Lei Jun's car manufacturing faces a severe test

Author | Chai Xuchen

Editor | Zhang Xiaoling

In the past two years, Lei Jun, who has been very popular, was doused with a bucket of cold water due to an accident involving the Xiaomi SU7.

At 10:44 PM on March 29, a standard version of the Xiaomi SU7 encountered a serious traffic accident in Tongling, Anhui. After the vehicle collided, it caught fire, resulting in the deaths of the driver and two passengers. All three were university students, and they were traveling from Wuhan to Anhui to take an exam.

The day after the incident, Xiaomi quickly responded, although they partially restored the accident process, the statement did not mention the AEB status of the accident vehicle, nor did it respond to the key issue raised by the family of the driver regarding "the doors being unable to open after the accident."

Various discussions pushed Xiaomi's automotive efforts to the center of public opinion. For a time, the high-powered "speed and passion" that Xiaomi cars created for young people also became the key for the market to scrutinize it, subsequently triggering shocks in the capital market.

On April 1, Xiaomi Group's stock price plummeted in the afternoon, with intraday losses exceeding 6%, ultimately closing down 5.49%, with a market value evaporating by over HKD 70 billion in a single day. Lei Jun's venture into car manufacturing thus slipped into its darkest hour.

Looking back in history, issues like spontaneous combustion, collisions, and accidents are almost a necessary path for car companies; each painful lesson pushes the brand and industry towards iteration and evolution. The current major test, which came "unexpectedly," will require Xiaomi Auto and Lei Jun to answer the question of how to respect safety and speed.

Tremor

On March 29, at 9 PM, a student from a university in Wuhan, Luo, along with classmates Li and a friend from another school, Huo, set off for Chizhou, Anhui to participate in a civil service examination.

At around 10 PM, an olive green Xiaomi SU7 was driving on the De-Shang Expressway in Tongling, Anhui, with Luo in the driver's seat, Li in the passenger seat, and Huo in the back seat. Unfortunately, the incident occurred that night.

At 10:27 PM, Luo activated the intelligent assisted driving at a speed of 116 km/h. At 10:44 PM, while passing through the section from Zongyang to Qimen, the vehicle collided with the concrete guardrail on the highway and caught fire, resulting in the immediate deaths of Luo and Li, while Huo later died despite rescue efforts.

After the news broke, the topic "Xiaomi responds to SU7 collision and explosion on the highway" briefly surged to the second spot on the trending list, with netizens engaging in heated discussions about Xiaomi's intelligent driving and the locked doors in the incident.

Quickly, on the afternoon of April 1, a spokesperson for Xiaomi released the vehicle's driving data at the time of the incident and responded to the event: "At 10:44 PM on March 29, a standard version of the Xiaomi SU7 encountered a serious traffic accident while driving on the De-Shang Expressway in the Chiqi section. We are deeply saddened by this."

According to Xiaomi's disclosure, the accident can be divided into three phases: before the accident, the vehicle was in intelligent driving mode, maintaining a speed of 116 km/h, but the driver's hands were off the steering wheel, prompting a reminder from the system; at the time of the accident, the intelligent driving system issued a warning about 2-4 seconds before the accident while decelerating, the driver took over, began to steer and decelerate to avoid, but failed to stop or change lanes, and the vehicle collided with the concrete guardrail at a speed of 97 km/h;After the accident, the vehicle immediately triggered the Ecall and called 120.

There are also many undisclosed doubts during these three stages: the Xiaomi SU7 detected an obstacle and began to decelerate during the accident, but it has not been disclosed whether the AEB was triggered to stop; the cause of the vehicle fire after the accident and whether the doors could be opened have not been explained.

Industry insiders pointed out that the vehicle only started to alert 2 seconds before the collision, leaving the driver with a very short reaction window. For a time, discussions surrounding "Is Xiaomi's intelligent driving unsafe?" and "Is the driver overly reliant on intelligent driving?" became rampant.

The reaction time left for the driver by intelligent driving is indeed too short. At high speeds, a reaction time of 2-4 seconds is too urgent for any ordinary driver. The industry is curious as to why the Xiaomi SU7 only issued a warning when the obstacle was right in front, rather than detecting the danger earlier or performing AEB or lane change avoidance, which may be related to the intelligent driving capabilities of the accident vehicle.

Xiaomi clarified in its official response that the vehicle involved in the incident is a standard version of the SU7, equipped with an NVIDIA OrinN intelligent driving chip, with a computing power of only 84 TOPS. In contrast, the Xiaomi SU7 Pro and Max versions use dual OrinX chips with a computing power of up to 508 TOPS; at the same time, the standard version is not equipped with lidar and only uses a pure visual solution.

This means that there is a several-fold difference in computing power between the standard and high-end versions, which has a decisive impact when it comes to processing data and making quick judgments. Industry insiders pointed out that if the SU7 Max version's lidar solution could achieve a detection distance of 200 meters, it might be able to identify obstacles in advance.

Intelligent driving industry professionals stated that the pure visual version of intelligent driving performs relatively poorly at night, which may lead to issues with timely obstacle recognition. Additionally, when the vehicle's speed exceeds 100 mph, there is a possibility that the AEB may not trigger.

Clearly, the combination of many adverse factors led to the occurrence of this accident.

Currently, regarding this traffic accident, the Tongling traffic police responded on April 1 that they have completed three rounds of on-site investigations at the accident site and have entrusted a third-party organization to conduct a judicial appraisal of the burned vehicle wreckage, focusing on analyzing the burn marks on the battery pack, the degree of deformation of the door structure, and the status of the mechanical linkage device.

Reflection

This is the most serious collision and fire incident resulting in death since the Xiaomi SU7 was launched. Although the intelligent driving system was not the direct cause of the accident, the focus has turned to the intelligent driving trend, and the industry has begun to reflect—Is intelligent driving really the future of automobiles?

In fact, there are currently too many car companies promoting intelligent driving in a way that aligns with "autonomous driving" and "quasi-L3," with brands emphasizing features like "from parking space to parking space" and "automatically navigating ramps," leading consumers to believe that intelligent driving capabilities are very strong.

In February of this year, BYD proposed the concept of "universal intelligent driving" and "intelligent driving equality," shifting the competition in the automotive circle towards intelligent driving. Subsequently, players like Geely, Chery, Toyota, and Leapmotor followed suit, and Nio even developed its own intelligent driving chip for this purposeWith the recent incident involving Xiaomi cars igniting public opinion, the safety issues surrounding intelligent driving have prompted new reflections within the industry: Is the pace of intelligent driving development too fast?

Industry insiders have pointed out that current intelligent driving is still based on Level 2, and there are limitations during its use. When the vehicle is on the highway, with higher speeds and greater control difficulty, consumers should maintain a sense of reverence for the intelligent driving system, always keeping their eyes on the road and being prepared to take over at any moment.

If the driver in this incident had not used intelligent driving and had remained focused on the road, the outcome might have been different.

On the other hand, the "gaps" exposed in Xiaomi's statement are puzzling. In the latest announcement, Xiaomi did not address the question of whether the car doors unlocked in a timely manner, which has drawn public attention. Individuals claiming to be family members of the passengers on social media stated that the vehicle's collision with the guardrail caused the doors to lock, and the battery explosion prevented the occupants from escaping.

It is worth mentioning that in an official response from Xiaomi last August regarding the Xiaomi SU7, it was stated that all four doors are equipped with emergency mechanical pull handles that can be used to open the corresponding door in an emergency. The mechanical pull handle is theoretically independent of the electrical system, but in extreme collisions, door structure deformation, interior component displacement, or loss of consciousness by the occupants may affect the use of the device.

Therefore, despite Xiaomi disclosing that it completed emergency calls, confirmed the accident, contacted the owner, and dispatched ambulances within three minutes of the vehicle encountering danger, and emphasized that the vehicle is equipped with mechanical emergency pull handles, the market did not buy it, and investors voted with their real money.

Initially, the capital market regarded Xiaomi cars as a model of "cross-border disruptors." Standard & Poor's had just upgraded Xiaomi's credit rating to BBB on March 31, but the day after the incident, the stock price plummeted—this is a cruel metaphor for the new energy track: the valuation constructed by technological halo and capital pursuit may face instability due to a single extreme incident.

However, looking back at history, "growing pains" are also an inevitable path for intelligent electric vehicle companies. The 2018 Autopilot fatality case caused Tesla's market value to evaporate by 20% in a single day, Nio's 2021 NOP incident triggered a crisis of user trust, and the controversy over Li Auto's AEB failure forced algorithm iterations... Each painful lesson has pushed the evolution of industry safety standards.

For Xiaomi, this incident may be a more brutal test than the price war in the smartphone market: it not only has to face a safety tolerance rate a hundred times stricter than that of the smartphone industry but also needs to make the leap from internet thinking to industrial thinking under the magnifying glass of the capital market.

Currently, Xiaomi faces a dual redemption: on the technical level, it needs to quickly cooperate with the police to complete the accident reconstruction, clarify the boundaries of responsibility with third-party data, and if necessary, initiate hardware recalls or software upgrades, turning the crisis into an opportunity for transparent communication.

It is worth noting that the combination of low liquidity in the Hong Kong stock market and negative factors such as Midea Group's liquidation of Xiaomi stocks may amplify short-term emotional fluctuations. However, from a medium to long-term perspective, as CITIC Securities stated, if Xiaomi can use this incident to promote upgrades to the underlying safety architecture, such as redundant design and emergency mechanisms for intelligent driving, it may, like Tesla, initiate a new round of value reassessment after its rebirthWhen the photos of the burning SU7 wreckage are frozen alongside the steep bearish candlestick on the chart, all practitioners in the new energy sector should revisit Musk's warning: "What matters more than the speed of development is surviving to reach the finish line."

For Xiaomi, which has just crossed the life-and-death line of car manufacturing, finding a balance between technological innovation and safety will determine whether it can truly take root in the automotive market