As Tesla’s star wanes in Europe, one of the rising stars of the Chinese electric-vehicle brands comes from smartphone giant Xiaomi which hits the ground running with its SU7 battery-electric sedan.
While the luxury model claims to be the safest car on sale in its domestic market, its ambitions to expand into global markets, including European, get a boost with a $5.5 billion cash injection from an upsized share sale.
The world's third largest smartphone maker has seen its share price surge by nearly 150% from HK$21.5 in the past six months, buoyed by investor enthusiasm for its BEV expansion plans.
Xiaomi has only been building cars for 12 months but the company says money raised will be used to fund the acceleration of its automotive expansion, research and technology development. Ford CEO Jim Farley has openly praised the Xiaomi SU7. In an October 2024 interview on the "Everything Electric Show" podcast, Farley said he had been driving the car, specially imported for testing.
Consumer recognition also gets a boost with C-NCAP’s top five-star rating scored by the SU7 Max in safety and crash tests, the highest scores recorded among Chinese cars evaluated in 2024.
The model has sold 186,112 units since launch last March and domestic consumer demand still exceeds supply, to the point that the time buyers wait for delivery after ordering is up to 11 months. A major attraction is the car's operating platform that is the same used on the company's smartphones providing a seamless connectivity experience for existing owners of its mobile devices.
China's safety tests largely mirror that of the Euro NCAP with ratings given in percentage terms and assess crash safety for vehicle occupants, active safety equipment and areas not covered by the tests performed by the National Highway Safety Administration in the U.S., mitigating protection of pedestrians and other vulnerable road users.
The Xiaomi SU7 Max achieves its C-NCAP with a performance of 93.5%, some 8.7% higher than the average result of other cars evaluated in the tests. It also scores the highest in the Active Safety category at 95.25% and approaches records for automatic emergency braking and lighting effectiveness.
On top of this, the model scores 94.31% on occupant protection and 90.42% on pedestrian protection, 13.14% higher than the average.
Some auto industry observers point out that, while the C-NCAP better reflects the heavier nature of BEVs in crash tests than either the European or U.S. tests using a heavier 1,700 kg (3,740 lb.) crash sledge, it does not deploy crash dummies to assess passenger movements around the cabin during a collision.
The Xiaomi SU7 Max is the all-wheel-drive version of the sedan and comes equipped with a standard LiDAR-enabled driver assistance system.
Its safety test results will be a boost for consumer confidence and, when Xiaomi upscales its vehicle production capabilities using the new traunch of cash, it’s very likely it will follow the Chinese automaker wave into European markets where value-for-money electric vehicles are selling well.
Most importantly it retails in China at the equivalent of just €40,000 ($43.215) and would become a very attractive proposition for European consumers, undercutting more expensive legacy auto brand premium BEV products even after being hit by the comparatively modest European Union import tariffs.
