Chinese smartphone company Xiaomi unveiled its upcoming electric car, the SU7 sedan, on December 28, 2023.
CNBC | Evelyn Cheng
BEIJING – Chinese consumer electronics company Xiaomi on Thursday unveiled detailed plans to enter China's oversaturated electric vehicle market, competing with automotive giants Tesla and Porsche with a car model that the company said it spent more than 10 billion yuan ($1.4 billion) to develop billion US dollars).
The company's car model, known as Xiaomi SU7, “is in test production and will hit the domestic market in a few months,” CEO Lei Jun said in a Tuesday post on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter was. “The price has not yet been determined.”
The Xiaomi SU7, pronounced “Sue Qi” in Mandarin, outperforms Porsche's Taycan and Tesla's Model S in acceleration and other metrics, Lei said during a three-hour presentation on Thursday.
He laid out bold ambitions to become an industry leader, including in autonomous driving, noting that the SU7 design team previously worked at BMW and Mercedes-Benz.
Sales are expected to begin in 2024, after more than three years of development – during which electric vehicles have gained traction in China's highly competitive market and domestic automakers have begun to differentiate their products with ambitious offerings of car-compatible technology.
This is a potential area of advantage for Xiaomi, which is best known for its smartphones and home appliances and previously said it wanted to create a “people x car x home” smart ecosystem.
The SU7 is integrated into Xiaomi's smartphones and internet-connected household appliances, Lei announced on Thursday. He highlighted the company's efforts to ensure data protection between devices and to develop a car that exceeds U.S. rear-end collision safety standards.
Lei said the vehicle will also be compatible with AppleiPhone, iPad, CarPlay and AirPlay. The US giant has yet to launch a car despite widespread speculation about such plans.
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Xiaomi
Two Xiaomi SU7 models were on a list of tax-exempt new energy vehicles released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology on Tuesday.
The document described the cars as being purely battery-powered, with a range of 628 kilometers to 800 kilometers (390 miles to 500 miles). The ministry named a subsidiary of the state-owned Baic Group as the manufacturer of the Xiaomi SU7.
While the car isn't available yet, Xiaomi has started selling its flagship smartphone and smartwatch in the “Aqua Blue” and “Olive Oil Green” colors of the SU7 sedan.
A price for the SU7 has not yet been announced, but Lei hinted that the purchase would not be cheap, dismissing rumors of a price of 99,000 yuan or 140,000 yuan.
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Xiaomi's auto tech event comes at a time when several domestic EV players have recently unveiled new electric vehicles.
- Nio On Saturday, the company unveiled its 800,000 yuan ET9, with deliveries scheduled to begin in the first quarter of 2025.
- Huawei brand Aito introduced its M9 SUV on Tuesday – starting at 469,800 yuan and with mass delivery at the end of February 2024.
- Zeekr, backed by Geely, announced on Wednesday that the 007 sedan would start at 209,000 yuan and deliveries would begin on January 1.
Xpengwhich Xiaomi supported in 2019, is expected to launch its X9 vehicle on January 1, 2024. Ahead of Thursday's event, Lei shared images on popular Chinese social media platform Weibo that showed buildings lit up with messages from Xiaomi saying it recognized BYD, Nio, Xpeng, Li Auto and Huawei.
Xiaomi Shares closed 0.25% lower in Hong Kong trading on Thursday. The company's Hong Kong-traded shares have risen more than 40% so far this year. The company reported record sales of more than $3 billion across various e-commerce platforms during this year's Singles Day shopping festival.
Xiaomi has said it expects to spend 20 billion yuan on research and development this year, up 25% from 2022 and more than double the spending in 2020.