On July 19, Lei Jun’s annual speech kicked off in Shijingshan, Beijing. The theme of this speech is “Courage”, and the content is about the ins and outs of Xiaomi’s car-making in the past three years. Compared with the 2023 annual speech, this year’s speech seems to be a special session for Lei Jun to talk about Xiaomi cars, telling about his original intention and experience of making cars in the past.
On January 15, 2021, Xiaomi was sanctioned by the United States. Lei Jun said that if it weren’t for such a huge impact as being “sanctioned by the United States”, we would definitely not rush into such a complex industry as making cars rashly, and there would not be today’s Xiaomi SU7. During the period of holding a board meeting to discuss the response plan at that time, someone asked: “If Xiaomi’s mobile phone business cannot be done, what should your thirty or forty thousand employees do?” This became the beginning of Xiaomi’s pursuit of diversification in making cars.
Lei Jun indicated that “If you want to make cars, you need to have a long-term plan, and at the same time, you must aim for the top five in the world. Our calculation at that time was that at least 10 billion US dollars would have to be burned.” Lei Jun also disclosed that in the research process before Xiaomi decided to make cars, Xiaomi visited more than 200 people, among whom Li Bin and He Xiaopeng unanimously strongly urged him to make cars.
According to Lei Jun’s disclosure, at the beginning of making cars, someone asked him why Xiaomi cars didn’t take out independent financing and go public independently, because at that time, making cars was very hot and the stocks of new energy vehicle companies soared, but Lei Jun refused. Lei Jun believes that “Because the cycle of making cars is very long, if you take other people’s money, your own ideas can hardly remain consistent for a long time. Of course, making cars is very difficult, and it is definitely not possible just by relying on me alone.” Lei Jun said, “This requires that everyone in the Xiaomi Group can support unreservedly and go all out to make cars together, so that we have a chance of winning. So in the end we decided that Xiaomi would do it all by itself, pay all the money by itself, and bear all the risks by itself.”
On March 30, 2021, Xiaomi officially announced that it would enter the field of making cars and invest 10 billion yuan in the first phase. Since then, Lei Jun has also always chosen to stand in front of the stage to increase the exposure of Xiaomi cars.
On March 28, Xiaomi SU7 was officially put on sale, and the popularity far exceeded imagination, and it became a hit overnight. Of course, before the listing of Xiaomi SU7, various controversies and doubts were endless, such as “Even the appearance is plagiarized, what technology is there”, “Except for the two words Xiaomi, there is nothing else of its own”, “The sales volume is no more than one thousand”…
Lei Jun recalled that he was really worried, both afraid that it would not sell well and also worried that it would not be enough to sell. But the bigger problem is pricing, and extremely low pricing is like drinking poison to quench thirst. In the end, Xiaomi SU7 still became popular all at once. At the launch conference, Lei Jun adopted a new way of Internet marketing to achieve a dimensionality reduction blow to the launch conference of traditional car manufacturers. After that, Lei Jun also started live streaming, explaining, test-driving and recruiting people in person, which triggered many car company leaders to also go live to grab traffic.
The data shows that from April to June 2024, Xiaomi SU7 has delivered 30,000 units, and the delivery in June exceeded 10,000 units. At present, the sales volume of Xiaomi SU7 is still climbing, and it is expected that the delivery in July will continue to exceed 10,000 units. Lei Jun repeated again in the speech that the delivery target of Xiaomi SU7 this year is to guarantee a minimum of 100,000 units, and it is expected to complete the target in advance in November and strive to deliver 120,000 units throughout the year. At present, Xiaomi cars still have a target space of at least 70,000 units, and the monthly average sales volume in the next half year needs to be more than 11,700 units, and if it is calculated according to 120,000 units, the monthly average sales volume needs to be more than 15,000 units, which is still quite a lot of pressure for Xiaomi cars.
Realizing monthly delivery of 10,000 units in just three months and setting the target at 100,000 units in the first year of delivery, the listing process of Xiaomi SU7 really can be called a textbook marketing case, but Xiaomi cars standing in the spotlight are not perfect either. Just as Lei Jun said, “We are still far from success, and our Long March has just begun. This is the courage of all Xiaomi people, and courage is the greatest anthem of mankind.”
