This year at MWC, one of the most exciting booths to tour belonged to Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi. Not only did the company have the new Xiaomi 15 Ultra and a modular camera concept on display, but a new car, the SU7 Ultra, in addition to the SU7 we saw last year at the show.
Announced just the week before the mobile show, the model displayed at the Xiaomi stand drew crowds of admirers with its sporty "lightning yellow" paint job. Positioned next to the same blue SU7 we saw last year, the EV has a noticeably sleeker and more sporty profile. This is the performance version of the car, and the prototype has already broken the lap record for a four-door sedan on the Nürburgring. An official attempt using a production model is scheduled for later this year.
Xiaomi's move into the EV market has been an astonishingly successful and bold maneuver for the company. By the end of 2024, it had delivered 135,000 units of the SU7, and within 2 hours of launching the SU7 Ultra last month, it had sold over 10,000 units of the new EV. The company has also achieved something unique in the tech world by succeeding in making a car and bringing it to market where others have either failed (sorry, Apple) or been slow to progress (looking at you, Sony).
Xiaomi has succeeded where other tech companies have failed.
According to Daniel Desjarlais, the company's global spokesperson, Xiaomi has bucked the trend and managed to push so aggressively and successfully into the EV market because the company's CEO, Lei Jun, has made it a priority. "Having him hands-on for the project has been part of the reason that we're doing so well," Desjarlais said in a media briefing. "He's the secret sauce."
At an MWC press conference this week, Xiaomi's president, William Lu, announced that the company plans to sell its EVs globally within the next few years. This will likely take longer than Xiaomi would like, but it seems prepared to stay the course. "Obviously, there are a lot of complexities trying to get a product like a car into global markets," said TJ Walton, the company's senior product marketing manager. "It's got a lot more pieces [and] a lot more complex technology than a smartphone does."
Exactly where Xiaomi's cars might land when they go global is still to be confirmed, but Europe is likely to be a target. "The EU is one of the regions around the world that is pushing the hardest to move strictly to EVs," said Desjarlais. This presents "a massive opportunity," although he added that Xiaomi must examine the regulatory challenges closely.
Xiaomi could bring its cars to Europe.
As for the US, that might be tricky -- especially with the Trump administration targeting Chinese companies with tariffs. "That's something that we're always going to be examining and something that we're always going to want to do," said Desjarlais about a potential move into the US. "Whether or not we will is something that you have to stay tuned for more information [on] in the future."
In some ways, it feels like Xiaomi is just getting started. In China, it sells a massive ecosystem of AI-connected products, and plans are in place to make its large appliances available globally in the coming years, too.
That's to mention nothing of the upcoming launch of the YU7, a mid-size electric SUV that the company has in the pipeline to round out its EV series. Already, the YU7 is being touted as a rival to Tesla's Model Y. With the SU7 outselling the Tesla Model 3 in China between April 2024 and January 2025 and Tesla sales widely reported to be declining in Europe, Xiaomi looks poised to become a serious competitor in the global EV space in the coming years.
