Xiaomi News

BYD, Chery and GWM might seem like the new-car boogeymen to legacy carmakers, but a quiet giant is muscling up in China. Xiaomi, which is best known for making smartphones, has branched out into electric cars and put the car world on notice. It has a seriously big hit on its hands with the YU7 mid-size SUV. The Tesla Model Y rival was the best-selling passenger car in China during the first month of this year. It reportedly sold almost 38,000 units in January, which was more than double the Tesla Model Y. Xiaomi also smashed big name Chinese brands such as BYD and Geely to take the top spot. This could all be the tip of the iceberg as the brand received more than 400,000 orders just a month after it launched in 2025. The Chinese brand isn’t just content with dominating its home market, but has big plans for global domination. Europe appears to be first up, with Bloomberg reporting it would launch in the continent by 2027. Xiaomi is winning fans around the world, including Ford’s boss Jim Farley. The Blue Oval’s head honcho has gone on the record about how much he loves the Xiaomi SU7 - the sedan version of the YU7. Last year he told the Everything Electric Show: “I don’t like talking about the competition so much, but I drive a Xiaomi. 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.” Ferrari has been seen benchmarking the high-performance SU7 at its Maranello headquarters ahead of the Prancing Horse’ coming first electric car. A fact no one would have believed a few short years ago. It is easy to see on paper why the YU7 is such a smash hit. In China the YU7 range kicks off with the Standard grade, featuring a single motor powering the rear wheels and producing 235W and 528Nm. The mid-tier Pro brings all-wheel drive and two motors with a combined output of 365kW and 690Nm. Both use a 96.3kWh lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery.    Range-topping Max is all-wheel drive and its dual motors up the ante with 508kW and 866Nm. That's enough grunt to throw this SUV from 0 to 100km/h in 3.2 seconds. At its core is a 101kWh nickel manganese cobalt (NMC) lithium-ion battery.

Ford's potential tie-up with hyped Chinese brand reportedly denied.

It’s happening. The first electric vehicles with 1000km of driving range are starting to hatch. What seemed like an out-of-reach fantasy just a few years ago has become reality with auto manufacturers now beginning to launch their next-gen EVs which can out-drive the range of combustion cars. So which brands are doing it and how far can these electric long haulers really go?  In January, Chinese carmaker Chery announced that this year it would launch the Exeed Liefeng - one of the world’s first production models with a solid state battery - which would give the electric vehicle a range of 1500km. Solid state has long been the holy grail form of batteries and for the past five years car manufacturers have been on a crusade to find how to cost-effectively use the technology on a large scale for EVs. Chery appears to be one of the first to make it there, but you can bet the rest will follow quickly.  Currently the longest-hauling electric vehicles in Australia are the Polestar 3 Long Range Single Motor with its 706km range and Tesla’s Model 3 Long Range AWD with 629km. Both use the tried-and-tested lithium ion batteries which have been the go-to for the industry for decades but it appears the limits are being reached. China’s rising star brand Xiaomi is even pushing the lithium ion limits further however, announcing this week that it was taking orders for its new SU7 sedan with a 902km (CLTC) range. While the SU7 uses an 101.7kWh lithium ion battery, the vehicle's new silicon carbide platform in 752V and 897V forms, as well as its aerodynamic performance, has returned improved efficiency.   CLTC is the China Light Duty Vehicle Test Cycle which isn’t as strict as the Worldwide Harmonised Light Duty Vehicle Test Procedure (WLTP). So 902km equates to about 750km in the real-world. The 1500km range of Chery’s  Exeed Liefeng is likely to be calculated using the CLTC criteria, too, but that is still equal to 1230km WLPT and that’s beyond remarkable, even compared to combustion engines. The distance you can drive on a full tank of petrol depends on the kind of engine you have, the size of the fuel tank, and the type of driving you do. It’s pretty obvious but big engines use more fuel, so do high-performance engines which prioritise output, and stop-start traffic on urban roads uses more than fast moving motorways.  New engines are super fuel efficient these days compared to what they were 20 or even 10 years ago and hybridisation with electric motors in all their forms can significantly reduce fuel consumption.  In my own testing, large mid-sized SUVs with four-cylinder petrol engines get no more than about 700km from a 60L tank, with the average being about 500km with the mainly urban driving I do.  So some electric vehicles you can buy right now have the same range as the equivalent petrol cars. The benefit of petrol though is clearly the speed at which you can refuel and the accessibility with up to 8000 service stations each with multiple pumps in Australia. Charging times have improved greatly but 30 minutes is about average to charge from 10-80 percent with a 150kW DC charger. In Australia there are only about 550 chargers capable of 100kW or more. Solid state batteries not only offer great ranges but super quick charging - 10-80 per cent in about five minutes. It's still slower than filling a 60L tank with petrol, but not much slower. What about hybrids? Hybrids add a lot more range, especially the new generation of "super hybrids" which are the plug-in kind equipped with larger batteries and clever management systems which can do what was unthinkable a few years ago. My current long-term test car is a Chery Tiggo 8 Super Hybrid which has a 18.4kWh battery and a 60-litre petrol tank. A 1.5-litre four cylinder petrol engine and an electric motor drive the front wheels. According to Chery the combined range of the Tiggo Super Hybrid is 1200km with fuel consumption as low as 1.3L/100km. In my first month with the Tiggo 8 Super Hybrid I drove 869km before I needed to refuel, but I did charge it during that time, occasionally.  Still, that’s outstanding. If I was to charge it regularly then the 1200km seems absolutely attainable. But regularly means every two to three days, otherwise fuel consumption increases dramatically. That’s inconvenient to say the least if you don’t have a home wall unit. It seems inevitable electric will take the place of petrol and solid state batteries will mean 1000km from a full charge. Ultimately this could mean petrol becomes the new source of range anxiety, as service stations swap fuel pumps for chargers, making 500km on a single tank seem concerning. Before you hop in the comments, understand I’m by no means an EV fan girl. I love the drama that comes with petrol. My own car has a 5.8-litre V8 that I rebuilt myself. However, I truly think most people don’t care what powers their car and if solid state batteries only take a few minutes to charge and you only need to do it once a month then petrol is a goner.

Xiaomi’s updated SU7 electric sedan launches this April in China and while the order numbers are enormous there’s another huge figure grabbing people’s attention - its 900km-plus driving range. The order books for Xiaomi’s new SU7 opened on January 7, 2026 and within two weeks nearly 100,000 pre-orders have been taken. That’s big even for the Chinese market, which sees 34 millions cars sold in a year. But part of the drive in sales is the massive leap in spec for the SU7 particularly when it comes to driving range. Pricing in China for the entry grade SU7 starts at the equivalent of A$46,500, an increase of $2800 over the hugely popular outgoing model. The SU7 now has a range of 902km (CLTC), up from 830km in the previous model. CLTC (China Light Duty Vehicle Test Cycle) criteria isn’t as strict or real-world applicable as the WLTP (Worldwide Harmonised Light Duty Vehicle Test Procedure) rating which is generally about 18 per cent less.  Still, even if the SU7’s WLTP range is about 750km that would still see it beat the best electric long-haulers the world currently has to offer including the Polestar 3 Long Range Single Motor with its 706km and Tesla’s Model 3 Long Range AWD with 629km. The longer range of the new SU7 is reportedly not due to a larger battery (a 101.7kWh battery capacity remains in the top grade model), but is down to a new silicon carbide platform in 752V and 897V forms which return improved efficiency. Other upgrades for the new SU7 include more advanced driving assistance systems, laser radar, and 700 TOPS (Trillion Operations Per Second) AI computing power for autonomous driving functions. Xiaomi has yet to launch in Australia with the company likely to enter the European market first in 2027 and then the rest of the world including Australia. Right now, the fledgling tech-brand-turned-automaker's factory capacity is exceeded for over a year with back orders for both the SU7 and its YU7 SUV sibling, both of which have created massive hype in China's domestic market. If and when Xiaomi makes it here, the sporty Chinese marque would join a multitude of new brands in Australia with electric vehicles over the past two years. The SU7 would go up against rivals such as the BYD Seal and MG’s IM5, as well as the ever-popular Tesla Model 3. Xiaomi isn’t the only brand coming up with super long-range EVs with Chery also recently announcing progress on solid state batteries which it claims will offer up to 1500km of driving range on a single charge.

2025 was the year of the new car brand in Australia, though things don't appear to be slowing down anytime soon.

Surely, you'd think there's no more room in Australia's market for more Chinese brands, but we think these ones would still have a place.

I know what you're thinking. Surely we don't need any more Chinese cars, but you'd better bet some of the best ones still aren't in Australia.

This new electric SUV has just handed Tesla a large defeat.

It’s one of those under the table automotive dark arts everyone knows is an industry norm but is rarely spoken about publicly. But Xiaomi Founder and CEO Lei Jun hasn’t held back in describing his company’s detailed analysis of the Tesla Model Y during development of the brand’s YU7 EV SUV. This week, while delivering his annual speech at the Beijing National Convention Centre, Mr Jun confirmed the Xiaomi engineering team had acquired not one but three Tesla Model Ys for the express purpose of disassembly and forensic analysis of every component.  And it’s a safe bet the Model 3 underwent a similar breakdown process as part of the Xiaomi SU7 sedan’s production program. Showing multiple side-by-side comparison slides of the YU7 and Model Y Mr Jun said, “We bought three Model Ys at the start of this year, disassembling the parts one by one, and studied every component, one at a time.” And in the face of massive supply shortages resulting from a huge order backlog for the recently released YU7, Mr Lei was effusive in his praise for Tesla's top-selling model and encouraged prospective Xiaomi buyers to consider it.  “If you don’t choose YU7, you can consider Model Y. I’m not criticizing the Model Y. The Model Y is a very, very outstanding car,” he said. Within 18 hours of the YU7’s mid-year launch, Xiaomi said it had received around 240,000 orders, with the waiting list quickly pushing out to as much as 12 months. On social media Jun has also recommended the Xpeng G7 and Li Auto i8 as worthwhile YU7 alternatives.  Already established as a large-scale global consumer electronics maker and software developer (it’s currently the world’s third-largest smartphone manufacturer), Xiaomi unveiled the single- and dual-motor SU7 EV sedan in 2024, with the YU7 SUV following this year. The tri-motor SU7 Ultra, currently the fastest EV around the Nurburgring Nordschleife and claimed to accelerate from 0-100km/h in 2.0 seconds, was recently spotted exiting Ferrari’s Maranello HQ, sparking speculation it’s being benchmarked in the development of the Prancing Horse’s upcoming pure-electric model. And a similarly focused version of the YU7, likely to be called YU7 GT, is expected soon, with a heavily camouflaged version of the car already spotted circulating on the famous German road circuit.   

Xiaomi YU7 will gain performance variant - here's what we know with a first look thanks to renders.