Xiaomi is a cellphone and appliance company, sometimes referred to as the Apple of China. It's built an affordable self-driving electric vehicle that starts at under $30,000, a direct effort to compete with Tesla. Within days of the car's release,

the entire planned production run for 2024 was sold out. When I get in the car, I actually have to put the key here, which tells the car that I'm starting it. Once I've done that, I can then put the key

and put my phone there or whatever to charge it. So, we've got quite a large screen. I believe this might be 16.1 inches, which is larger than many other screens. To start the car, I need to press this button here.

Off we go. Right now, we're driving the max version of the Xiaomi MS11. There are three versions of the car: the standard, the pro, and the max. The max comes in at $41,500 USD.

The standard is priced at $29,000. Now, the standard and the pro are both rear-wheel-drive, single-motor cars using a 220-kilowatt motor on the rear axle. That's 299 horsepower.

With the max version, it becomes a dual-motor vehicle for a combined power of 495 kilowatts, which is 673 horsepower. The range of the max version we're driving is supposedly around 500 miles, or 800 kilometers.

The standard has a range of around 438 miles. Now, something I should point out: that is using the CLTC standard. Now, this generally is quite biased towards city driving and is really very generous. I would say, in real-world conditions,

you're looking at about half that range. Here we go. So, we're driving now using navigation and autopilot. Xiaomi were uncomfortable with letting me try this out, although I've actually driven multiple cars

with this before. This will work following the navigation on the system. So you basically put in a destination that you want to go to, and you activate it by pressing a button on the steering wheel. You can see here a representation of the road,

and we've got a little two-wheeler there, coming up to a junction; there are cars going there, as you can see. Compared with some of the other systems I've driven, this does not seem very smooth so far.

So, this is used—I should point out—it uses a lidar-based system. So we've got a lidar unit on the top of the windshield. It's also got cameras surrounding the car, and we've got ultrasonic sensors

and millimeter-wavelength radars. This will supposedly work in most places in China, and it's working in urban areas as well as on highways. When Xiaomi launched the MS7, they managed to immediately sell out their year's production.

in a matter of days. Now they're working double shifts and are producing and selling 20,000 a month. They're producing one car every 76 seconds. This car is the first car from Xiaomi, but it is far from the last.

Next year we'll see an SUV, and following that will be an EREV, which stands for an extended-range EV, which should come in cheaper than this car and presumably the SUV as well. A lot of people have also compared the looks to

let's say, a Porsche Taycan. Yes, perhaps there are similarities, but there are also a lot of differences. This car has a lot going for it. Perhaps I'm a little disappointed with the looks, as it's perhaps a bit derivative, but it isn't a copy.

There are a lot of new features with this car. It offers very good value for money in the China context, and obviously Xiaomi have global ambitions. Will it make it globally? Well, time will tell.

Test-Driving The $30,000 Chinese EV That Ford's CEO Loves: Xiaomi SU7 | Business Insider

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Test-Driving The $30,000 Chinese EV That Ford's CEO Loves: Xiaomi SU7 | Business Insider

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