Xiaomi SU7 is Chinese smartphone maker's first car, and it's quick

The Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi is officially in the car game, as it just revealed its first vehicle named the SU7. It’s a four-door sedan with big performance aspirations with the “SU” aptly standing for “Speed Ultra.”

We’ll forgive you if you haven’t heard of Xiaomi before, because while the company may be one of the top five smartphone makers in the world, its products aren’t sold in the U.S. Xiaomi says its plans for the SU7 are to sell it “globally,” but it’s not getting any more specific than that so far. The specs look plenty respectable on paper. It’s riding on an in-house platform named “Modena” that’s designed to accept multiple battery and motor configurations.

The most basic setup features a single electric motor good for 294 horsepower and 295 pound-feet of torque, good for doing 0-62 mph in 5.3 seconds. Step all the way up to the dual-motor AWD version, and you get 664 horsepower and 614 pound-feet of torque combined. This version boasts a 0-62 mph time of just 2.8 seconds. Xiaomi says the Porsche Taycan Turbo was its benchmark for performance, and it tried to learn lessons in tech from the Tesla Model S. 

When it comes to range, the numbers provided should be taken with a large grain of salt, as they’re calculated using the China Light Duty Test Cycle which tends to produce very optimistic figures, even more so than the already optimistic WLTP cycle. The base RWD car has the standard battery pack that Xiaomi says is good for 415 miles of range, while the AWD dual-motor car is claimed to go 497 miles on a full charge. Both of those numbers would be significantly lower if it were ever tested on the EPA cycle.

Its design looks rather aerodynamic and is penned by Sawyer Li, a designer who previously worked for BMW. We’re seeing elements of both the Porsche Taycan and Tesla Model 3 in the design, but what we’re really missing are substantial interior photos. From the single darkened image Xiaomi provided, it appears to have a large central infotainment system and a small digital instrument cluster to pair with it. We can see a traditionally shaped steering wheel, some toggles on the center console and what appears to be a handy head-up display splashed across the windshield, too.

Photos of the exterior in Aqua Blue, Mineral Gray and Verdant Green were provided, and you can check them all out in the gallery at the top of this post. Xiaomi says the SU7 will be going on sale in China in a few months, though a price is not yet available.