[car home Information] In the past few months, a heavy "bomb" was dropped on the automobile circle, that is, Xiaomi entered the automobile field.
Since Xiaomi announced to build a car at the end of March, the location of headquarters and factories has attracted much attention. Beijing, Shanghai, Wuhan, Hefei, Xi ‘an and other places are striving for Xiaomi’s car-making project. Lei Jun also visited Chang ‘an, GAC, SAIC-GM-Wuling, Great Wall, SAIC, Dongfeng, Bosch, Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Limited and other manufacturers frequently in more than four months, and released a lot of recruitment information. On November 27th, the official WeChat of Beijing Yizhuang announced that the Management Committee of Beijing Economic and Technological Development Zone officially signed a contract with Xiaomi Technology and announced that Xiaomi Automobile had settled in Beijing Economic Development Zone. The determination of the headquarters and the factory to settle in the city is also an important node in the preparatory work for Xiaomi’s car.
Just after the signing of the contract was announced, I drove to Beijing Economic Development Zone to visit Xiaomi’s current progress. Where is the factory located?
◆ It is still in the retirement stage, and the intelligent manufacturing base is waiting for "manufacturing".
Open up a vitality in the wasteland
According to the official publicity information, Xiaomi Automobile Factory is located in Majuqiao Intelligent Manufacturing Base (Intelligent Manufacturing Base) in Yizhuang New Town (Tongzhou District), Beijing, with a total investment of 63 billion yuan. Four boundaries: Tongyi Road in the west, Huanjing West No.1 Road in the east, Jingsheng South Fourth Street in the north and Yitong Street in the south. With the specific street name, it is actually much easier to find the destination, but according to the navigation display, Tongyi Road and Yitong Street are in the state of being built (not searched). Huanjing West 1st Road and Jingsheng South 4th Street are residential buildings and Liandong U Valley Park.
On the other hand, there is a large construction site in the south of Jingsheng South Fourth Street. When I went to check it, I found that it was the project site of SMIC Jingcheng integrated circuit production project (FAB3 P1 production plant and other 32 projects), and not far from this project site, it was the project of projection mask aligner exposure optical system research and development and mass production base.
According to public information, Majuqiao Town is located in the intelligent manufacturing group of Yizhuang New Town. According to the planning of Yizhuang New Town, the intelligent manufacturing industrial zone will focus on developing high-end manufacturing. "Majuqiao Zhizao Base Land Grade I Development Project" is located in majuqiao town, east to the green belt on the west side of Beijing-Shanghai Expressway, west to Environmental Protection Avenue, south to Zhuxin Road, and north to Xinsi Road. The investment in the relocation and vacating of non-residential houses within the project scope is about 2.4 billion yuan. The relocation involves eight villages, namely Fangxindian Village, Zhouying Village, Xiaoyingyi Village, Yangxiudian Village, Guzhuang Village, Xiaozhang wan Village, Zhang Cun Village and Shichun Village. According to the feedback from relevant personnel, it is still in the stage of vacating, and the project is expected to start around 2022. Of course, if you want to see some clues, it will be at least in the middle of the year.
In the future, the territory of Xiaomi Automobile will be developed to us in Beijing Economic Development Zone.
Why did you choose Beijing Economic Development Zone?
According to public information, Xiaomi Automobile Project will build Xiaomi Automobile Headquarters Base, Sales Headquarters and R&D Headquarters, and will build a vehicle factory with an annual output of 300,000 vehicles in two phases, of which the first and second phases will have a production capacity of 150,000 vehicles respectively. It is expected that the first vehicle will be off the assembly line in 2024 and mass production will be realized.I believe that many netizens have doubts. Why did Xiaomi Automobile choose to settle in Beijing Economic Development Zone?The reasons may be analyzed from the aspects of business, policy and geographical location.
First of all, in terms of location, it was previously reported that Xiaomi Automobile wanted to acquire Beijing Hyundai No.2 Factory in Shunyi District, Beijing (with an annual production capacity of 300,000 units), which was also in line with the combined production capacity of Xiaomi in Beijing Economic Development Zone Phase I and Phase II. But don’t ignore the fact that Xiaomi Automobile will not have a demand of 300,000 production capacity in the early stage, and there are still problems such as optimization, adjustment and upgrading in the acquisition of Beijing Hyundai No.2 Factory, which is unreasonable in terms of capital. At the same time, apart from Beijing Hyundai No.2 Factory, Shunyi District has not publicly indicated that it will provide the rest land for Xiaomi Automobile to build its sales headquarters and R&D headquarters, which will lead to "time difference" in communication between sales companies and factories, which is not as suitable as "cluster construction". In addition, Xiaomi also has an office in the park near Kechuang, Beijing Economic and Technological Development Zone, which consists of three parts: office building, production factory and warehousing and logistics. The factory mainly produces hardware equipment such as Xiaomi mobile phones, and the warehousing and logistics part is a cooperative project between Xiaomi and JD.COM. The goods stored in the warehouse are all related to Xiaomi products, which is also convenient for cross-departmental linkage and communication.
Secondly,Business aspectLei Jun has publicly stated that intelligence and electrification have brought the automobile industry closer to consumer electronics from the original machinery industry. Xiaomi also said, "The most difficult thing is the battery and automatic driving. After four years, the advantages of electric vehicles for traditional vehicles will gradually be reflected, and fuel vehicles will transition to electrification. Now the timing of Xiaomi’s cut-in is just right. " Just like this, Xiaomi has invested heavily in power batteries and autonomous driving sectors. Power battery has always been the heart of new energy vehicles, and it is also a plate that new car manufacturers pay special attention to. Xiaomi automobile is no exception, and it has made multiple attacks, and its layout in the field of power batteries has also surfaced.
"Overview of investment in Xiaomi power battery field"
Xiaomi currently directly or indirectly invests in four power battery-related enterprises in the field of power batteries, and each major enterprise has its own characteristics. These four companies are Honeycomb Energy, AVIC Lithium Battery, Zhuhai Guanyu and Ganfeng Lithium Battery. Among them, Zhuhai Guanyu and Ganfeng Lithium Battery are listed companies.
"A list of the number of patents related to Xiaomi and other Internet companies; Overview of investment in Xiaomi’s autonomous driving field "
Auto-driving is an important force point for Xiaomi’s car in the future, and it is actually a weak point for Xiaomi to build a car. According to public information, by 2020, Xiaomi has disclosed more than 800 patents related to automobiles, and only one patent related to autonomous driving. In the field of intelligent vehicle networking, by April 2021, Xiaomi had 72 patents, including vehicle-to-person V2P, vehicle-to-vehicle V2V and vehicle-to-infrastructure V2I, among which 57 were vehicle-to-person V2P patents. Since the announcement of building a car, Xiaomi has also made frequent shots in the field of autonomous driving and made a series of investments. In June 2021, Xiaomi participated in the D-round financing of Zongmu Technology, a supplier of autonomous driving technology. In the same month, Xiaomi participated in the D-round financing of laser radar enterprise Hesai Technology. In July, Xiaomi acquired DeepMotion Tech Limited, an autonomous driving technology company, for US$ 77.37 million (about RMB 503 million). In August, Xiaomi led the Pre-A2 round of financing for geometry partner of autonomous driving company, and then participated in the strategic investment of geometry partner in October. It is worth mentioning that Tianyanchao information shows that Shendong Technology Company is also located in Beijing.
What can improve the above business to the extreme is that a series of Beijing Economic Development ZoneA favorable policyAccording to "Beijing Intelligent Networked Vehicle Innovation and Development Action Plan (2019 -2022)", it is clearly pointed out that in 2022, a complete technical system of intelligent networked vehicles meeting the requirements of advanced autonomous driving (L4 level) will be formed; The scale of intelligent networked automobiles and related industries in the city reached 100 billion yuan. Specific to Yizhuang, the First Industrial Policy of Yizhuang Group in the High-end Industrial Zone of China (Beijing) Pilot Free Trade Zone clearly puts forward the goal of "building a core bearing place for the development of new energy and high-end automobile industry", and sets a minimum financial support policy of 30 million yuan and a maximum financial support policy of 100 million yuan according to different conditions.
"There are different models such as self-driving passenger cars, self-driving logistics trucks, self-driving feeder cars, self-driving cleaning cars, unmanned delivery cars and unmanned retail cars on the streets of Yizhuang every day."
Among them, "encourage domestic and foreign new energy smart car manufacturers to settle in the development zone. To drive the formation of a 100 billion-level industrial cluster, leading enterprises can be given up to 100 million yuan of innovation funds to support; Encourage the research and development of autonomous driving technology to reach L4 level and above, and carry out conditional large-scale production. For enterprises that have completed the transformation of the first batch of results, a certain proportion of financial support will be given according to the transformation effect of the results, up to 30 million yuan. "
It is worth mentioning that the "Overall Implementation Plan of Beijing Intelligent Networked Automobile Policy Pioneer Zone" released here shows that the planning scope of 225 square kilometers including Yizhuang New City will be set as the policy pioneer zone. Beijing Intelligent Networked Vehicle Policy Pioneer Zone has four distinctive policies: allowing enterprises to carry out commercial operation services based on fees, allowing unmanned delivery vehicles to obtain road rights for on-road operation, supporting mutual recognition of test results of intelligent networked vehicles in different places, and opening high-speed testing of self-driving vehicles.
Geographical locationThe mature supporting environment and good policy support have enabled many brands to set up factories here, such as Mercedes-Benz R&D Center, Beiqi New Energy Blue Valley R&D Center, Beiqi New Energy High-end Intelligent Ecological Factory, Foxconn Precision Components, e-commerce giant JD.COM and many logistics companies. It is mentioned that Xiaomi and BAIC have signed a strategic cooperation agreement before, which may be one of the "reasons" for Xiaomi Automobile to choose Beijing Economic Development Zone.
◆ Talk to the end
Lei Jun once said that the initial intention of Xiaomi to build a car is to use high-quality smart electric vehicles to let users enjoy the ubiquitous smart life. In the future, Xiaomi will provide intelligent life for all aspects of rice noodles from personal equipment, smart home, smart office, and smart travel. In the future, I hope that every road will be equipped with a full set of Xiaomi smart products.
However, at present, although Xiaomi has signed a contract, it is still some time before the factory breaks ground. Referring to the time when the new car rolled off the assembly line in 2024, Xiaomi’s factory will start in 2023 at the latest, and we will pay more attention to Xiaomi’s trend in the future. At that time, in the face of strong competitors, complex supply chain management and more discerning consumers, can Xiaomi Automobile create an eye-catching model?
We will wait and see. (Text/car home Zhouyi)