On April 23, 2024, at the Xiaomi Group Investor Conference, Xiaomi Auto became the absolute protagonist.
Because just 3 days ago, Xiaomi Auto’s first model, SU7, locked more than 70,000 units, and only 23 days had passed since the launch of Xiaomi SU7.
As the soul of Xiaomi Auto, Lei Jun said like an acceptance speech, “I am really grateful to the suppliers, who have believed that Xiaomi cars can be successful from the first day and have given us very good costs and support.” ”
A year later, on June 26, 2025, Lei Jun released Xiaomi Auto’s second new car, Xiaomi YU7, which is far more popular than the former, and in just 3 minutes, Dading has exceeded 200,000 units.
As one of the suppliers of Xiaomi Automobile, Titanium Software has been deeply involved in the construction of R&D platforms in a “high-intensity and fast-paced” mode since the launch of Xiaomi’s car manufacturing project, providing it with digital solutions such as collaborative online design and enterprise-level application systems.
Yan Zhaofa, general manager of Titanium News Software, revealed to Yiou Automobile that Xiaomi Auto can be called the “efficiency ceiling” it has cooperated with for more than 20 years:
In March 2021, it announced the construction of the car, launched the selection of the information system in August, and completed the POC (proof of concept) of the 3DExperience platform in September and finalized the cooperation, and the entire decision-making cycle was only 1 month, which is more than 90% higher than the average decision-making time of traditional car companies of 1.5 years, setting a rare “Xiaomi speed” in the industry.
As a veteran of more than 20 years in the software service industry, Yan Zhaofa has led the team to tackle the manufacturing fields of automobiles, ships, aerospace, industrial equipment, etc., at that time the business was relatively scattered, although the automotive business accounted for more than 70% of the company’s revenue structure, but the vast majority of the operating income came from overseas parts suppliers or multinational enterprises.
The watershed of Titanium News Automobile’s business occurred in 2015.
Before 2015, during the heyday of the fuel vehicle market, the focus of Titanium’s automobile business was concentrated on multinational auto parts companies, such as Valeo,Andaotuo, ADAC, Faurecia and other international suppliers have a strong position in the domestic market, and the business demand released by them is relatively concentrated every year.
“With their technology accumulation and brand advantages, these multinational companies play an important role in the supply chain, and also bring us a stable source of business.” Yan Zhaofa said.
After 2015, the new energy trend of the automotive industry has accelerated, and local Chinese companies have ushered in an explosive period. Traditional car companies such as BYD and Geely have begun to accelerate their transformation to electrification, and new car-making forces such as NIO, Ideal, and Xpeng have entered the game one after another, and cross-border companies such as Xiaomi have also joined the battle and completely activatedNew energy vehiclesMarket.
“In 2015, on the streetNew energyThere are few cars, but now they are everywhere. In Yan Zhaofa’s view, this change in new energy vehicles has directly reshaped the industrial chain pattern and brought new business opportunities to Titanium. Due to the obvious impact of electrification, multinational parts companies have reduced their R&D investment in China or even withdrawn, and the market space given up has been filled by local supply chain enterprises.
At the same time, the rise of battery companies such as CATL and EVE lithium energy, and the demand for electronic production lines around the three electric systems (batteries, motors, and electronic controls) in the new energy vehicle industry has surged, giving birth to new business growth points. These changes have led to a turnaround in Titanium’s core customers: before 2015, 70% of its business came from multinational auto parts companies, and as of now, 70% of its business has shifted to local companies, including OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers.
This data intuitively reflects Titanium’s transformation path in industry change – from “relying on international giants” to “serving local innovation”.
The “blitzkrieg” paradigm under the wave of digitalization of car companies
According to CIMdata, the global PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) market will grow by 9.6% in 2024, reaching US$79.5 billion (approximately 571.6 billion yuan). Among them, the cPDm (Collaborative Product Definition Management) market volume reached $25.5 billion, the tool market capacity reached $52.8 billion, and the digital manufacturing market reached $1.04 billion.
Coupled with the explosive development of intelligent new energy vehicles, the wave of digital transformation of car companies has surged. Yan Zhaofa saw a vast blue ocean of the market.
Chinese car companies have shown a significant growth trend in digital investment in the field of R&D, especially under the leadership of the post-80s and younger management, and the importance of enterprises to digital tools such as R&D management systems and simulation technology can be described as the world’s leader.
This has created business opportunities for digital technology service providers such as Titanium, but it has also added happy troubles to Yan Zhaofa, and market competition has presented a contradictory status quo of “high opportunity and low profit”:
In order to seize strategic markets, service providers often need to invest a lot of free technical resources (such as R&D customized solutions) in the early stage in exchange for future orders, forming a game situation of “current losses for long-term expectations”.
Therefore, in the face of different customers, Yan Zhaofa adopted a differentiated strategy – focusing on the deep binding of “platform + customized development” for enterprises with strong technical capabilities; For cost-sensitive enterprises, optimize standardized delivery processes to improve efficiency and tap incremental value through emerging product lines.
This puts forward higher requirements for Titanium News, that is, how to accurately identify the differences between corporate genes and needs in customer cooperation, and seek a balance between “scale expansion” and “value cultivation” to cope with the market challenge of high opportunity and low profitability. In the cooperation with Xiaomi Auto, Titanium seems to have found a dynamic balance.
In March 2021, Xiaomi announced the construction of a car, started the selection of R&D information systems in August, and completed the POC of the 3DExperience platform and finalized the cooperation in September, and the entire decision-making process took only one month.
After 4 years, Lu Guanglin, head of Titanium News Technology, can still blurt out the launch date of Xiaomi’s automobile cooperation project: October 8, 2021. Two months later, the first version of the system delivered by Titanium News for Xiaomi Auto was launched, and the basic functions were implemented.
The launch cycle of similar systems in traditional car companies generally exceeds 8 months, but Xiaomi uses the “fragmented iteration” model to disassemble the overall cycle into multiple short-cycle tasks, and the first iteration realizes CATIA online collaborative design in only 1.5 months.
Lu Guanglin, who is deeply involved in the Xiaomi car project, is like a treasure at every node, which once again refreshes his understanding of the efficiency of car companies.
Cooperation is not all smooth sailing.
In the early days, when the new platform replaced the traditional tools, some employees had adaptability problems due to changes in operating habits. Coupled with the special scene of working from home in Shanghai in 2022, it has caused negative feedback such as “complex operation” and “reduced efficiency”.
However, this phased conflict unexpectedly verified the technical advantages of the 3DExperience platform. The first is the ability to collaborate remotely, which can be deployed in the cloud or on-premises to provide enterprises with a comprehensive real-time view of their business activities and ecosystem. Connect people, processes, data, and solutions in a single environment, and the online architecture based on a single database supports VPN remote access, allowing R&D teams to collaborate in real time while still being physically isolated.
In 2022, the Xiaomi automotive design team will work from home and realize the multi-departmental joint design of the vehicle model through the platform, just like using Feishu documents for real-time collaborative editing, ensuring that design modifications are updated to the global database in real time.
The second is training to force efficiency, Titanium News quickly solves operational problems through online training, but accelerates the team’s mastery of new tools, proving the advanced flexibility and scalability of the platform.
In the cooperation of Xiaomi Auto, Lu Guanglin felt that his style is that the system construction does not pursue “big and comprehensive”, but matches the rhythm of model development
——”It only needs to be half a beat ahead of the vehicle research and development stage.” Through phased iteration, Xiaomi Auto avoids the waste of resources caused by excessive one-time investment, and forces the supply chain and service providers to improve their responsiveness through an efficient execution rhythm, forming a “fast decision-making”
– Fast landing – fast optimization”.
It is the cooperation with Xiaomi Auto that Titanium News is already thinking about a “fragmented iterative management model” customized for Xiaomi, which can be transformed into a reusable automotive R&D process template after stripping away corporate characteristics. The cooperation between the two can be called the “blitzkrieg” paradigm under the wave of digitalization of car companies.
With the rapid narrowing of the R&D cycle of intelligent new energy vehicles, the construction of R&D system is no longer an “IT project” independent of the affairs of the automobile company, but a “strategic tool” that directly binds the model development cycle.
This has also prompted car companies to transform from “asset-heavy and slow decision-making” to “lightweight and fast iteration”, and the popularization of technical systems such as the 3DExperience platform may become the core watershed of the digital capabilities of car companies in the future.
Explore the transformation path from “price competition” to “value competition”
As China’s new energy vehicles accelerate their overseas expansion, traditional car companies around the world are experiencing unprecedented transformation pressure.
Volkswagen of Germany, Toyota of Japan and Honda have set their sights on the Chinese market, and accelerated the layout of new energy vehicles and the reconstruction of a new generation of digital platforms through technical cooperation and ecological co-construction.
Yan Zhaofa revealed that Titanium Software is currently negotiating cooperation with a Japanese car company, hoping to participate in its new energy vehicle construction project in China. “For this project, if Titanium News can help it achieve a breakthrough, the successful experience will reverse empower the Japanese headquarters and drive it to accelerate its overall transformation, which will also bring us more possibilities for development.”
Yan Zhaofa also has deeper considerations, if he can successfully win the project, its influence will directly affect the Japanese market. “At that time, we can send a special team to Japan to deeply participate in follow-up services and related operations.”
The Japanese market attaches great importance to service quality, especially in terms of professional service investment, and recognizes the value of service and is willing to pay for it, whether it is the POC stage or the project delivery link.
This has allowed Titanium, which has been in the Chinese auto market for a long time, to see a market opportunity to breathe.
Going to sea is the next major direction of Titanium.
Yan Zhaofa has conducted a detailed investigation and analysis of overseas core markets.
The U.S. decision-making process is efficient and flexible, similar to the pace of operation of domestic enterprises, but there is a fundamental difference in the underlying logic – its business model pays more attention to the return on assets and the quantification of labor value, which is in stark contrast to the usual scale expansion thinking of domestic enterprises.
German companies have a conservative decision-making style and relatively lagging behind in process efficiency, but their core competitiveness stems from more than 100 years of technical inheritance, process experience and craftsmanship, which has formed industry barriers that are difficult to replicate.
The Japanese decision-making process is notoriously complex and lengthy, even difficult to understand from the Chinese perspective – from project evaluation to agreement finalization, multi-level deliberation is often required, and the cultural “culture of shame” and collective decision-making mechanisms lead to slow progress.
However, once cooperation is established, Japan will attach great importance to the spirit of contract and tend to build long-term partnerships for decades, which is quite unique in the global market.
According to Yan Zhaofa’s understanding, in the industrial software service industry in which he is located, the payment ability of Japanese customers for technical services is significantly higher than that in China, and the average monthly service income of engineers for typical PLM service projects is about 80,000 yuan, which is about 30% premium over the domestic market.
In contrast, the domestic cooperation environment is relatively cruel under the competition of involution, and there is often a phenomenon of “100 man-days of project requires 150 man-days of work”.
Going overseas has also become a game-breaking way for Titanium News Software. Titanium News, which seems to be “forced to go overseas”, is actually actively exploring the transformation from “price competition” to “value competition” – when enterprises can prove their service premium ability in overseas markets, their competitiveness will also achieve a qualitative leap. Therefore, it has become a top priority for Titanium Software to fully promote the cooperation of domestic projects of overseas car companies.
Become an “infrastructure provider” in the field of automotive R&D digitalization
In a market dominated by resource-based and relational play, Titanium News advocates the return of the essence of the technology industry.
Yan Zhaofa firmly believes that when services can effectively promote customers to upgrade from “process digitalization” to “capability digitalization”, this value creation itself constitutes industry barriers and brand endorsements.
At present, Titanium Software is developing self-developed products for the specific needs of the automotive industry, building differentiated competitive advantages, focusing on core customers in the automotive industry, actively supporting the digital capacity building of benchmark enterprises such as Xiaomi Auto, NIO, and Xpeng Motors, accumulating industry solution capabilities, exploring opportunities to go overseas, and actively embracing the wave of AI technology.
To this end, the company will also change the name of “Jiangda”, which has been used for more than 20 years, to Titanium Software (TECWIN), which means to win technology. In this transformation, Titanium Software is trying to complete the transformation from an “opportunistic service provider” to an “industry value co-creator”.
Yan Zhaofa very much agrees with Feishu’s product logic, that is, “single data source + collaborative office”, and its underlying architecture is similar to the design concept of Dassault’s 3DExperience platform – both break down business barriers through data penetration. This model of “good product + efficient management” is of great popularization value.
He told Yiou Automobile that for Titanium News, the essence of focusing on the automotive track is to find a “reusable knowledge carrier” in the wave of digital transformation, that is, the ability to transform service experience into standardization through productization, and finally achieve a leap from “selling manpower” to “selling knowledge”.
Talking about the capital level, Yan Zhaofa said frankly that Titanium currently has a good self-hematopoietic ability, so it does not pursue a short-term valuation bubble.
Yan Zhaofa has higher expectations for Titanium News Software, that is, by continuously strengthening the automotive industry solutions, making it a “key node” in the industrial chain, then the integration of capital will come naturally, whether it is a strategic merger with a listed company, or an independent capitalization operation, Titanium News will have enough bargaining power, because what is truly scarce is never capital, but a unit of ability that can create real value for the industry.
“Just as Feishu reconstructs corporate office processes, our goal is to become an ‘infrastructure provider’ in the field of automotive R&D digitalization, so that every service delivery can become a nutrient for product iteration, and every customer case can be transformed into a building block for industry solutions.” Yan Zhaofa said.