Xiaomi the money Round 2: SU7 Ultra breaks China and global EV internet
Boom. Bang.
6,900 units in 10 minutes.
10,000 units in two hours.
15,000 units in 24 hours.
That’s the number of firm orders (requiring a deposit of RMB20,000 refundable within seven days) Xiaomi hauled in for its SU7 Ultra performance EV by midnight local time on February 28 after CEO Lei Jun officially launched the much-awaited sportier, track-capable version of the SU7 the previous evening.
Those 15,000 firm orders, if fulfilled, represent at least RMB300 million in deposits and potential revenues of at least RMB7.95 billion, based on the MSRP of RMB529,900 that Lei dropped at the Xiaomi new product launch event on February 27, which also introduced the company’s flagship smart phone and a host of other electronic gadgets and home appliances.
“Porsche-like performance, Tesla-like tech and BBA (Mercedes, BMW and Audi)-like luxury, the goal of the Xiaomi SU7 Ultra is to redefine the standards of luxury cars,” said Lei at the event, having been crowned as China’s richest person for an hour earlier in the day and wearing a new $400 brown leather jacket that soon went viral and was sold out on Taobao.
The biggest mic drop moment was indeed the price drop, literally and figuratively, nearly RMB290,000 cheaper than the pre-sale starting price of RMB814,900 announced late last year.
That difference roughly equals the MSRP of the Xiaomi SU7 Max, which retails at RMB299,900, representing the biggest delta between pre-sale and launch pricing of a vehicle model in China, maybe ever. In all my 25 years of covering China’s auto market, I don’t remember a single model having that high of a price difference between pre-sale and launch.
The biggest “price cut” in the history of China’s auto industry, done in typical Lei Jun fashion.
And just like that, Xiaomi has fulfilled Lei’s plan to sell 10,000 units of these beasts in a matter of hours, and then some. Deliveries began at 10 am on March 2 at Xiaomi’s plant in Beijing where Lei personally handed out the keys and commemorative 24-karat-gold carbon fiber Xiaomi logos to the first customers and took them for a ride in a mini track next to the plant, like what he did nearly a year ago when deliveries of the SU7 began.
By the time all the pageantry was done, Xiaomi had received nearly 20,000 firm orders and more than 10,000 locked-in orders for the SU7 Ultra, less than 72 hours after order books opened.
“I found out that last year China sold about 121,000 sedans priced above RMB500,000. The original sales target for the SU7 Ultra this year was 10,000 units, which was not a small target. But so far sales have far exceeded our expectations,” quipped Lei on Weibo.
You can bet that Lei will have his team work hard to deliver every single one of those 10,000+ locked-in orders this year, all while having to ramp up production for the regular SU7, which still has hundreds of thousands of back orders, prepare for the launch of the YU7 SUV and the opening of its second plant in the summer, and meet his goal of delivering 300,000 vehicles in 2025.
One slide that Lei shared at the launch event revealed that Xiaomi received 248,000 locked-in orders for the SU7 in 2024 in just nine months after the launch of the model at the end of March, of which 135,000 units were delivered. A safe bet is there might still be around 150,000–200,000 locked-in orders for the SU7 to be delivered this year, and it wouldn’t be surprising if deliveries of the SU7 (including the Ultra) account for at least two-thirds of the 300,000-unit delivery target with the rest accounted for by the YU7.
As of the end of February, Xiaomi has delivered more than 180,000 SU7s, which meant deliveries in the first two months of 2025 topped 45,000 units. It’s right on pace to hit, if not exceed, the 300,000-unit target.
If it isn’t already apparent by now, Xiaomi as a newcomer in China’s cutthroat smart EV arena has become one of the most formidable as sales continue to blow past expectations, with just a single model. When the SU7 launched 11 months ago, I had written then that if Xiaomi delivered 70,000 SU7s in 2024, it would be a success (see Xiaomi the money: SU7 breaks China and global EV internet). I was wrong by about 50%.
The SU7 Ultra offers segment leading specs and hardware/software features among performance EVs that I won’t repeat here and has recently broken every track record possible in China and the Prototype version broke the lap record for a four-door vehicle at the famous Nürburgring Nordschleife in Germany last October. The SU7 Ultra even broke Taycan Turbo GT’s lap record at the famous Shanghai F1 Circuit for a production car, and Lei has been boasting the social media interaction on Weibo between the official accounts of Xiaomi and Porsche, which congratulated Xiaomi’s achievement.
But the only spec that mattered at the end was the price, and Lei made sure he hit a homerun in that department and made people’s jaws drop.
This was his explanation:
“At the pre-launch press conference, I tested the waters with a price tag of RMB814,900, which led to a huge response. There were two opinions: one was that it was too expensive, the other was that it was too cheap, and should have been set a RMB 1 million. In the months that followed, there was a lot of internal discussion and research. We found out that many owners of the BMW 5 Series, Audi A6L and Mercedes E-Class were very eager to get a SU7 Ultra, and these BBA models were priced in the RMB500,000 range. That’s how we decided on the final price of the SU7 Ultra.”
Xiaomi will offer a Limited Nürburgring Nordschleife edition of the Xiaomi Ultra priced at RMB814,900 after it tries to tackle the German track again later this year.
For the RMB529,900 regular version, which is also throwing RMB90,000 worth of packages including Xiaomi’s HAD smart assisted driving system for free until the end of March, the meme has become: “I can’t believe I paid RMB529,000 for this thing, but why do I feel I got a bargain?!”
More salt on the wound for Porsche, Tesla, BBA and other foreign premium brands in China, with YU7, a Macan, Model Y, GLC, X3 and Q5 killer, still yet to launch.
When it does in mid-2025, it’ll be Xiaomi the money Round 3.
“The past is behind us. Today is where we shape the future. In this era of transformative change, a new wave of innovation has arrived. Xiaomi SU7 Ultra is our vision of what a premium EV can and should be!” said Lei at the launch event. “It’s the ultimate Dream Car.”
It’s Lei Jun’s world and we are all living in it.
