Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun wants his company to be able to compete with the world’s largest automakers and sell 10 million electric cars a year with the global top 5 in mind.
According to the CEO of Xiaomi, the world’s top five brands will have more than 80% market share. But in order to be at that level, Xiaomi must market 10 million vehicles per year.
Lei Jun argues that cars are no longer cars, but forms of electronic goods with software and user experience at the core of their services.
I'm convinced that the world's top 5 brands will hold more than 80% of the market share when the EV industry reaches maturity. In other words, the only way for us to succeed is to be one of the top 5 and ship more than 10 million cars annually. The competition will be brutal.
— Lei Jun (@leijun) October 19, 2022
Lei Jun said that cars evolved from mechanical goods to consumer electronics. Electric cars are much more complicated than gasoline-powered vehicles, and that battery costs have fallen by 80 percent in the last decade alone, with a further 50 percent cost reduction still possible.
His opinion is an indirect response to some experts who think that Xiaomi is too late to join the fight in the electric car segment, with Tesla being the flagship player in the next 10 years.
But Lei Jun claims the race has just begun and Xiaomi will have plenty of opportunities to catch up.
The manufacturing threshold of EVs has been dramatically lowered compared to gasoline cars: 30,000 components are highly modular, and the cost of batteries has fallen by 80% in the past ten years (with at least 50% more room for cost reduction in the future).
— Lei Jun (@leijun) October 19, 2022
