In the late night, Beijing's Xiaomi Technology Park is still brightly lit, and 49-year-old Lei Jun is lost in thought as he stares at a screen full of data. This fierce individual, jokingly referred to by netizens as 'the most powerful product manager in Zhongguancun,' has now placed his chips on a potential game-changer in the Chinese automotive industry—Li Xiang, the new leader who turned Li Auto into a company valued at hundreds of billions, competing closely with traditional luxury car brands.

While Musk is busy making waves on Twitter, a more dramatic comeback is unfolding in factories of the Pearl River Delta. In just 72 hours, pre-sales for the Li Auto L9 surpassed 30,000 orders, and Li Bin’s NIO has just completed its 1,000th battery swap station, while Li Xiang, who once sat in a budget hotel eating instant noodles while coding, is now selling 'mobile homes'—domestic smart electric vehicles—at high price ranges of 500,000.

Lei Jun's investment ledger hides an astonishing calculation: Xiaomi's ecological chain has made 21 moves in the automotive sector, and in 2023 alone, it has spent 2.48 billion. This time, the application to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange appears to be about providing Li Auto with additional fuel, but secretly, it is laying out a big game plan to change the rules—using the smart ecological chain to connect mobile phones, cars, and home appliances.

Five years ago, when Musk buried a time capsule at the Shanghai factory, no one believed that a Chinese brand could produce an electric vehicle that understands the Chinese people better than the Model Y. Now, the new forces formed by Wei, Xiao, and Li have forcibly taken 18% market share from Tesla. A new battle map hanging in Lei Jun's office shows: the goal is to achieve over ten million installations of the vehicle's operating system before 2025.

Behind this high-stakes gamble is a suffocating race against time. BYD's production capacity is climbing at a rate of 20% per month, and CATL's Kirin battery has pushed the range beyond 1,000 kilometers. An anonymous investment banking executive revealed: 'Lei Jun is using ecological warfare to combat scale warfare, just like rewriting the rules of the Android game with MIUI back in the day.'

When Musk announced price cuts and volume increases, Li Xiang wrote on social media: good products never rely on price wars. This nearly obsessive gene may be the confidence that allows Lei Jun to bet two-thirds of Xiaomi's strategic investment ammunition—after all, those who have fought their way out of the bloody smartphone market understand the sharpness of disruptors the best.

The bell of the Hong Kong stock market is about to ring, but the real battle has just begun.