A few days ago, on June 18, Xiaomi published a patent for “vehicle function control method, vehicle function control device and storage medium.” The publication number is CN112995948A.
The patent abstract shows that it refers to a vehicle function control method, vehicle function control device and storage medium. Through the present disclosure, it can be ensured that when the sensorless control function is provided, the power consumption of the vehicle and the terminal is reduced. Plus, the hardware cost is reduced as well.
At the end of March this year, Lei Jun announced that Xiaomi would enter the car industry, with a 10-year investment of 10 billion US dollars and an initial investment of 10 billion yuan. Xiaomi released a number of recruitment information for autonomous driving related positions last week, involving data platforms, vehicle infrastructure, decision planning, millimeter wave algorithms, development tools, front-end platform development, embedded software, control, perception, high-precision maps, simulation platform, etc.
In addition, three days ago, there was news that car building was “accelerating”, preparing for self-developed chips. Also, we learned that the company has begun recruiting chip IC design and autonomous driving algorithm engineers.
Prior to this, Lei Jun, Chairman and CEO of Xiaomi Group, stated that according to users, Xiaomi’s first car will be either a sedan or an SUV, and the price range is expected to be between 100,000 and 300,000 yuan ($15,000 – $45,000).
Lei Jun also stated that the newly designed Xiaomi round logo is more suitable for the car brand than the square. But this doesn’t mean they will use this logo on the Xiaomi car because the logo design is determined before the car plan is announced.