Smartphone giant Xiaomi to sell EVs in Europe from 2027

Chinese tech giant Xiaomi’s CEO, William Lu, is currently in Spain, where he told the Chinese press Jiemian that he will tour Europe’s car markets in the coming days to prepare for the launch of its EVs on the Old Continent starting in 2027. He wants to see firsthand how Chinese EV makers are doing in the EU so far.

It’s showtime for Chinese smartphone giant Xiaomi in Barcelona, where the Mobile World Congress 2025 (MWC) is held. Xiaomi is presenting its latest 15 Ultra smartphone and the SU7 Ultra electric sedan there.

673 hp and 800 km range

Xiaomi first announced its intention to enter the EV market in March 2021, and in December 2023, it presented its first car: the SU7. It was shown in Europe for the first time at the MWC 2024 event in February last year and went on sale in China a month later at a starting price of 215,900 yuan (€27,980).

The SU7 was the brand’s first foray into the automotive industry. It’s a mid-size sedan powered by two electric motors with up to 673 hp and 800 km of range (CLTC). And it is pretty good—a bull’s-eye from the first shot.

Praised by Ford’s CEO

Jim Farley, Ford’s CEO and boss of the world’s sixth-biggest car company, with 177,000 people working for him, made a striking confession in October last year: he has been driving a Chinese Xiaomi SU7 fully electric car around Detroit for the previous six months and didn’t want to give it up.

“It’s fantastic and is made by a smartphone juggernaut. The Apple car Apple failed to make in the US,” he told British actor Robert Llewellyn on the Fully Electric Show podcast.

Llewellyn interviewed Jim Farley about the challenge of Chinese competition in a 43-minute podcast. Farley was straightforward in admiring how the Chinese car industry managed to rethink the electric future decades ago while the rest of the world was ‘sleeping.’

135,000 cars delivered

According to the latest figures from Xiaomi, it has already secured 248,000 locked-in orders and delivered more than 135,000 cars. On February 27th, Xiaomi launched the SU7 Ultra in China, a sports version with a whopping 1,548 horsepower starting at 529,900 yuan (€63,340). It has already secured 19,000 orders, almost double the 10,000 target set for this year.

The SU7 Ultra shown in Barcelona today is the smart maker’s ultimate proof that it also knows something about electric sports cars. In October 2024, a Xiaomi SU7 Ultra prototype became the fastest four-door car on the Nürburgring Nordschleife in Germany. It recorded a time of 6 minutes 46.874 seconds, quicker than the Ferrari 296 GTB, the Porsche 918 Spyder, or the Rimac Nevera.