Mi car full body photos are crazy!Coupé body + McLaren style headlight

With the halo of Xiaomi mobile phones above your head, Xiaomi cars have their own traffic.

Within a few days of the Year of the Rabbit, there have been several waves of public opinion. Unlike the previous revelations about the price and shape, the recent focus is on what the Xiaomi car looks like.

From spy photos of test vehicles, leakage of component design documents, to the exposure of MS11’s unofficial “credential photos”, they have all captured people’s curiosity.

Source: Xiaomi Car

Prior to this, the relevant person in charge of Xiaomi also confirmed that the component design documents were leaked, but not the final documents.However, there is no further explanation for the renderings of yesterday’s heat transmission.

According to the plan, Xiaomi cars will be mass-produced in 2024, and it is bound to focus on 2023. What is certain is that the true face of Xiaomi has not yet been revealed, but according to the new car development cycle, the truth is not far away.

spy shadow

Years ago, a netizen photographed a camouflaged car suspected of being a Xiaomi car in the Xiaomi Science and Technology Park. It looked like this:

The shape is a coupe, more like a Porsche Taycan.

During the Spring Festival holiday, a group of pictures of the molding design of Xiaomi’s first model were circulated on the Internet, mainly showing the design details of the front and rear enclosures of the vehicle, and disclosing information about the cooperation between Xiaomi and BAIC Molding.

In response to this incident, Wang Hua, general manager of Xiaomi’s public relations department, also issued a response: “It is true that the second-tier supplier’s confidential design documents leaked; this supplier is only a supplier for mold proofing,The leaked document is a very early draft of the bidding process, not the final document. “

In other words, the exposed design details are indeed true, but the early samples are not finalized, and Wang Hua did not directly respond to whether the BAIC Mold mentioned in the leaked picture represents BAIC OEM.

Not a few days after the leaked detailed pictures, the vehicle’s styling design renderings were “hot out of the oven”.

Although the official has not made an official response to this exposure incident, but combined with the previous leaked information, it is not groundless, and it still has certain reference significance.

Judging from the renderings of this exposure, the overall look and feel is highly consistent with the various information previously exposed, and the whole car looks more rounded.

Viewed from the side, it has a slip-back design, and the front face adopts a semi-closed front grille.

Take a closer look at the design of the front surround grille, which is basically consistent with the previously exposed molding design.The word “xiaomi MS11” is printed on the license plate frame, which also adds a bit of credibility to this exposure picture.

The charging interface is located on the left rear fender of the car body. The wheels adopt a double five-spoke shape and are two-color rims. The center logo is the new brand logo updated by Xiaomi in March 2021, or it is equipped with multi-piston brake calipers.

The tail most likely adopts the through-type taillight design. From above, you can vaguely see the situation inside the car, which shows that Xiaomi also uses the giant integrated canopy design that is currently the mainstream of new energy vehicles.

The most eye-catching and most controversial point is the shape of its headlights. Many netizens complained, “The proportion of the headlights is too large, it looks like an old man’s temperament”, “the design is a bit overwhelming”.

The overall headlight looks like the shadow of New Focus and McLaren. Inside the headlight, four small light groups can be clearly seen.This is somewhat similar to the four-eye design of the Porsche Taycan.

In addition, combined with previous market news, Xiaomi’s first electric car is positioned at the 200,000-300,000-yuan electric coupe, and its main competitors may include Tesla Model 3, Seal, Weilai ET5, Xiaopeng P7, etc. In this price range of “fairy fighting”, intelligent driving and intelligent cockpit are two key factors.

It can also be clearly seen from the outflowing renderings that there is a “bulge” above the windshield of the car, which is likely to be equipped with a solid-state long-distance laser radar, and one can be seen on each of the left and right fenders. Short range lidar. The rear of the car is not yet known, but there is a high probability that there is also a short-range radar on each side of the rear of the car.

As a new force among new forces, Xiaomi Auto inevitably lags behind other competitors in the accumulation of road data. It is also a good choice to directly use hardware to make up for the lack of data.

It is speculated that Xiaomi’s first car may have high-level automatic driving assistance functions.

However, there is no need to over-interpret these pictures. After all, there is still a year before mass production, and there is still room for improvement in the overall design details.

Where are we now?

Building a car is a labor-intensive job, and all links such as talents, technology, supply chain, and factories are indispensable.

However, Xiaomi is not short of money. In the first three quarters of 2022, the investment in smart electric vehicles is 425 million, 611 million, and 829 million yuan respectively. Since the official announcement of building the car in March 2021, the cumulative research and development expenses of Xiaomi cars have exceeded 5 billion. Yuan.

The investment of real money has also brought a lot of patents to Xiaomi. According to the data of Tianyancha APP, as of November 2022, Xiaomi has applied for more than 280 patents, and the latest patent is on the power battery.

The sharp weapon of Xiaomi in making cars lies in intelligence. In order to catch up with the trend, Xiaomi has also begun to increase its layout in the intelligent industry chain.

For example, autonomous driving supplier Zongmu Technology and lidar supplier Hesai Technology, all of these unicorns are backed by Xiaomi’s investment. In addition, Xiaomi also acquired DeepMotion, an autonomous driving company.

Lei Jun once made a car-making plan with an initial investment of 1 billion yuan and a 10-year investment of 10 billion U.S. dollars. The current cost has exceeded half. It is reported that Xiaomi’s first model has entered the winter test stage, and the next step is the mass production plan.

In the actual progress of the factory, in April 2022, the construction of the first phase of the Beijing Yizhuang factory of Xiaomi Automobile has started. The construction plan is divided into phases one and two, of which the first phase is expected to be completed in June 2023, the second phase will start in March 2024 and be completed in March 2025.

Self-built factories, unheard of acquisition trends, and denial of OEM actions all indicate that they will take a path to apply for qualifications. According to Yizhuang New Energy Vehicle Research Institute, “It is expected that the Xiaomi Automobile Factory will obtain the qualification for automobile production in June-July 2023.”

In terms of personnel, Xiaomi has also been recruiting. Currently, the Xiaomi R&D team has more than 1,800 people. Compared with the second quarter, the third quarter’s staff salary alone increased by 200 million yuan. The increase in expenses for the Xiaomi team naturally has to reduce costs and increase efficiency at the other end. Not long ago, Xiaomi has been in the midst of layoffs.

In the automotive field, Xiaomi’s way of improving efficiency is to constantly “poach people”. Since 2022, the Xiaomi team centered on Lei Jun has continued to grow. Hu Zhengnan, the former president of the Geely Research Institute, Yu Liguo, the former president of the ARCFOX Jihu Division, and Zhou Ying, the former deputy general manager of SAIC-GM-Wuling Sales Company, joined Xiaomi one after another. Senior management positions on the core team.

Yu Liguo served as the vice president of Xiaomi Automobile and the political commissar of Xiaomi Automobile Beijing Headquarters, responsible for coordinating Xiaomi Automobile’s comprehensive management work, special business promotion, and the organization and talent construction of Xiaomi Automobile Beijing Headquarters; Hu Zhengnan joined as a senior consultant and was mainly responsible for Xiaomi’s complete vehicle work ; Zhou Ying is responsible for the marketing of Xiaomi Automobile and reports directly to Lei Jun, CEO of Xiaomi Automobile.

In mid-January this year, it was reported that Wang Kun, the general manager of Weilai Suzhou, also officially joined the Xiaomi car manufacturing team as the vice president.

First, overall management and then vehicle business and marketing methods. Now that it has reached the operation stage, coupled with Lei Jun’s slogan of investing 10 billion US dollars in 10 years, Xiaomi will probably not go too low-end.

Previously, some media reported that Xiaomi internally discussed the pricing plan of Modena (new car code name): the low version is positioned in the range of 260,000 to 300,000 yuan, and the other version is more than 350,000 yuan.

According to this pricing strategy, there is a high probability that Xiaomi cars will be differentiated in hardware configuration like the Pro and Max of ideal cars.

However, as a comparison, the Tesla Model 3, which has lowered the price to 230,000, can be said to be full of cost performance.

Xiaomi mobile phones are the king of cost performance, and people will naturally regard Xiaomi cars as smart cars with high cost performance. Once the price of Xiaomi cars is too high, will Mi fans buy it?