Three years ago, Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi announced that it was planning to get into the electric car game.
Last week it launched the SU7. An interesting comparison is with Apple, who spent $1Bn every year for 10 years trying to build a car (albeit an autonomous, self-driving one) and abandoned that earlier this year.
Xiaomi's Founder, Chairman, CEO and busy man, Lei Jun, says that they can build 40 cars an hour - one every 76 seconds. That's about twice as fast as traditional car companies, he claims - and from the video it's easy to believe. It's an incredibly impressive process.
More stats - 700 robots operate in the factory, 381 of which work in the bodyshop, monitored by only 20 human employees.
And they're targeting 1m sales in the first three years. For comparison, Tesla sold just 2,650 cars in its first three years (although it sold a record 1.8m in its 15th year, 2023).
Will Xiaomi's SU7 be infested with trackers and bugs that mean China's President Xi Jinping knows your every move and conversation? I'm sure someone's checking that.
Meantime, it costs less than £24k. Expect to see loads in your neighbourhood very soon.
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