[BEIJING] Xiaomi’s billionaire founder outlined plans for its first SUV and top-end gadgets with self-developed mobile chips, showcasing ambitions to expand its technology portfolio and move past a much-publicised accident that cast doubt on its expertise.
Lei Jun, who shot to fame with bold plans to unseat Apple in China, gave online viewers a sneak peek at an electric sport utility vehicle – the YU7 – in a livestreamed event from Beijing. The five-metre long vehicle’s top model can go 760 km on a single charge and hit 100 km/h in 3.23 seconds, faster than Tesla’s Model Y or a comparable Porsche, Lei claimed. Apart from cars, the chief executive also showed off the Xring O1 chip, designed to power a new generation of devices including the Tablet seven Ultra. At 3nm, that processor is aimed at matching Apple and Qualcomm chips.
Xiaomi is keen to push deeper into arenas beyond the affordable smartphones and appliances it is best known for. Lei announced plans Thursday to invest 200 billion yuan (S$35.9 billion) in research and development over the next five years. Scheduled to coincide with the company’s 15th anniversary, the EV-focused event underscored Lei’s intent to restore Xiaomi’s brand lustre after a fatal March accident involving one of its signature SU7 sedans sent orders plunging the following month.
Xiaomi had raised its 2025 delivery target for electric vehicles to 350,000 units days before that incident, which prompted scrutiny over its self-driving advertising claims. That in turn stoked concerns that the YU7 would be delayed.
“Today’s Xiaomi of course has its flaws, its imperfections,” Lei said at the gala’s close. “I promise everyone, we’ll manage even greater achievements in the next five years,” said the entrepreneur, who often hosts product launches.
Lei admitted that the Xring lags Apple’s own chipset in some respects such as processor speed, but he stressed the chip was an achievement for his fledgling design team.
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Still, his most important project is EVs – a US$10 billion attempt to take on Tesla and BYD that the founder has called his final endeavour as an entrepreneur.
The market for SUVs was more intense than that for sedans, Lei wrote in a social media post, but he believed the YU7 harboured its own unique qualities. It won’t officially hit the market until at least July, with no pricing released at the Thursday event. Xiaomi won’t take pre-orders for the vehicle yet, Lei wrote in a separate post.
The company has previously announced a US$7 billion investment to develop and enhance its own mobile processor over the next decade. That goal recalls Huawei Technologies’ breakthrough of a few years ago with the Mate 60 Pro, which spooked Washington and raised concerns about Chinese advances in strategic technologies such as AI and chips.
Among the other hard-tech initiatives Xiaomi has touted since the March incident was an in-house large language model dubbed the MiMo.
Executives have reportedly talked about investing in AI in the past, though MiMo is the first real product to emerge. Its foray marks the second big project in as many years for a company best-known for making affordable smartphones and appliances from robot vacuums to rice cookers. BLOOMBERG
