At the beginning of the year, Lei Jun, who did what he wanted, returned to the poker table of "all in everything".

On April 1, Lei Jun, chairman and CEO of XIAOMI, stood together with BYD Chairman Wang Chuanfu, XPeng Inc. CEO he Xiaopeng, NIO Inc. Automobile CEO Li Bin and Li Auto Inc. CEO Li Xiang. It was not an occasion deliberately created for "car building", but a regular exchange among Chinese entrepreneurs with a business school background, which was actually planned as early as the end of last year. Just two days ago, XIAOMI just issued a notice through the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, announcing the formal establishment of a "car building" project and setting up a wholly-owned subsidiary to develop a new generation of electric cars. The rumors over the past two months have finally come true, and XIAOMI has joined the game.

In this context, Lei Jun's "chance encounter" with a group of leading figures of new and old car-building forces in an event became a big deal-- it was not a narrow encounter that could not be spared in his lifetime, but a collective oath to change those who bowed into the auto industry for a century.

According to a person familiar with the matter, Lei Jun said a sentence at the scene where the group photo was taken that day, which probably means:

10-20 years later, when the smart electric vehicle ushered in the end of the competition, it would be nice if the five final "boat tickets" happened to be taken by five people present, brothers.

The transition of the automobile industry to electrification and intelligence is too close to the start and too far from the end. XIAOMI's entry is not too early, but it is not too late. Different from the imagination and speculation of the outside world, this decision was not a long-planned mature fall, but an unexpected kick that XIAOMI was highlighted and kicked onto an unexpected path. On January 4, 2021, Hong Kong stocks hit an all-time high of HK $34 on the first trading day of the new year, doubling their offering price of HK $17. At the beginning of the listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, Lei Jun said he wanted to double the income of people who bought XIAOMI's shares. This is a promise, but it has never been fulfilled.

The day after the share price closed at HK $34, people in Lei Jun's friends' circle mentioned to Playplay: Lei Jun sighed, finally fulfilled his wish, and was finally able to uninstall all the stock quotation software and did not care about the stock price any more.

Lei Jun made his debut for more than 30 years, rang the bell several times, and led Jinshan to list for 8 years. Jinshan Software survived the stage of at least 2 Hong Kong dollars, and the temporary rise and fall of the stock price was no big deal. Only, this time is different. When XIAOMI went public, too many emotional debts of trust and loyalty had to be repaid. Although the promise of "doubling the share price" was said at the IPO victory banquet and was not intended to be told to the public, since it was made public by the media, Lei Jun could not evade the burden of implementing the contract.

What's more, many friends invest a lot of money to support and even save the scene because they believe in themselves. For example, he Xiaopeng bought and sold 100 million US dollars when XIAOMI's IPO share price flopped. Two and a half years later, when the share price exceeded 34 Hong Kong dollars, Lei Jun finally gave an explanation.

Lei Jun no longer cares about XIAOMI's share price, but he doesn't really care about building cars. He has indeed seen a lot about building cars. In 2013, Lei Jun visited Tesla, Inc. CEO Musk twice in Silicon Valley and placed an order for two Tesla, Inc. Model S, one to open and one to dismantle. In 2015 and 2016, he personally invested in NIO Inc. Automobile and XPeng Inc.. XIAOMI and Shunwei also have a lot of investment in the new energy smart car industry chain.

When Lei Jun decided to build a smartphone 11 years ago, many people thought he shouldn't do it. It wasn't that easy, but Lei Jun did it and moved faster than expected. Now, when the proposal for building a car is placed at Lei's desk again and again, everyone thinks he should do it. I'm sure you can do it, but Lei Jun never did it. It is not that XIAOMI has never had any ambition or enthusiasm for cars. Whether it is the proposal of a small number of executives, or the rumors of the outside world, it has been heard for several years.

However, these discussions, within XIAOMI, only stay in the chat time after a few executive meetings at most. For this company, which is considered to have the most experience in combining hardware and software, building cars always seems like a distant thing. Lei Jun's explanation for this: XIAOMI's decline in 2016 is too unforgettable.

Over the years, Lei Jun has mentioned this "darkest moment" countless times on various occasions at home and abroad: XIAOMI, who has an annual planning target of 100 million units, actually shipped only more than 50 million units in 2016, down more than 10 million from 2015. In the industry at that time, it was generally believed that XIAOMI's story was over. After all, the previous 20 years of industry history tells people that when sales in the mobile phone industry decline, it is a dead end-when the entire supply chain loses confidence in you, the death spiral is formed.

From Ericsson, Motorola, Nokia and BlackBerry's gloomy past, this iron has been tested again and again. Lei Jun was forced to take over the mobile phone department in that year, and began the process of really immersing himself in learning the hardware industry, repeatedly emphasizing the word "make-up lessons" to the whole company. At that time, XIAOMI's mobile phone department had a total R & D team of less than 300 people, while Huawei had a corresponding R & D team of 15000 people.

The main theme of "make-up lessons" has been consistent within XIAOMI since 2016, and Lei Jun still does not dare to relax. Not only is it the mobile phone hardware industry, Lei Jun personally took over China in 2019. Like the experience of the mobile phone department, Lei Jun moved his office to the working area in China and did a solid job as president of China on the front line. It was not until more than half a year later that Lu Weibing, who joined that year, gained a foothold in XIAOMI with a series of remarkable meritorious deeds, that Lei Jun let him take over the post of president of China and let himself be a full-time CEO again.

These "make-up lessons" experience, let Lei Jun over the past 10 years in the process of XIAOMI's repeated ups and downs, produced a gradual in-depth understanding and awe of the manufacturing industry and the supply chain. It is precisely because of these awe that XIAOMI really got rid of the shadow of the 2016 "death spiral", began to rise again, and established his rising position in the "zero-sum game" of the mobile phone market.

From 2020 to early 2021, Lei Jun and his colleagues finally plucked up the courage to attack the high-end market, and the pricing of products jumped from more than 4000 yuan to 10,000 yuan, withstanding the test. After six years of failure, Lei Jun and his colleagues finally returned to the top three in the world. In terms of stock price, they recovered the issue price after two years, and then realized the promise of doubling the stock price at the beginning of 2021. In the past five years, XIAOMI has been fighting for the opportunities for survival and development. Cars are the story of the horizon. As the "department head" who personally took over XIAOMI's supply chain, Lei Jun's car story is only as a veteran Tesla, Inc. owner and dismantler, as an early investor in NIO Inc. and XPeng Inc., two smart electric car companies.

As early as July 2018, when XIAOMI first went public, Lei Jun was asked by a securities analyst why XIAOMI was not involved in building cars. Lei Jun's answer to this is: if I had been ten years younger, I would have done it without hesitation, and I would never do it now.

Age is changing, people's state of mind is also changing. After XIAOMI's share price reached 34 Hong Kong dollars at one point on January 4, 2021, people close to Lei Jun said to Pinplay.

Lei Jun already has the feeling of following his heart, he said. from now on, he can stop looking at the stock price and focus on what he cares about: looking at the mobile phone business, going global, and thinking about how to keep XIAOMI's intelligent ecology unfolding. These things do not include building cars, let alone setting up a car company.

Until 10 days later, a board of directors of XIAOMI Company changed the Lei Jun who "did what he wanted". In the early morning of January 15, Beijing time, the US Department of Defense added nine Chinese companies, including XIAOMI, to the "list of Chinese enterprises owned or controlled by the Chinese military." Unlike the Department of Commerce's entity list, the Defense Department's "military list" restricts investment by US investors and does not restrict US suppliers from doing business with the companies on the list. XIAOMI is a Hong Kong-listed company, restricting the investment of American investors has not hurt its fundamentals.

However, as a public company, XIAOMI has to convene a board of directors in accordance with the procedure to discuss the emergency that was pulled into the list by the US Department of Defense. People familiar with the investment community revealed to Pinplay: at the XIAOMI board meeting on January 15, there was no disagreement or even discussion among board members on how to deal with the issue of being pulled by the US Department of Defense. However, the issue of "building a car" surfaced on the board of directors for the first time. Some directors no longer "advised" Lei Jun to accept the proposal of building a car, but directly "asked" XIAOMI to immediately start the research and preparation work for the building of the car. The reason is clear: the external environment is changing and full of uncertainty. Enterprises must be prepared in advance, take the initiative to change and embrace new opportunities. The new ten-year cycle is coming, and XIAOMI has to plan a new growth curve. This time, in the face of the requirements of the board of directors to investigate and build cars, Lei Jun no longer said directly "resolutely not to do it."

On the same day, XIAOMI launched a "car-building" survey. A team from the staff headquarters of XIAOMI Group began to assist Lei Jun to start his journey in a low profile. Later, at an internal meeting of XIAOMI, Lei Jun said that setting the tone of the research at the beginning is not to find a reason worth doing, but still a reason why arguments can and should not be done.

But whether it is to demonstrate that it should be done, or to demonstrate that it can not be done, research itself is a task that must be taken seriously. Throughout the Spring Festival holiday, this light attack and heavy task team did not stop "doing research"-Lei Jun revealed on the day of the announcement that "85 industry visits and communication within 75 days, in-depth exchanges with more than 200 senior figures in the automobile industry."

In the course of the research, the "XIAOMI system", that is, the intelligent travel-related companies invested by XIAOMI Direct Investment, Leijun's Shunwei Capital Investment and Lei Jun's own angel investment, first of all became important objects of visit and research-- they include self-driving companies Momenta and Zhiwalker, lidar company Beixing Photon, automotive electric control company Oyx, as well as BYD, XPeng Inc. and NIO Inc.. Subsequently, the whole automobile industry and the whole upstream and downstream industry chain of intelligent electric vehicles are included in the scope of research.

If they decide to build cars, some of them will become partners in XIAOMI's car-building supply chain and production line, and some will become XIAOMI's solution service providers. Others are bound to become XIAOMI's "peers"-no one will be surprised, but explain clearly why they should consider building cars and investigate under what circumstances the decision to build cars was made, which is what XIAOMI and Lei Jun himself must do. At the same time of the start of the research, the internal repeated discussion and argumentation also began.

Product play understanding: around the Spring Festival, XIAOMI staff organized several symposiums attended by Lei Jun, as well as three partner meetings to discuss whether to do electric cars, who will do it, and how to do it.

With the research report, at the beginning of one or two partners' meetings, most of the partners continued the tone of "if you want to do it." although the time for the final decision had not yet come, the attendees vaguely felt that car building could not be avoided this time.

On February 19th, XIAOMI held an enlarged meeting of cadres above the general manager level of the department attended by more than 50 people, and reported the progress of car-building topics and research work within a certain scope of the company for the first time, and held an expanded discussion on whether to build a car. Dramatically, in the course of the meeting, some media released the news that "XIAOMI has decided to build a car and regards it as a strategic decision."

Public opinion immediately boiled, and the stock price soared. So that in the course of the meeting, the relevant team began to prepare the first public company announcement on the topic of car building. From then on, "XIAOMI car-building" has become a "collusion" in which the market and public opinion participate together, and the outside world holds great enthusiasm for "XIAOMI car-building". In a monologue at a press conference on March 30, Lei Jun said that many people thought that "XIAOMI has no reason not to build a car." There are also many people advise Lei Jun that the difficulty of building a car, the high risk, the long cycle, and the low fault tolerance rate must not be taken lightly.

The analysis of the research team has gradually become more and more detailed: intelligent electric vehicles have been recognized as the largest Taiwan tuyere in the next decade; the maturity of the three-power system has greatly reduced the difficulty of the automobile manufacturing machinery industry; the cost of power batteries has been greatly reduced and there is still huge room for decline; the high point of the "software-defined vehicle" represented by the intelligent cockpit has become the key.

Lei Jun and his team are clearly aware that intelligent electric vehicles have changed from "mechanical and electrical industry" to "consumer electronics and information industry". A person in the automobile industry who has been interviewed by Lei Jun said that one of the ideas he put forward to Lei Jun is that the intelligence of traditional car companies is to add a mobile phone to four wheels, while XIAOMI builds a car. is to add four wheels to the mobile phone and a whole set of intelligent systems. Combined with the current industry trends, which is difficult and which is easy, we can see clearly.

At the moment, Lei Jun's attitude towards research has gradually changed from "finding every reason not to build a car."

In late February, one month before the final decision, XIAOMI's research on car construction entered a critical stage of argumentation.

The first is the question of "how to do it".

Is it done in the XIAOMI system? Or should we set up a separate company and accept financing from the capital market? Product play learned that before and after the Spring Festival

Domestic venture capital funds that "hear the wind" frequently contact Lei Jun to try to persuade Lei Jun to set up a company independent of XIAOMI to build cars, with a valuation starting at $10 billion. And inside XIAOMI, the ideas of the partners were not exactly the same at the beginning.

Comparatively speaking, it is easier to start quickly by setting up a separate subsidiary financing outside the body through the acquisition of the existing car building team in the assembly market, and the effect is faster from the point of view of increasing the capital value. XIAOMI's research team believes that if you adopt this approach, or even acquire multiple teams to do it together, you may be able to get out of the car as soon as the end of this year and be able to make quick trial and error.

The founder of the new power of car building even suggested to Lei Jun that if we cooperate, it doesn't matter whether it involves capital or not, "I'll build the car, and you (XIAOMI) can do the experience of intelligent systems and networking, and then paste your cards." "

But Lei Jun's thinking is that XIAOMI building a car must not only be a car, but also a part of XIAOMI's overall intelligent ecology, and will be one of the key scenes and core nodes of intelligent life. Therefore, Lei Jun will position XIAOMI's original intention to "use high-quality intelligent electric vehicles, so that users around the world can enjoy a ubiquitous intelligent life." In order to do this, we must get through all the company's technical accumulation, product experience and even the ability and resources of sales operation and marketing. On the other hand, if XIAOMI's partners and core staff are not really closely tied to the opportunities and risks of "car building," the situation of "all in" will not be realized, so they should do it within XIAOMI's system, set up a wholly-owned subsidiary, spend money first, and place a bet of 10 billion US dollars first.

To build a car in vitro, it is easy to start quickly, and then difficult; to build a car in vivo, it is slow to start, and it is difficult before it is easy. Lei Jun chose the latter. Because he decided that if XIAOMI built a car, the first battle must be a decisive battle, must establish a leading situation, must win. In a live broadcast of XIAOMI's 11th anniversary celebration on April 6, Lei Jun said that XIAOMI's car is expected to be available three years later. The second is the question of who will do it.

If a wholly-owned subsidiary is set up within the XIAOMI system, how to form the team? Who is in charge? It seems that XIAOMI has talent reserves that can be deployed to the car-building system from the supply chain, software engineering, AI research and development to the marketing system, but XIAOMI's talent reserve over the past 10 years has been around smartphones and Internet of things devices. Although there are many similarities, smart electric vehicles, as larger, smarter and more complex future electronic devices, are on autopilot, lidar and manufacturing supply systems. There is a demand for more specialized talents. It is not difficult to understand XIAOMI's deliberate choice to form a new automobile team in parallel with internal staff transfers and external acquisitions. In terms of the basic capabilities of the automotive industry, and laser radar and self-driving, which involve very specific professionals and business needs, XIAOMI tends to recruit talents from the outside, or even directly acquire relevant start-up companies. XIAOMI and Lei Jun themselves also have many investment layouts in related fields. As for the new company CEO, it can only be Lei Jun himself, which will greatly reduce the cost of trial and error in the early run-in, and he is the only one who can win the trust of the board of directors and give a 10-year US $10 billion project funding authorization at a time; only he can maximize all resources inside and outside XIAOMI Group.

We can see the clue from XIAOMI's recent series of personnel changes. XIAOMI management appointed Lu Weibing, president of China, as president of the international department, and actually set up a unified sales and service management section covering the whole world. At the same time, Lu Weibing and Zeng Xuezhong, president of the mobile phone department, were promoted to senior vice president of XIAOMI Group. Zhang Feng, senior vice president and minister of staff, was publicly appointed again to make it clear that Lei Jun was in charge of notebook, TV and home appliance business. Lei Jun also made the existing business management more dependent on Lu, Zeng and Zhang. And I am more prepared to devote more of my energy to the automobile business. "many people underestimate Lei Jun's action and determination to grasp something personally. If he does it himself, he must do it himself. Just like when he personally took charge of XIAOMI's mobile phone department and China, and served as the president of these two departments, he was really grasping the specific business in the front line. As far as he is concerned, there is no nominal CEO," a former Jinshan person who is familiar with Lei Jun once said to Pingpong.Then there is the question of whether it can be done or not.

Throughout the research period, Lei Jun has been very cautious and is a conservative among the partners. It was not until the final stage that the reasons why XIAOMI had a chance to build a car were gradually summed up and confirmed:

Intelligent electric vehicles have completely changed the business model of the automobile industry. XIAOMI has a deep understanding of the hardware-based Internet service model.

XIAOMI has the richest experience in software and hardware integration in the industry, and his understanding of manufacturing in the Internet industry is unbeatable.

XIAOMI has a mature intelligent ecology with the largest scale, the richest categories and the most active connections in the industry.

XIAOMI has accumulated a large number of key technologies and supply chain resources that can be reused in the past ten years.

XIAOMI has a strong brand accumulation and a solid user base, as well as the trust and support of global rice noodles.

XIAOMI has sufficient cash reserves and can invest boldly without distractions.

When Lei Jun showed these reasons after repeated consideration, the possibility of "XIAOMI building a car" landing gradually became clear. After these articles were confirmed by the announcement on March 30, they were directly written into the email of the whole staff.

In the discussion on XIAOMI's car-building industry, a question that has been repeatedly raised is that Tesla, Inc. has been building cars for more than 10 years, Apple Inc has been preparing for eight years, and the new forces of car-building in China have been running for six years. XIAOMI has only entered now. Is it too late?

XIAOMI did not enter the game too early, and smart electric cars are only likely to be longer than the production and development cycle of smartphones. If a XIAOMI smart electric car can't be delivered until 2023, what chance does it have in the face of Tesla, Inc., Apple Inc, BYD, NIO Inc. and XPeng Inc.? Just because it is XIAOMI, someone must pay for it?

He believes that cars are a century-old track, and the opportunities brought about by any major revolution are a long period of change, and now a new cycle has just begun. At present, the market penetration of pure electric vehicles is only 4%, and everyone has only taken a few steps in the long March. At this time, the so-called time difference is negligible in the time scale of industrial change.

On the other hand, XIAOMI made a little later, but he had the opportunity to see more of the experiences of his predecessors and stepped on a few pits as little as possible.

What really puzzled him was the core logic of his car-building proposition, a broader question: what is the end of the smart electric vehicle industry?

This is a question he has asked almost everyone he communicates with, and he is increasingly convinced that if electric cars are eventually "consumerized", it will repeat the old days of PC, smartphones and other industries, with a winner-takes-all situation: 10-20 years later, global TOP5 manufacturers take 80 per cent of the market, while most of the remaining small brands struggle with losses until they give up.

So, who will these last five "tickets" belong to? Why can XIAOMI win this "boat ticket"? The entanglement lasted until late March. During this period, the external situation is still changing.

On March 13, a US court issued an injunction against the US Defense Department's sanctions list on the grounds that there was no credible evidence for XIAOMI's allegations of "military involvement." Amid the uproar, XIAOMI unexpectedly won a historic preliminary victory. XIAOMI himself also released his annual results for 2020. Despite the impact of the epidemic, XIAOMI's annual report still exceeded market expectations and became the only major mobile phone brand in the smartphone industry that recorded significant positive growth throughout the year. And the rumors of XIAOMI's car still abound. Although everything is inconclusive, the market is happy with any suspected rumors.

The enthusiasm of XIAOMI's employees has long been high. Although there is no final conclusion at all, many XIAOMI employees have begun to send private messages to Lei Jun and other company executives expressing their determination to "open up wasteland" for XIAOMI cars, and some veteran employees who no longer care much about money even say, "No salary is fine, as long as you can join the automobile project team." "

The situation is stronger than people, and the form is strong. Some industry observers said that no matter what Lei Jun thought at first, no matter what Lei Jun thought at first, the market expectation of "XIAOMI building a car" is unlikely not to be done now. Some XIAOMI employees cannot even imagine the chain reaction if XIAOMI finally decides not to make a car. "maybe many people will be very disappointed. If the car represents a great opportunity in the future and represents an important node of ecological development, XIAOMI will not do it." will it be regarded as an outdated traditional electrical company in the future? At the time of the release of the 2020 earnings report, XIAOMI has already begun the warm-up of the flagship spring product launch at the end of March. As we all know, the contents of this release include XIAOMI 11 Ultra, which XIAOMI has proved his photography skills, XIAOMI's first mass production mobile phone priced at 10,000 yuan, C1 chip that XIAOMI's expression chip road continues, and XIAOMI's brand-new LOGO and CI system. XIAOMI tried to show the public and users a new look for the new future, and Lei Jun set the theme of the release as a word with a different meaning-"endless life". In the last few days of March, Lei Jun caught an unexpected cold, so much so that the well-prepared press conference had to be divided into two days. And it was before and after this that Lei Jun's original entanglements about building cars were dispelled. First of all, he made a final summary of the reasons for building cars: the general trend of the times, there is no choice. At the same time, as for the deduction of the ticket, he figured it out. Don't worry about it at this time, don't think too much about it, and it's over. If the ticket is final, but at present, XIAOMI has not yet entered the board, what is there to struggle with?

Now, he only needs to think of the most convergent and practical question: how to build a good car that XIAOMI's core users, rice noodles, like and are willing to buy.

At the press conference, Lei Jun specially mentioned the story of iron rice noodles' support for XIAOMI to build cars. After extremely complex analysis and deduction, the simplest touch is often the last driving force.

Within the company, Lei Jun asked his colleagues: as long as our product line, if there are hundreds of thousands of rice noodles in the world willing to pay for our cars, will our delivery volume be among the top three in the world?

For the tens of millions of core rice noodle circles around the world, this is within reasonable imagination. But this thing reflects Lei Jun's decisiveness: when he hesitates to do something, he may have to hesitate for a long time. And once the decision is made, no one can pull him out. On the evening of March 30th, XIAOMI Group issued a notice on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, announcing that the board of directors formally approved the establishment of a smart electric vehicle project and set up a wholly-owned subsidiary, with an investment of US $10 billion in 10 years and an initial investment of 10 billion RMB. Lei Jun personally served as CEO of XIAOMI's intelligent electric vehicle business. At the beginning of the year, Lei Jun, who did what he wanted, returned to the poker table of "all in everything".

In 75 days, he visited players in the automobile industry, held symposiums on car building, talked to old friends who had invested in cars, sued the US Department of Defense and won the case, and submitted a bill at the plenary session of the National people's Congress. He handled two important personnel changes, including the resignation of XIAOMI's chief financial officer Zhou and the departure of Jinshan office chairman GE Ke, and prepared a two-day launch of new products. Decision-making XIAOMI brand CI upgrade the final plan, and finally on March 30th, ushered in XIAOMI's board of directors to make a formal decision to build a car.

"I would have done it if I were ten years younger," Lei Jun was asked 32 months ago why he didn't throw out the answer when he was building a car. Now it's time to break his promise. He told the public that this would be the last start-up project in his life, betting on his entire reputation.