During a three-hour long speech on Friday, Lei recounted his initial response to seeing his company had been added to a US Defence Department blacklist in the final days of the administration of former president Donald Trump. He called an urgent board meeting, he said, to address the new rules that made it illegal for American investors to hold stock in the smartphone maker because of alleged ties to the Chinese military.
Xiaomi scored a rare legal victory four months later, getting its name scraped off the list – one of the first Chinese companies to do so. But the incident forced Lei to think about the future of the company he founded in 2010, the entrepreneur said during his 2024 annual speech.
While just announcing its SU7 sedans in March, Xiaomi has already found some success in the market owing to its aggressive pricing strategy. It has delivered more than 30,000 of the vehicles so far, and Xiaomi said it is on track to meet its minimum annual target of 100,000 deliveries by November.
Xiaomi announced plans to launch an EV subsidiary in March 2021, just two months after it was blacklisted by the US.
Lei said Xiaomi turned down venture capital, instead ploughing US$10 billion of its own money into the business over 10 years. Lei called it “the last major entrepreneurship project” of his life.
Part of that investment involves 5.5 billion yuan (US$756.3 million) to build a sprawling EV factory in Beijing, covering 718,000 square metres (7.7 million sq ft), equivalent to 100 standard football pitches, according to the company.
China’s EV market has become highly saturated, with numerous start-ups and entrenched carmakers flooding the market, pushing down prices.
Xiaomi’s so-called HyperFactory in Beijing switched to double shifts in June, as it ramps up production capacity to meet its maximum annual delivery target of 120,000 vehicles this year.
