Xiaomi's second model is coming, this time to start "rolling" SUVs? The response came

Tide News

2024-05-14 15:59Posted on the official account of Zhejiang Chao News

Chao News client reporter Zhou Xialin Chen Jie

Xiaomi SU7 has been on the market for less than two months, and Xiaomi Group has made new moves. On May 13, according to media reports, Xiaomi Group plans to start producing and selling an SUV model similar to Tesla's Model Y as soon as 2025, marking a major expansion of Xiaomi's automotive business. Affected by this news, Xiaomi Group's stock price rose in response. As of press time, Xiaomi's share price was HK$20.1, with a total market capitalization of HK$501.6 billion. Previously, Xiaomi launched its first electric car, the Xiaomi SU7, which will be produced in about 100,000 units this year.

The picture comes from Weibo

According to sources, Xiaomi is approaching its initial capacity cap and is working to ramp up production to meet market demand. They said that in the development process, Xiaomi will benchmark Tesla's SUV models. It's unclear what the specific specifications and pricing of this SUV in Xiaomi's plans are.

According to the report, the launch of the SUV will mark a major expansion of Xiaomi's $10 billion electric vehicle business. The business, led by Xiaomi's co-founder Lei Jun, aims to reduce the company's reliance on smartphones. However, Xiaomi will face stiff competition to enter the electric vehicle space, with established players such as Tesla and BYD already taking a large share of the market.

Discussions about launching SUVs began back in 2021, when Lei Jun announced his foray into electric vehicles and saw it as his last major entrepreneurial project, according to sources. But in the end, Xiaomi decided to give priority to the SU7 sedan.

Since the current production capacity of Xiaomi's factory is only enough to meet the delivery of less than 10,000 units per month, Xiaomi expects the SUV to reach mass production until the end of 2025 at the earliest.

It is understood that more than 60% of Xiaomi's revenue comes from smartphone sales, and the launch of electric vehicles is partly to diversify its business, official data shows that as of 24 o'clock on April 30, the number of Xiaomi SU7 locked orders reached 88,063 units. According to the data of the Xiaomi Auto app, the fastest delivery times for the three models of the Xiaomi SU7, SU7 Pro and SU7 Max are currently 29 weeks, 30 weeks and 33 weeks respectively after locking orders, which means that the delivery time for most orders has been scheduled for November and December 2024. Since the SU7's release, Xiaomi's share price has risen by about 30% and is now near its highest level in two and a half years. Perhaps it is the unexpected performance of the market's demand for Xiaomi SU7 that makes Xiaomi begin to consider entering the current domestic "more volume" SUV track.

Photo by Chao News reporter Zhu Yao

In fact, Xiaomi's foray into SUVs has been very popular on the Internet.

On April 18, three weeks after the Xiaomi SU7 was officially launched, Xiaomi founder Lei Jun conducted a live broadcast on Douyin, in which Lei Jun responded to netizens' questions about Xiaomi's launch of SUV models. He said that there were some questions that could not be answered at the moment because of the confidentiality matters involved.

At the Beijing Auto Show at the end of April, Lei Jun bought an ideal L6, and some netizens thought that this was Xiaomi's preparation for the future layout of the SUV track.

At the end of April, there were media reports that Xiaomi Auto has started the development of a new platform, which will use a range-extended hybrid powertrain, and the three planned products are all SUV models, positioning family cars, benchmarking the ideal L7, L8, and L9 models. Subsequently, Wang Hua, general manager of the public relations department of Xiaomi Group, responded on Weibo that the news was untrue.

The picture comes from Weibo

As of press time, in response to the rumors that Xiaomi produces SUVs, Xiaomi Group responded to Chao News: At present, the company has no news about this.

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