The biggest car brand you've never heard of ... until now: Why the 'Apple of China', Xiaomi, could be the next big Chinese carmaker to land in Australia

It rivals Apple and Samsung and Ford boss Jim Farley raves about its products, but you’ve probably never heard of this brand.

At least not until last week, when Chinese car maker, Xiaomi, set a new quick lap at the Nurburgring in Germany, beating the likes of Porsche and Tesla for an electric car around the famous circuit.

It marked a very public emergence for Xiaomi in the western world, forcing people to start paying it some attention. But in China the brand is a household name because it’s one of the biggest producers of smartphones and home appliances.

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Xiaomi is the third best-selling smartphone company in the world, behind only Samsung and Apple, despite only being established less than 15 years ago, earning it the nickname the ‘Apple of China’ from pundits.

Having conquered consumer electronics it has decided to take the plunge into the electric vehicle market, releasing its first car earlier in 2024. The SU7 sedan went on sale in March and already the brand claims to have delivered more than 75,000 examples of the car with the goal to reach 100,000 sales by the end of 2024. For context, it took Tesla 12 years to deliver 100,000 vehicles, so Xiaomi is using its expertise in mass-production and consumer sales to enjoy extremely rapid growth.

As BYD, MG, GWM and others have already shown, the Australian market is an opportunity for Chinese brands looking to expand internationally. Don’t be surprised, therefore, if Xiaomi arrives on our shores in the coming years.

Xiaomi founder and CEO Lei Jun has big plans for the brand in the automotive space, with aspirations to make it one of the world’s leading car makers. Speaking at the initial launch of the SU7 in 2023, he made it clear that both Porsche and Tesla were in his sights and set a high goal to reach. 

“By working hard over the next 15 to 20 years, we will become one of the world's top five automakers, striving to lift China's overall automobile industry,” Jun said in December 2023.

The recent Nurburgring event was more of a promotional exercise and a public demonstration of the potential of the SU7 rather than an official record run, as the car was a heavily modified prototype. Crucially, though, Xiaomi has made it clear that it intends to return to the famous German circuit with a production version of the SU7 Ultra and aims to beat the times set by both the Tesla Model S Plaid Track Package (7m25sec) and the Porsche Taycan Turbo S (7m33sec).

It isn’t just self-promotion that’s building hype around the brand. Ford’s global boss, Jim Farley, is a fan of the SU7, having had one shipped to the USA to get a first-hand experience of what it can offer.

“I don’t like talking about the competition so much, but I drive the Xiaomi,” Farley told the Fully Charged podcast recently.

“We flew one from Shanghai to Chicago, and I’ve been driving it for six months now, and I don’t want to give it up.”