Another week, another Chinese electric car poised to deliver an extinction event to Western automakers.
This time it’s Xiaomi, a Beijing-based tech firm best known for smartphones and the company behind the Porsche Taycan-baiting SU7, which in late-2024 was so popular that Xiaomi increased its sales forecast three times in a matter of months.
Now Xiaomi is back, and this time it has an electric SUV up its sleeve. Resembling the lovechild of a Ferrari Purosangue and an Aston Martin DBX707 described down a patchy phone line, the YU7 hits all of the benchmarks you’d expect from an EV in 2025.
The $35,000 YU7 has top specs for low money: 0-62 mph in 5.88 seconds and 800-volt electric architecture.
Photograph: Xiaomi
There are three models, ranging from the YU7 Standard, a single-motor car with 235 kW and a 0-62 mph time of 5.88 seconds, through the more potent, dual-motor YU7 Pro and, leaning into smartphone nomenclature, headed by the YU7 Max. That model has 508 kW of power—38 kW more than the electric Porsche Macan Turbo—and a supercar-like 0-62 mph time of 3.23 seconds.
Using China’s somewhat generous CLTC test cycle, range claims span from 472 miles for the Max, to a whopping 518 miles from the less powerful Standard. Xiaomi claims the car’s 800-volt electric architecture delivers a 10-80 percent charge time of just 12 minutes, or can add 385 miles of range in 15 minutes.
All very impressive, but especially so when you consider the Chinese market price. The YU7 starts at 253,500 yuan, which is about $35,000 in the US—the exact price Tesla briefly achieved with its first-generation Model 3 in early-2019, before heading back up to the $40,000 mark. The Pro and Max versions of the Xiaomi YU7 are priced at 279,900 yuan ($39,000) and 329,900 yuan ($46,000) respectively, while Tesla’s Model Y starts at 263,500 yuan ($36,500).
Meanwhile, Tesla has just missed its own deadline for putting more affordable cars into production. Despite canning its so-called Model 2, the company said at the start of 2025: “Plans for new vehicles, including more affordable models, remain on track for start of production in the first half of 2025.” We’re into July now and still waiting.
