Xiaomi announces electric car to compete with Tesla

This last Thursday (28), Xiaomi's SU7 electric car model was announced during an event in China. During the live broadcast on the internet, directly from Beijing, the CEO and co-founder of the Chinese company, Lei Jun, announced that the company specializing in smartphones has taken a step forward and is now competing not only with Apple for the Chinese smartphone market, but also with Tesla. This fact was even a reason for jokes with Apple, which gave up on producing its own electric car, in addition to losing the battle to Xiaomi for the Chinese smartphone market.

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_{CEO Lei Jun during the announcement of the SU7 electric car (Photo: reproduction/Getty Images Embed)}

The SU7 model and what it represents for the market

CEO Lei Jun, nicknamed “Thor” in China due to his surname meaning “thunder”, has also been compared to Steve Jobs for turning a smartphone startup into an electronics giant. The SU7 model, therefore, is another step in the company's climb, which seeks to include other sectors also linked to high technology, but aimed at the consumer market. During the broadcast, Lei Jun warned investors that this project, planned for around 3 years, will cause the company to lose money, but will create the basic conditions for the company to become one of the top 5 car producers, competing with Porsche and Tesla. The car promises to have functions in sync with smartphones, notebooks and others “gadgets” from Xiaomi, in addition to already being tested in around 300 cities in China, seeking to consolidate itself in the automotive market within 2 or 3 years. According to China Daily, the company received more than 50,000 orders within the first 30 minutes.

Trade and technology war between China and the USA

Last week, on the 20th, it was also announced that Intel will receive subsidies from an American State program called “Chip Act” (Chips Law). With this, the American company announced that it will build a new chip factory, in addition to modernizing and expanding three other plants with the aim of becoming the world's largest chip producer from 2027, thus reducing dependence on the largest chip producer in the world. world today, the Taiwanese company TSMC, whose headquarters are located on the island of Taiwan and which is the target of political disputes with China related to its incorporation by the latter.

Therefore, the announcement of an electric car that will compete with Tesla is part of this context of economic and technological disputes between both countries, both in relation to the capacity of their companies in technological development itself, and the capacity that each company will have to obtain larger shares of the Chinese consumer market, the largest in the world today.

Featured Photo: Xiaomi’s new car (reproduction/Michael Zhang/Getty Images Embed)