On the evening of August 11, Lei Jun, the founder and chairman of Xiaomi group, gave a speech in 2022 and released a series of new products and technologies under Xiaomi.

In the automotive business, Lei Jun said that it has been 500 days since the official announcement of entering the electric vehicle industry on March 30, 2021. During this period, Xiaomi group has invested 3.3 billion yuan and set up an exclusive team of more than 500 people to study the automatic driving technology in the whole stack. For this reason, Xiaomi's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Xiaoai team and mobile camera department have also given full support.

Then a demonstration video was played at the press conference, showing us the current development progress of Xiaomi automatic driving technology and what core functions it will have.

■ Xiaomi automatic driving applicable to all scenes

First, the test vehicle equipped with Xiaomi automatic driving can be called remotely. As long as people open the mobile phone app on the ground, they can start the vehicle remotely with one button. Then, the test vehicle can automatically drive from the basement to the ground and come to the users. This can not only avoid the problem of finding a car, but also avoid the delay of parking space or the risk of collision.

In terms of automatic navigation, we can see in the demonstration video that Xiaomi's automatic driving can cope with various driving scenes and situations on urban roads and intercity expressways. For example, vehicles can automatically enter the ramp and overtake on the intercity expressway.

On the more complicated urban roads, Xiaomi's automatic driving can also perform such actions as "unprotected automatic U-turn", "unprotected automatic right turn", "automatic detour of temporary vehicles", "automatic detour of accident vehicles", "automatic detour around the island", "zebra crossing to yield to pedestrians".

Although it seems that these functions are very useful in the demo video, I still have some questions. First, the two "automatic detour" functions do not show the vehicle speed and the real reaction time of the vehicle at that time, so we can not know under which conditions or scenes they can play the greatest role.

In addition, we can see from the first figure below that when the test vehicle is making an unprotected right turn, there is a bicycle riding laterally on the left side, but the test vehicle does not make a comity action. This may be because the auto drive system determines that it is a motor vehicle, so the comity function is not enabled.

However, in the middle of the right turn, the test vehicle stopped on the sidewalk. This is because the auto drive system "saw" a vehicle on the left side, so it stopped to avoid it, but it also prevented pedestrians from crossing the road to a certain extent.

At present, the traffic laws and regulations of many cities have strict regulations on the passing and parking of vehicles on the sidewalk, such as giving way to pedestrians or not parking on zebra crossings. However, many automatic driving assistance can not effectively solve these problems, so if Xiaomi automatic driving can effectively deal with these pain points, it will stand out among many driving assistance technologies.

At the end of the video, we demonstrated the parking function of Xiaomi's automatic driving. First, vehicles can automatically enter the parking lot or basement according to the navigation, and even queue up automatically.

In the driving scene of the basement, Xiaomi can also drive automatically on sharp and narrow bends or spiral ramps with small angles, and can automatically avoid pedestrians and cones or other landmarks on the ground.

Of course, when automatic parking is turned on, the system automatically starts to find parking spaces. In the demo video, the system finds a parking space with a robot arm. After the vehicle is parked in the parking position, the robot arm will automatically scan the charging interface of the vehicle and automatically connect it to start charging.

It can be seen from the video that the robot arm is relatively small, wrapped with thick charging cables, while the shape of the base and the overall orange and white combination are very simple in Xiaomi's style.

Finally, I would like to briefly talk about the test car. At least two "tool cars" appeared in the presentation video released this time. Judging from the appearance and interior, it is speculated that they were modified based on the PHEV version of BYD Han EV and the new BMW 5 series.

In addition, on the test vehicle, we saw some sensor equipment required for Xiaomi's automatic driving. Take the modified version of BYD Han as an example. There is a sensor in front of the front of the car, and one above the front wheel. Besides a larger stand on the roof, the sensor on the top is very similar to the pandar128 laser radar of Hesai technology in terms of size. It is the only device in the market that can realize 360 ° laser sensing, This may also enable Xiaomi auto drive system to achieve a high level of environmental sensing and mapping capabilities with fewer sensors.

At present, Xiaomi automatic driving is undergoing road test nationwide. In the first stage, 140 test vehicles are running on roads in different environments.

■ the road of "leading" car building

At the press conference, Lei Jun revealed that at present, the work of the automobile business has been progressing smoothly, and even exceeded expectations. He said that in the 500 days since the announcement of car building, he had a deeper understanding of the automobile industry, and believed that to make a car, one must have a sense of awe and absolutely not worry. At the same time, he hoped that everyone would give Xiaomi more patience and space. "Although we have strict confidentiality measures, there are always some rumors on the Internet. Therefore, in the past two years, I am not prepared to refute the rumors or introduce new developments. I will report to you regularly at the appropriate time."

After playing the demonstration video, Lei Jun said that the Xiaomi autonomous driving project would continue to be developed for two years, and their goal was to enter the first camp of the industry in 2024.

So this is all about Xiaomi car in the press conference last night. It can be seen that for Lei Jun, the most important task at present is to research and develop the automatic driving technology, because he believes that this is the "match point" for intelligent electric vehicles.

Perhaps in the cognition of many people, this view seems to be a little too advanced, because the domestic policies have not yet "unlocked" the automatic driving, and the technology application seems to be still early. Putting "treasure" on the automatic driving, is Lei Jun not afraid of failure?

We don't know what he really thinks about this at present. Maybe he will show his heart in 2024. However, judging from Lei Jun's previous entrepreneurial track and the current development trend of the smart electric vehicle market, the advance of Xiaomi's car manufacturing is necessary and can not fail.

In the speech session before the press conference, Lei Jun shared his entrepreneurial road. The process of entering the mobile internet field has a very similar historical background to today's "Xiaomi makes cars".

According to Lei Jun's recollection, he first realized the great power of the Internet in 1998. At that time, a group of "pioneers" had created Chinese Internet brands, such as Sina, Tencent, Sohu and NetEase. At that time, Jinshan, which was only concerned with developing application software, missed the first wave. In the case of unsuccessful direct acquisition, Lei Jun led the team to launch the excellence network, which mainly sells books and audio-visual products, in 2000, and became a very influential B2C e-commerce in two or three years through many very advanced measures at that time.

。

However, just when the business was developing smoothly, the bursting of the global Internet foam and the downturn of the capital market, coupled with the characteristics of the e-commerce platform that was originally very "money burning", knocked down the excellence network, and the management could only sell the website. But at that time, no one expected that a new wave of Internet was coming. This time, B2C e-commerce was standing at the top of the wave.

"Zhuoyue.com was founded after the bursting of the Internet foam and fell before the comprehensive rise of e-commerce." Lei Jun was very impressed with this entrepreneurial experience and called it an unforgettable experience.

However, from this entrepreneurial experience, Lei Jun has a clearer understanding of the future: the future Internet will be integrated into all walks of life. So when he heard the rumor that 3G wireless network was about to open in 2005, he thought the opportunity had come.

Therefore, Lei Jun stepped up his actions, first of all, to become a real user of the mobile Internet, constantly looking for user pain points and business opportunities. During this process, he found that people were somewhat resistant to the mobile Internet because of the small screen of mobile phones and the slow speed of 2G networks. However, this is where the business opportunities lie and has become the basic concept for Lei Jun to develop all electronic products in the future.

Next, he hopes to become the earliest participant in the wave of mobile Internet, and the fastest way is angel investment. Therefore, Lei Jun started the road of investors. Until he left Jinshan in 2007 and founded Xiaomi in 2010, he did not give up this business.

Lei Jun's judgment on Xiaomi's car building is similar to his experience. When Xiaomi entered the electric vehicle market, it also missed the first wave of "new forces", and even this track has the smell of "foam burst". Through in-depth understanding of the automobile industry and long-term deep cultivation in mobile Internet, Lei Jun realized that the "3G era" of the automobile industry might be the application of automatic driving technology.

Therefore, just as Lei Jun actively "embraced the mobile Internet" in the past, he is also treating autonomous driving with the same attitude. He hopes that this path will enable Xiaomi to achieve a breakthrough in the field of intelligent electric vehicles. After all, this is the last major innovation project that "pressed" Lei Jun's entire reputation.

■ bang Dianping

Of course, Xiaomi's strength is much better than that of Jinshan or zhuoyou. It is not comparable in terms of human resources, financial resources, brand awareness and influence. In addition, China has become the world's largest single market for electric vehicles, which also gives Lei Jun more confidence and can steadily take every step.

However, there is power and pressure. Many enterprises that have not caught up with the first wave of electric vehicles are also taking the same development path as Xiaomi. For example, baidu not only has Apollo automatic driving, but also has an independent smart car brand: Jidu car and the first concept car robo-01. There is also Huawei. Although it has made it clear that it does not build cars, its drive motor and intelligent driving assistance technologies have been implemented on many models, such as the new hi version of the extreme fox alpha s equipped with Huawei hi full stack intelligent vehicle solutions, the avita 11, which was just launched and created by the "CHN" combination, and of course, the AITO M5 and M7.

It took Lei Jun three years from his departure from Jinshan to the establishment of Xiaomi. And the Xiaomi car building announced in March 2021, can it also take three years for autonomous driving to blossom and achieve the set goals? Let's wait and see.