On July 12th， according to news from Kuaitech， a recent online discussion about “Lei Jun’s statement that the most difficult part of car manufacturing is making wheels” has garnered significant attention.
A video circulating online shows Lei Jun， in a conversation with Li Xiang， stating: “The most difficult part is making wheels. I looked at 5，000 pairs of wheels， and it made me sick. For every single wheel， we did 500 iterations.”
Lei Jun elaborated on this， saying， “Now， wanting to create a uniquely beautiful wheel that no one has done before is divine. It’s just a circle inside， a simple decoration， and it can’t be too outlandish. It’s really hard.”
Wang Hua， the head of Xiaomi’s public relations department， responded in a post stating: “In the past couple of days， I’ve seen several articles or similar videos selectively extracting segments from Lei Jun’s April 2024 interview with Li Xiang， cutting off the beginning and end. They are isolating and disseminating the part where he uses wheel design as an example.“
Wang Hua clarified that the full video is 3 hours and 26 minutes long， with the portion in question appearing around the 1 hour and 53-minute mark. This section， starting around the 1 hour and 40-minute mark， primarily discusses the overall difficulty of automotive design， emphasizing that pioneering designs may not always be accepted. The wheel was presented as an example of something seemingly simple yet artistically challenging.
The consequence of this selective editing， Wang Hua pointed out， is that it distorts the original meaning， leading to the narrative that Lei Jun claimed making wheels was the hardest part of car manufacturing.
