basics and be creative. Get on the poker table first.

"Jun'er, stop it, there are XX people outside."

This was a joke from netizens about Lei Jun's car manufacturing at the time, and it is also a true portrayal to some extent. When Xiaomi Motors officially announced its car manufacturing in 2021, Tesla was the leader abroad, and new forces such as Wei, Xiaopeng and Li Auto had a certain foundation in China. Huawei began to cross-border join hands with car manufacturers, and traditional car companies represented by BYD and GAC Aion accelerated their transformation.

Flirtatious

The competition is too fierce, and Lei Jun's timing of making cars is also awkward. In the early days, new energy vehicles were too popular, and those who crossed over from the Internet and real estate to make cars were left with a mess after a few years of tossing. Many users' view of cross-border car manufacturing is that they are here to grab the wind and raise money with PPT financing. This has led to the outside world firmly looking down on Xiaomi Automobile.

on the other hand,The probability of failure of the world's top companies that cross-border and start new businesses is much higher than that of innovative companies, and this history keeps repeating itself.

Microsoft is an excellent company with Windows operating system, Office suite and other products that dominate the world, but these technological advantages have not enabled Microsoft to make smartphones. Intel once dominated more than 80% of the global PC and server chip market, but its presence in mobile phone chips is extremely low, and cross-border efforts are almost equal to failure.

It is an objective fact that elephants are slow to turn. Although Xiaomi has become one of the top three smartphone companies in the world, it sounds a bit unreliable that it has to invest in the unfinished battle in the smartphone field while also making cars.

In February 2024, Apple canceled its electric car manufacturing plan, and doubts about Xiaomi's car manufacturing reached a climax at this time. "Can Xiaomi accomplish what Apple has failed to do in ten years in three years?"

Later, Lei Jun recalled the scene with Li Xiang, and said, "The table of the automobile industry has been there for 140 years. Do you think it can be overturned? A young company like Xiaomi should make cars first and get on the table first."

Many excellent companies are prone to failure in cross-business development. The root cause is cognitive dislocation, inertial thinking, and heavy idol baggage. To get rid of these pitfalls, you must respect the rules of the industry, get involved, stick to the right path, and do something surprising. Don't subvert it right away.Lei Jun is willing to be a primary school student in the automotive industry first.

As the jewel of human manufacturing, the automobile industry has huge investment, long cycle, and low fault tolerance, which is a huge challenge for any entrant. To maintain integrity, you must first correctly understand the complexity of the industry and your own capabilities. Looking back on his 14 years of experience in mobile phone manufacturing, Lei Jun adopted a reverse thinking approach to Xiaomi Auto's entrepreneurship:Instead of taking shortcuts, we return to the core technology level, invest tenfold, and "seriously build a good car."

During the car manufacturing stage, some people thought that electric cars were just four wheels + two sets of sofas, and other parts could be outsourced to suppliers at will, and Xiaomi's job was to complete the assembly.

In fact, it takes more than 10,000 independent parts that cannot be disassembled to build a car, and tens of thousands of employees are required to coordinate and coordinate. Even in China, where the automotive industry chain is very complete and mature, it is not easy to find suppliers to buy auto parts. Many parts require car manufacturers and suppliers to develop them together. Each company has limited resources. Helping each customer customize the development of parts means investing more costs. If sales do not increase, there will be losses. It is impossible for suppliers to customize for customers.

It is very difficult for hardware companies to get the support of suppliers. Many years ago, Lei Jun spent countless time visiting suppliers of Xiaomi mobile phones. The context at that time was to "make up lessons" and "fill in the gaps". Now this scene is repeated in Xiaomi Auto.The path is completely different. This time, Lei Jun led the team to practice Luohan Fist in a down-to-earth manner, starting from laying a solid foundation.。

The effect is also obvious. Standing on the shoulders of high-quality suppliers and using mature industry technologies, Xiaomi Auto's performance bottom line is also guaranteed. At present, Xiaomi Auto chooses to align with A in terms of the vehicle supply chain, and 2/3 of its suppliers are the same as A.

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In order to ensure quality and control production capacity, Xiaomi Auto decided to build its own factory from the very beginning and fully equip it with intelligence. A total of 29 laboratories have been set up in the factory, and more than 700 robots have been introduced in the body shop alone. AI is widely used in the entire manufacturing process to maintain a high rate of automation.

As a company with high market attention, any slight movement will be infinitely magnified on the Internet. However, Xiaomi Automobile has been under the magnifying glass of the industry, consumers and media.It has become a super brand carefully selected by millions of netizens.

Xiaomi Motors finally made its way to the table.

This car-making event was like a whetstone, and it also made the outside world re-examine Lei Jun.What you think is a happy male protagonist in a good novel is actually carrying heavy burdens all the way and changing his fate against all odds.

2. From not being able to sell to not enough to sell, is it marketing that’s the reason?

When the Xiaomi Mi SU 7 was first launched, almost everyone thought it would not sell well. Lei Jun once invited 23 professional media to rate the Mi car, and the vast majority of them were not optimistic, saying that "it would be a blessing if we could sell 3,000 units per month."

It is widely believed in the market that the target audience of Xiaomi Auto is converted from Xiaomi mobile phone users, mainly male. Lei Jun recalled in the conversation that a media person told him that Xiaomi's coupe performance car would not be purchased by female users, and the number of female car owners who bought it would not exceed 5%.

now,Xiaomi SU7 deliveries exceeded 10,000 units in June and JulyThe annual delivery target of 100,000 vehicles is expected to be completed ahead of schedule in November. Not long ago, Xiaomi Motors also officially obtained the qualification to independently manufacture cars. More importantly, in the user portrait of Xiaomi SU7, female buyers accounted for 28%.The actual proportion of female car owners is about 40%-50%.. Apple users accounted for 29% and Apple users accounted for 51.9%.

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Data is the most straightforward answer for Xiaomi Auto. In a conversation with Li Xiang, Lei Jun frankly said that it is impossible to have no problems with such a complex system engineering. Xiaomi Auto will have minor problems, but they will be corrected in time. The most important thing is how to avoid major problems.

Interestingly, Xiaomi SU7 sold like hot cakes after it was launched on the market. The diligent Lei Jun rushed between live broadcast rooms, auto shows, and car pick-up sites. The huge traffic also made Lei Jun be labeled as the god of marketing.

During the conversation, Lei Jun expressed his frustration and expressed his dislike for the title several times. Lei Jun talked about how he tried to avoid being deified, and even more soI am afraid that everyone will think that the success of Xiaomi Auto SU7 is just due to marketing.

In psychology, there is a "halo effect", which refers to the fact that people's cognition and judgment of other things often start from the local, grasp individual characteristics, and then expand to derive the overall phenomenon.

In fact, Lei Jun is worried that the "halo effect" of the "God of Marketing" is too strong, causing the market and consumers to focus only on the "domineering president" and "cool male protagonist".It ignores the efforts that Xiaomi Auto has made in R&D and products to solve user pain points.

Products and marketing are often two sides of the same coin. Both require sufficient insight into the user base and the ability to solve pain points. The so-called marketing success is often due to the support of good product strength. To summarize the efforts of countless engineers and the application of innovative technology with just the word marketing is a misunderstanding and harm to the product.

Hidden behind the product strength of Xiaomi Auto are a series of details. For example, Lei Jun test-drove more than 170 models of cars; more than 100 Xiaomi Auto employees obtained racing licenses; more than 200,000 words of test drive notes; and the industry's largest-scale real-car road test, which tested the streets and alleys of more than 300 cities, with a total test mileage of 5.4 million kilometers.

Since the decision to build cars was made, Lei Jun has been recruiting top talents for Xiaomi Auto. Today, the Xiaomi Auto department has more than 7,000 people, including more than 1,000 technical experts, who have built up the product capabilities of Xiaomi Auto.

Lei Jun himself frequently visits the front lines of the factory. It is understood that every time Lei Jun appears in the Xiaomi car factory, he will attract many staff members to watch. When faced with unclear points in the painting, electroplating and other processes, Lei Jun will continue to ask questions. So now every time Lei Jun appears in front of the camera, he knows every link of the production process like the back of his hand.

Lei Jun himself is an engineer by training. When Xiaomi was just starting out, 6 out of the 8 co-founders were engineers. It can be said that these people have left a deep mark of research and development on Xiaomi. Although the market now sees more of Lei Jun's speaking ability and marketing aura, but back to the details of the three-hour conversation with Li Xiang,Lei Jun talked about motors, large die-casting, autonomous driving, sun protection, wheels, and aspect ratio. These are actually Lei Jun's true background.

3. No technological content? Show off your strength

Through Xiaomi Auto, what is the sea of ​​stars that Lei Jun is looking at?

In a conversation with Li Xiang, Lei Jun mentioned: Toyota sells more than 10 million vehicles a year, but its market value has always been around 300 billion. Tesla sells 1 million vehicles, but its market value can reach about 600 to 700 billion.

The reason is that everyone thinks Tesla is the king of future cars. Tesla's continuous investment in the field of technology and its leadership in intelligence represent the future direction of car manufacturers.

Sales volume can only make a brand famous, but if you cannot break through the technological ceiling, you will not be able to move to the center of the world stage. By moving upscale and reserving profit margins, you can continue to invest and bring Xiaomi to new heights with hard-core technological strength.

Back in 2023, with the launch of Xiaomi Pengpai OS and Xiaomi 14 series, Lei Jun announced the goal of the new decade (2020-2030): to continue to invest in underlying core technologies and strive to become a new generation of global hard-core technology leader.

However, the outside world still has a stereotype of Xiaomi as an "assembly plant". In fact, this is not only a misunderstanding of Xiaomi, but also a misunderstanding of "assembly plants".

In the early days of making mobile phones, Xiaomi's unique asset-light model and OEM production method allowed it to focus on software development and marketing, quickly respond to market changes, and seize market share. However, there were hidden risks, especially the 2016 supply chain crisis that caused a drop in mobile phone sales, which taught Xiaomi a heavy lesson.

Whether it was in May 2016, when Lei Jun personally took over the mobile phone department and made it clear that "delivery, innovation, and quality" were the focus to make up for the lessons in an all-round way; or in 2020, when Xiaomi launched a high-end strategy and continued to explore with the Xiaomi 10 series, Xiaomi 11 series, and Xiaomi 12 series; or today, the Xiaomi MIX Fold 4, which carries eight self-developed Surge chips and is equipped with core self-developed technologies such as the Dragon Bone Hinge 2.0, and the Xiaomi SU7 Ultra prototype car, which is armed to the teeth with various radical technologies, has shown the market one thing:Behind every major leap in Xiaomi's growth, technological research and development has always been the most critical driving force.

According to the data, Xiaomi's R&D expenditure in 2023 has reached 19.1 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 19.2%, equivalent to 0.57% of the national science and technology expenditure in that year. Xiaomi's R&D investment in the next five years will exceed 100 billion yuan. By the end of 2023, Xiaomi's R&D personnel will be about 17,800, accounting for more than 53% of the total number of employees, and the number of authorized patents worldwide will exceed 37,000, of which more than 50% are overseas applications.

In his book "The Art of Imitation: How Companies Go from "Copycats" to Innovation", Tatsuhiko Inoue mentioned that there is a type of company whose model is to imitate innovations, which requires foresight, accumulating experience, and then launching sample companies that are difficult to reversely learn and imitate. In fact, the iPhone and iPad launched by Apple also partially imitated its competitors and then occupied the market with innovation.

This is similar to the three stages of technological development summarized by Xiaomi in "Xiaomi Entrepreneurship Thinking". Over the past 20 years, Xiaomi started with integrated technological innovation, went through independent technological innovation,Today, disruptive technological innovation has continued to penetrate into the underlying core.

In recent years, from launching imaging chips and charging chips, achieving mass production and delivery of chips in high-end mobile phones, to the self-developed Xiaomi Pengpai OS system and the application of AI large models, to Xiaomi's full-stack self-developed intelligent driving technology for automobiles, Xiaomi will be ranked among the top echelons of the industry in 2024. With continuous accumulation, Xiaomi's technological innovation has also begun to show a blowout trend.

Especially in the field of self-developed intelligent driving, Xiaomi has achieved three key technological breakthroughs: adaptive zoom BEV technology, large road model, and super-resolution occupancy network technology. The total investment in the first phase is currently 4.7 billion yuan, and the dedicated team has a size of over 1,000 people.

Building and developing two smart mobile phone factories and one smart automobile factory have become the most prominent footnotes in Lei Jun's script of changing his destiny.

Currently, Xiaomi is the only company that has engaged in both the mobile phone and automobile businesses and has made achievements in both businesses. With the core linkage of Xiaomi Surge OS, the closed loop of "people, cars and home ecosystem" is opened, and hardware devices are seamlessly connected and coordinated with each other, achieving the effect of 1+1+1>3.The subsequent AI-enabled ecological chain will also promote the transformation of the "entire ecosystem of people, cars and homes", and Xiaomi will also bring more reference value to the entire industry.

Xiaomi, which has been working hard on technology, is a representative example of a Chinese company that has gone from trying to catch up to leading the global technological wave, which is extremely valuable in the current international environment dominated by containment and interception. "I want to win in 15 years" has also become the latest preview of Lei Jun's story of changing his fate against all odds on the global stage.