Interview:Why Lei Jun Chose to Build a Car (#1)
From the announcement of building a car by Xiaomi to the release of SU7, the topics surrounding Lei Jun are endless. Lei Jun was named the god of marketing, but also named the commercial butcher who rectified the market. In the marketing industry and advertising circles, Lei Jun was also used as a reference object to set off a discussion of “whether the founder should be an IP”. And so on and so forth… When praise, scrutiny, criticism and sarcasm all kinds of attitudes are mixed, practical methodology is summarized and refined by a third party. I think there is always a lack of perspective. It, from Lei Jun himself, but also from an unbiased, dialog-literate media party. The perspective can answer a series of questions from business decisions, project coordination, to the more advanced marketing, launch and so on.
Lei Jun is also a master of methodology. When he decides to enter a new industry, he is able to methodically define the strategy, assemble the team, position the product, determine the price and demographic, and then launch. That’s why I wanted to do a detailed interview with Lei Jun. I wanted to know his thinking, his strategy, his methodology ……
–Li Xiang, reporter of Business Newspaper
Why build a car
1. clarify the misunderstanding.
“Because of the pig in the wind said, people always think I am an opportunist. Actually not. I am a long-distance runner, do something especially focused, a tendon to the end. Later felt that this does not work, you still have to look up and see the road.”
2.millet car building, driven by crisis. After the board of directors put forward the plan, Lei Jun first organized a 3-month research.
“I was shocked after the research. The world has changed, cell phones and cars will merge, they (in the future) are an industry. Anyway, if you don’t do it, those who do cars will come to do cell phones, it’s as simple as that. Tesla is going to do cell phones, Azera has already done cell phones.”
So it is not the founder’s mission-driven, or market growth-driven, millet car-making is driven by crisis.
3.Lei Jun judgment, the winner takes all. When talking about business decisions, he used two words: end game thinking and winner takes all.
“I used end game thinking when I talked to them. For the past 14 or 15 years, the cell phone industry has believed in winner-take-all, and the Internet even more so. The principle is actually quite simple: marginal cost. The input cost of intelligence is particularly high, but once successful, it has a low cost of replication. For example, making chips, Internet software, consumer electronics. The automobile is such a complex industry, in the future, there may only be 5-8 companies in the world can survive. The winner takes all is scary in what? If you can’t live until the end, it’s still a dead end.”
Lei Jun this judgment, but also in line with the last article he said crisis driven.
the implementation of the project
4.the first four executive meetings, two board of directors, invested 10 billion U.S. dollars, equivalent to the equivalent of 65 billion yuan.
“At the beginning of the time is not excited, there is a kind of I do not go to hell who go to hell sense of self-accomplishment. Research found that the vast majority of the project team only three or four hundred people, 1 billion to do a car. Jargon called fling car, in fact, the vast majority of the project team only do a look, and then project integration, from this perspective, most car manufacturers are like a system integration company, cell phone instead of R & D company. So I think that millet has a chance.”
5. Lei Jun recalled the road to build a car, mentioned three key points: core technology, 10 times the investment, keep the right thing.
“In fact (car-making) this matter dry early dry late are not important, who can live to the end is very important. Only by seizing the high point of core technology can we live to the end. So we are determined to start from the most complex. Compared with making cell phones 14 years ago, this time it’s the other way around. The second is 10 times investment, 10 times is an imaginary number, but 3-4 times is there. At the very beginning (when I didn’t know much about the business), I was adamant that the expensive ones were the good ones. The third is to keep the right thing in the right place. At that time, this sentence at the launch also caused controversy. We thought that millet to do car is strange, but it turned out that Mr. Lei’s guard is “respect for the laws of the automobile industry”.
First the automobile industry this set of whole understand, and then out of the strange. Or do the opposite. We are willing to be an elementary school student in the automobile industry, learn all over again. Don’t come up to be shockingly subversive. Just as everyone has high expectations of Apple, Apple has high expectations of itself. It may want to disrupt and turn the table upside down! But this table is 140 years old. (After 140 years of development of the automobile industry.) I wonder if a company as young as Xiaomi can make a good car and get on the table first. Don’t just take the table off the table before you get to the poker table. So the strategy is, keep it right and get on the poker table first I think these 3 main strategies are the underlying logic behind our delivery of the Xiaomi su7 works.”
6.Integrate the team and build consensus.
“In the Spring Festival of 2022, I thought about the Spring Festival, because that’s when I realized that team integration is important. Think about it, do cell phone, do car, do the Internet, we sit at a table, even the language can not be unified. If we don’t solve this integration problem, millet car is definitely finished. So after the holidays on the first day of work, the meeting, the core issues to discuss through, do not discuss clear not to adjourn. This meeting took more than twenty days. One of the important issues is how we will die. And why the top 500 do new business are very easy to die. Before Microsoft did cell phones, but also bought a Nokia, and finally lost in a mess. Intel did CPUs and was incredibly powerful a decade or so ago, but couldn’t do anything about it, it’s just incredible. (Brain fill he talked to the rise of slightly high-frequency tone) We repeatedly summarized, and finally summarized three reasons: idol baggage, inertia thinking, cognitive dislocation.
The first is the idol baggage: we have money, talent and resources and everything, but we forget that we are entering a new industry, and we are ZERO. So we have repeatedly said that the automotive industry industry to have a sense of awe. Iconic baggage thing falls on the business, it is easy to reflect in the goal set too big, do not think they want to go from 0-1, 1-10, 10-100.
The second mistake that is often made is inertial thinking. For example, if you don’t use AGENCY, it’s like you won’t do anything.
The third is cognitive misalignment, a biased understanding of where you are in the current stage. The consensus reached at that time was to eliminate these three points, without the consensus of that time, this battle can not be fought. Because you think about it, in these three years we have recruited 6,000 people, more than a dozen teams.
The car is another industry that requires a high degree of coordination, and there are countless sub-units in a car ……”
7.how can we carry the millions of netizens of quality control, strict selection.
“Any one thing on the Internet, will be held with a magnifying glass 10,000 times enlarged. However, millet su7 can be said to be the brand that has experienced the quality inspection and strict selection of millions of netizens. There are also 4 points about quality.
(1) Quality is by design. Did we find the best R&D team in the world, because their ability and experience determines (quality).
(2) Find the best and also the most expensive suppliers. I remember a connoisseur said a word that impressed me deeply after seeing the car: it all smells of RMB.
(3) Establish a good management system and process.
(4) Testing. Extremely complex and adequate testing. It is because of the achievement of these four points, so the completion of millet su 7 is so high.”
8. before making the car, Lei Jun is not a particularly fond of cars.
“In fact, before I have not been to the 4s store much, buy a car are drivers and assistants to complete. The front spent a lot of time to make up, go to borrow all the cars that can be borrowed, borrowed 170 cars. Would also talk to the owners, why they bought the car, what was good about it, what wasn’t. For a while I would buy a new car every quarter and go from house to house to experience and learn. Took a special racing license to learn to drift exclusively, and I forced all the executives in the automotive department to get racing licenses. In short, went through all the processes.”
9.there are so many heavyweight players involved in the case, why millet made the car. “In fact, I think our car-making strength is still underestimated. Because the initial period in order to ensure success, a lot of things are done with the traditional car factory method, not yet used the model of technology enterprises to do, in order to ensure that it can be on the poker table, the playing style will be on the side of stability. Later Xiaomi will speed up. Why millet can succeed, I think the reason is still a few levels.
(1) the complexity of the matter of building a car, we have enough knowledge, investment is also large enough.
(2) when the study of the importance of the human car home ecology, almost think the car had to do, it is an ecological closed loop. So in addition to crisis-driven, it is also strategy-driven.
Xiaomi is an ecological enterprise. The so-called ecological enterprise is centered around the core user. The best thing is that your home is surrounded by Xiaomi products, ecological development, this is our important strategy. The strategy can bring each other’s strength, especially the sharing of the underlying technology, including the sharing of the sales network, which will overall strengthen Xiaomi’s comprehensive competitive strength.”
10. if friends also began to go down to make cars, how will Xiaomi look at it.
“They may get on the car through alliances, cooperation with other car manufacturers and other various ways. For example, iphone do carplay. we know the integration of cell phone and car is inevitable. Huawei is one mode, apple’s carplay is another. But like Xiaomi to the underlying technology all through, that kind of integration degree is very different.”
