In the past three months, Xiaomi, who was rumored to "deny the three companies", finally came to the end.
On March 30th, Xiaomi Group announced on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange that it plans to set up a wholly-owned subsidiary to be responsible for the smart electric vehicle business. The initial investment is 10 billion yuan, and it is estimated that the investment will be 10 billion dollars in the next 10 years.
This also means that Xiaomi officially announced "building a car."
Xiaomi also said that Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun will also be the CEO of smart electric vehicle business.
That night, Lei Jun, chairman of Xiaomi Group, issued a Weibo saying: Xiaomi’s board of directors officially approved this resolution today, and Xiaomi’s smart electric vehicle project was officially established. I will tell you in detail about building a car at the press conference tonight.
As soon as the news came out, as of the close of Hong Kong stocks on March 30, Xiaomi Group closed up 2.2% and its share price was HK$ 25.6.
It is worth mentioning that three days ago, Reuters broke the news that Xiaomi and Great Wall are planning to cooperate to produce electric vehicles aimed at the mass market. But soon, Xu Jieyun, deputy director of the General Office of Xiaomi Group and general manager of the former group’s public relations department, personally denied it at the Weibo, saying: "It’s completely nonsense fake news." Great Wall Motor declined to comment.
Not only that, at the beginning of this year, there was a rumor in the media that "Lei Jun is personally in command and Xiaomi is about to build a car", but Xiaomi has denied it on the official platform.
In fact, as early as 2013, Lei Jun once revealed the idea of building a car, but it was once stranded due to poor market feedback.
Among them, the most rudimentary news from "Xiaomi making cars" belongs to 2018, when it was reported that Xiaomi had launched a car-making research called "micar", led by Wang Chuan, co-founder of Xiaomi Group.
But even so, Xiaomi official has never "let go" and will officially enter the field of vehicle manufacturing.
Subsequently, Xiaomi’s more "relationship" with the automobile industry lies in large-scale investment.
In 2015, Shunwei Capital, a subsidiary of Lei Jun, invested in Weilai Automobile, a new force in car manufacturing. After the successful listing of Weilai Automobile, Shunwei Capital reinvested in Xpeng Motors. In April 2020, Xiaomi invested in Botai, a car service system manufacturer.
At the same time, Xiaomi is also actively deploying the field of car networking. In June 2019, Xiaomi announced a cooperation with Mercedes-Benz to promote Xiao Ai, a virtual voice assistant under Xiaomi, to enter the car interaction system of Mercedes-Benz. The person in charge of Xiaomi MIUI said that Xiaomi is considering developing an in-vehicle service system based on MIUI to counter the BlackBerry QNX operating system, which can also ensure the security of China’s in-vehicle operating system and realize the localization of the automotive software ecology.
The data shows that at present, more than 96% of Xiaomi’s automobile-related patents are invention patents, and the fields are concentrated in wireless communication network, digital data processing, digital information transmission, image communication, traffic control system, distance measurement, navigation and other fields, while automobile spare parts patents account for a relatively low proportion. As far as patent value analysis is concerned, the value of patents related to Xiaomi Automobile exceeds 100 million US dollars.
On March 24th, Xiaomi’s 2020 financial report showed that its total annual revenue was 245.9 billion yuan, up 19.4% year-on-year, of which the adjusted net profit was 13 billion yuan, up 12.8% year-on-year, and the total cash reserve exceeded 100 billion yuan. According to analysis, Xiaomi’s total revenue, smartphone revenue and Internet revenue in the fourth quarter of last year and the whole year were less than expected.
To this end, in the eyes of many people in the industry, for today’s Xiaomi, there may be an urgent need for a new story about "building a car" to continue to interpret the legend.
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