The Chinese tech giants have received a huge amount of state support but that doesn’t make their achievements any less impressive. Xiaomi’s new EV, the SU7 Ultra, just shattered the lap record at the legendary Nurburgring racetrack.
Xiaomi is sometimes called China’s Apple, and its CEO Lei Jun has the pull power of Steve Jobs. No wonder the unveiling of the company’s luxury version of its SU7 electric sports car on Tuesday seemed just as impressive as some of Apple’s presentations.
Of course, the Chinese tech giant is better known for smartphones and home appliances. But it entered the EV market with a bang in March with the SU7, a Porsche-like car, and has now announced a premium Ultra version of the electric sedan.
“This is the world's fastest four-door mass-produced car currently available,” Lei said, adding: “When people ask why we created such a powerful machine, my answer is simple, we're building a dream car.”
Staggering growth
The new EV seems truly amazing. The SU7 Ultra prototype has claimed the title of the fastest four-door car around the Nurburgring, a classic racetrack in Germany, clocking a lap time of 6:46.874.
According to Xiaomi, the SU7 Ultra is powered by three of the firm's electric V8s motors, delivering a staggering 1,548 horsepower combined. This allows the SU7 Ultra to accelerate from 0 to 100 km/h in 1.97 seconds and reach a top speed exceeding 350 km/h.
The new EV costs 815,000 yuan ($114,200), roughly the same as Tesla’s Model S Plaid. The latter still has a better driving range of 672 km on a charge versus 630 km but Xiaomi’s car is faster.
Demand seems huge. Xiaomi said it had received more than 3,600 orders for the SU7 Ultra in the 10 minutes after the car’s debut. After releasing the basic version in late March, the company is aiming to deliver 120,000 SU7 vehicles by year-end.
For comparison, Chinese rivals Xpeng and Nio took about six years to produce 100,000 electric cars, while it took Tesla 12 years. Moreover, Citi analysts say in a new report that they expect Xiaomi to deliver a whopping 250,000 EVs next year.
It all looks great for Chinese car manufacturers. The country seems far ahead of the rest of the world on EVs, and even Ford CEO Jim Farley recently admitted that he’s enjoying the SU7 after having it flown from Shanghai to Chicago.
It’s even more impressive when one is reminded that Xiaomi is primarily a firm making smart devices. Apple, another fancy gadget manufacturer, tried to build an EV for a decade but canceled Project Titan in February.
The subsided EV giant
Xiaomi currently only sells its cars in China. The company told CNBC earlier this year that any overseas launch would take at least two to three years, but it’s surely coming.
That’s because the relative calm in the market just a few years ago, when China was exporting only a small number of cars to Bangladesh or India, is over.
Both the US and the European Union are now applying – and increasing – tariffs against Chinese EVs, saying their imports would destroy local car industries which are at the same time losing sales in China. The obvious answer surely is to begin making better cars.
However, there are caveats. The EU policymakers, for example, keep saying they’re backing free trade as long as it’s fair.
And, in June, research from the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington revealed that China’s EV industry received at least $231 billion in government subsidies and aid from 2009 to the end of 2023. This is something automakers in the US and the EU can only dream about.
Perhaps that’s why, specifically in Xiaomi’s case, the company isn’t too worried about bleeding cash even though it admitted in its 2024 Q2 results that the new auto branch posted a loss of $252 million for the quarter. That means that, on average, it lost $9,200 per delivered EV.
Plus, the EV sale numbers in China are not necessarily trustworthy so some are asking if the boom is even real.
In the country, EVs go by the “New Energy Vehicle” name, and the term covers everything from a plug-in hybrid to a pure battery EV. Originally, even simple hybrids were also part of the definition.
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