While it’s mostly been bad news on the financial front for Chinese tech company Xiaomi, including reports of a 10 per cent drop in revenue last November, it seems they’re looking to turn that around by embracing the demand for electric vehicles.
Company CEO Lei Jun says their auto division, Xiaomi Automotive – which was officially registered in 2021, and has more than 2300 R&D team employees – is “progressing beyond expectations”.
To that degree, he expects mass production of a vehicle to kick off in the first half of 2024, after recently completing winter testing of their first electric vehicle, which is set to compete against the Tesla Model 3 small electric sedan, which comes off the showroom floor at $65,000. A prototype is said to be unveiling in August.
An entry-level Xiaomi EV could boast a 400-volt class charging architecture using Build Your Dreams lithium-iron-phosphate (lFP) blade battery, while higher-end versions could roll with an 800-volt platform with LiDAR sensors and Nvidia’s Orion computing chip to prepare for self-driving in the future, not unlike the Volvo EX90 and luxury SUVs.
All upcoming models of the Xiaomi sedan are said to roll with Qualcomm Snapdragon Automotive processors, and feature a large central touchscreen.
