Today, the talk of the town was about the upcoming Xiaomi Car. It turns out the first product in this category will be a sedan. The latter will use a LIDAR developed by Hesai Technology. Also, its price will exceed 300,000 yuan (around $44,000).
Also Read: Apple Car vs Xiaomi Car
If you remember, a year ago, Lei Jun posted a poll on Weibo for the first Xiaomi car price. In effect, most of the voters hoped that Xiaomi’s first car should not exceed 150,000 yuan ($22,000). Simply put, Xiaomi fans are expecting a cheap Xiaomi Car.
Xiaomi Car Project Requires Huge Investments
At the Xiaomi press conference in August, Lei Jun said that Xiaomi had invested 3.3 billion yuan ($0.48 billion) in R&D in the first phase of autonomous driving. Also, it has established a top R&D team with over 500 people. Through wholly-owned mergers and acquisitions and industrial investment in upstream and downstream enterprises and other means, it promotes the medium and long-term industrial layout in the field of autonomous driving. This shows that Xiaomi has invested heavily in this field, and it is difficult to lower the cost of the first model. So whatever the Xiaomi fans wait for, most likely, it won’t turn into reality.
The source also reported that the Xiaomi Car would come with one Hesai hybrid solid-state radar AT128 as the main radar, and several Hesai all-solid-state radars are used as blind-filling radars.
Xiaomi’s first car is planned to have two configurations, high and low. The low model ought to use a 400V voltage platform, and the high model will use an 800V voltage platform. The latter will also come with CATL Kirin batteries.
Xiaomi Auto will build a vehicle factory in two phases in the Beijing Economic and Technological Development Zone. The cumulative annual output of the factory is expected to be 300,000 vehicles. However, the production capacity of the first and second phases is 150,000 vehicles. In 2024, Xiaomi’s first car will roll off the assembly line in the Beijing Economic and Technological Development Zone and achieve mass production.
According to Lei Jun, their first car will reach the customers in the first half of 2024.
