Lei Jun is personally leading Xiaomi’s autonomous driving recruitment. Has he recruited enough people?

Introduction 

Unconsciously, four months have passed since Xiaomi officially announced its car manufacturing in April. Although the media reports that Xiaomi Auto may cooperate with more and more partners, there are very few official announcements. Recently, Lei Jun personally took the lead in recruiting autonomous driving talents for Xiaomi Auto on social platforms, in order to develop industry-leading L4-level autonomous driving capabilities and support offices in multiple locations across the country. The official recruitment information has been updated to August 4.

Now that autonomous driving is developing rapidly, most of the autonomous driving talents on the market have been recruited by OEMs or new car manufacturers. What can Xiaomi rely on to attract talents? Is it too late for Xiaomi to start its own autonomous driving research at this stage?

1. Comprehensive talent recruitment

In fact, some time ago, Xiaomi has started to release a large number of positions related to autonomous driving on its official website. From the perspective of subdivided jobs, it covers more than 20 positions including autonomous driving data platform, vehicle infrastructure, decision planning, millimeter wave algorithm, development tools, front-end platform development, embedded software, etc. From the perspective of application locations, most of them are located in Beijing, the place with the largest concentration of autonomous driving talents in the country. Some market analysts speculate that Xiaomi may place its automotive R&D center in Beijing.

Lei Jun recently announced on social media that he was recruiting the first batch of autonomous driving technology elites, which has pushed Xiaomi's recruitment to the forefront. Now, the latest update date of the recruitment page is August 4, and it seems that Xiaomi's car manufacturing progress is progressing steadily. Xiaomi is recruiting talents in such a high-profile manner. The author believes that there are two reasons:

First, it is to strengthen netizens’ confidence in Xiaomi Auto. As a company that started late in the industry, it is very important to build public confidence at the beginning, and it is also to let everyone see the progress of Xiaomi after its high-profile official announcement of entering the automotive field;

 

Second, for these Internet companies, the publicity significance of the CEO personally announcing recruitment is greater than the practical significance itself. This is most obvious in Tesla. When a CEO with a halo releases some personal opinions that shock the industry, the publicity effect is much better than normal channels.

Of course, with autonomous driving already hot today, most talents have already been consumed by the market. It is very difficult to recruit at this point in time. Unless you have a passion for Xiaomi's corporate values, it is difficult to attract the right talent. Therefore, in addition to recruiting, Xiaomi has acquired the autonomous driving technology company DeepMotion. According to industry sources, DeepMotion will have a team of up to 20 people joining Xiaomi. This will help Xiaomi initially increase its technical accumulation in the field of autonomous driving and complete the lineup of people in charge of various sectors of autonomous driving technology.

2. How can Xiaomi break through in the road of car manufacturing?

Unlike the "new forces" that were determined to build cars from the beginning, Xiaomi, as an Internet technology company that can be called a "big factory", has a well-known name, but in the minds of most netizens, Xiaomi is just a layman in the field of car manufacturing. Compared with its predecessors who are better at telling stories, Xiaomi did not declare what route its cars would take or what height they would reach when it announced its plan to build cars. The information it revealed when it announced its plan to build cars can probably be summarized in one sentence: I, Lei Jun (Xiaomi), am going to build cars and invest 10 billion yuan first.

However, before this, Xiaomi has not officially announced where the R&D center will be located and where the car factory will be built, but it has already started recruiting autonomous driving talents, which seems a bit strange. Even if the industry leaders are interested in Xiaomi, they may not dare to contact it easily. So why does Xiaomi do this? If we shift our focus to the current new energy field, we can actually understand why Xiaomi needs to first gather development talents in the field of autonomous driving systems.

First of all, compared with traditional fuel vehicles, the pure electric platform of new energy vehicles adds more possibilities to the consumer product "car". With the support of 200kW and 300kW battery chips, new energy vehicles can add more technological equipment on the basis of fuel vehicle functions. In this way, there are many things that can be done on the car, including intelligent driving, intelligent cockpit, etc., and autonomous driving talents have a place to use their skills.

Secondly, in terms of autonomous driving alone, both Tesla cars with FSD driving systems and Xiaopeng cars with self-developed NGP driving are being sought after by capital and have attracted the attention of most media and consumers. In addition, BAIC Group's high-end new energy brand, Polar Fox, has gained popularity because it is equipped with Huawei's autonomous driving technology. Therefore, in such an environment, first of all, using autonomous driving as a breakthrough to open up the industry market can also gain the public's interest and curiosity in Xiaomi cars, which can be said to be killing two birds with one stone.

Finally, the changes under the wave of new energy are not only changes in product content, but also in the consumption expenditure of "service". For example, the FSD (full self-driving) service launched by Tesla requires a subscription package at a price of US$199 per month. Therefore, unlike traditional fuel vehicles, which no longer have any income after selling the product once, new energy vehicles can obtain continuous income through the sale of services, and can also improve the car experience of old users, and can gain the favor of consumers.

3. Electric cars that young people can afford

In the past, car companies could only earn extra profits through mechanical parts on their products, but in the era of smart electric vehicles, the profit point of products is not just visible mechanical parts. For the younger generation of consumers who are gradually occupying the market, they are willing to "spend money to buy services." As for Xiaomi, a technology company that is closer to the young consumer group than car companies, its efforts in the direction of autonomous driving are undoubtedly based on this. Perhaps Xiaomi's slogan in the automotive field is no longer "the first mobile phone that young people can afford", but it is very likely to be "autonomous driving that young people can afford."

Compared with traditional cars, the technical requirements for new energy vehicles have shifted from traditional mechanical hardware technology to intelligent software and hardware. Among them, autonomous driving technology has become a benchmark for future new energy technologies. Whoever masters the most advanced autonomous driving technology is likely to dominate the next trend.

I don’t know what the “first car” that Xiaomi brings to young people will be like, but one thing is certain: the car manufacturing track has welcomed a strong player.