Chinese smartphone company Xiaomi announced its upcoming electric car, the SU7 sedan, on December 28, 2023.
CNBC | Evelyn Chen
BEIJING – Chinese consumer electronics maker Xiaomi on Thursday entered China’s saturated electric vehicle market, rivaling auto giants Tesla and others with a car model it said it spent more than 10 billion yuan ($1.4 billion) to develop. It announced detailed plans to compete with Porsche.
The company’s car, known as Xiaomi SU7, “is in prototype production and will be launched in the domestic market within a few months,” CEO Lei Jun said. Tuesday’s post on the X social media platform formerly known as Twitter. “The price has not been determined yet.”
The Xiaomi SU7, pronounced “su-chie” in Mandarin, will outperform Porsche’s Taycan and Tesla’s Model S in acceleration and other metrics, Lei said during a three-hour presentation on Thursday.
He expressed bold ambitions to become an industry leader in areas such as self-driving, noting that the SU7’s design team previously worked at BMW and Mercedes-Benz.
Sales are scheduled to begin in 2024 after more than three years of development. Meanwhile, electric vehicles have become popular in China’s highly competitive market, and domestic automakers have begun to differentiate their products through ambitious offerings of automotive-compatible technology.
This is an area of potential advantage for Xiaomi, which is best known for smartphones and consumer electronics and has previously said it wants to build a “smart ecosystem of people, cars and homes.”
SU7 is integrated with Xiaomi’s smartphones and internet-connected home appliances, Lei announced on Thursday. He highlighted the company’s efforts to ensure data privacy between devices and develop vehicles that exceed U.S. safety standards for rear-end collisions.
Ray said the vehicle is also compatible with Apple’s iPhone, iPad, CarPlay and AirPlay. Despite widespread speculation about such plans, the American giant is yet to launch the car.
Two Xiaomi SU7 models were featured on the list of duty-free new energy vehicles published by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology on Tuesday.
The documents say the cars will be purely battery-powered and have a range of 628 kilometers (390 miles) to 800 kilometers. The ministry named a subsidiary of state-owned Beiqi Group as the manufacturer of the Xiaomi SU7.
Although the car has not yet been released, Xiaomi has started selling its flagship smartphones and smartwatches in the SU7 sedan’s “Aqua Blue” and “Olive Oil Green” colors.
The price of the SU7 has not yet been disclosed, but Lei hinted that the purchase will not be cheap, denying rumors of 99,000 yuan or 140,000 yuan.
The Xiaomi automotive technology event comes after several domestic EV players recently announced new electric vehicles.
- Nio debuted the 800,000 yuan ($113,090) ET9 on Saturday, with deliveries scheduled to begin in the first quarter of 2025.
- Huawei’s Aito brand unveiled the M9 SUV on Tuesday. Prices start at 469,800 yuan, and mass deliveries are scheduled to begin in late February 2024.
- Geely-backed Zeekr announced on Wednesday that the 007 sedan will be priced at 209,000 yuan and deliveries will begin on January 1.
Xpeng, which Xiaomi supported in 2019, Plan to release X9 vehicle on January 1, 2024. Ahead of Thursday’s event, Lei shared a photo on popular Chinese social media platform Weibo of a building lit up with a message from Xiaomi paying tribute to BYD, Nio, Xpeng, Li Auto and Huawei. did.
Xiaomi shares closed down 0.25% in Hong Kong trading on Thursday. The company’s shares, which are traded in Hong Kong, have risen more than 40% since the beginning of the year. The business claims that during this year’s Singles’ Day shopping festival, he recorded record sales of over $3 billion across various e-commerce platforms.
Xiaomi expects to spend 20 billion yuan ($2.8 billion) on development and research this year, a 25% increase from 2022 and more than double the amount from 2020.