Chinese consumer electronics company Xiaomi on Thursday detailed plans to enter China’s oversaturated electric vehicle market and compete with automaker giants Tesla and Porsche with a car model it says it spent more than 10 billion yuan ($1.4 billion) to develop.
The company’s car model, known as Xiaomi SU7, “is in trial production and it will hit the domestic market in a few months,” CEO Lei Jun said in a Tuesday post on the X social media platform, formerly known as Twitter. “The price has not been finalized yet.”
Pronounced “Sue Qi” in Mandarin, the Xiaomi SU7 beats Porsche’s Taycan and Tesla’s Model S on acceleration and other metrics, Lei said during a three-hour presentation Thursday.
He laid out bold ambitions to become an industry leader, including in autonomous driving and noted that the SU7 design team previously worked at BMW and Mercedes-Benz.
Sales are due to begin in 2024, after more than three years of development — during which electric vehicles have taken off in China’s highly competitive market, and domestic automakers have begun to differentiate their products through ambitious offerings of car-compatible tech.
