As reported by Reuters, Xiaomi appears to be the next tech giant willing to take on electric vehicles. The news comes as a surprise, since all the rumors around electric cars lately have been coming from Cupertino (for a supposed Apple Car).
Who’s going to manufacture the cars? The Great Wall Motors Company. That’s a Chinese automobile manufacturer, with headquarters in Hebei. In case you haven’t heard of the car-maker before, it happens to be China’s largest SUV and pick-up truck producer. According to other reports, in 2016, GWM managed to sell over 1M cars worldwide. In other words – that’s not a random car manufacturer.
However, insiders claim that such partnership is indeed happening. Xiaomi is planning to make their own brand of cars, using manufacturing help from the already established GWM. That’s very similar to what Apple is trying to do.
Outsourcing production is the perfect start for companies, which don’t have any experience in creating vehicles. Although, that’s not 100% true… Xiaomi makes electric scooters. In fact, the Mi Electric Scooter 1S currently holds the number 1 spot on Amazon UK (it’s not even close), as the best-selling ES. It is very popular all over Europe too.
Xiaomi has put out a bunch of teaser images on Twitter for Monday’s event, but all of them seem to be hinting at smartphone (camera) features, not a vehicle of any kind. This means, the car might be their One More Thing – meaning they’ll announce it right at the end of the event, as a surprise. That’d be ironic, because that’s an Apple move, and Xiaomi might just get to beat Apple in the car race (no pun intended). At least until Cupertino stays out of it.
Anyway, we’ll have to wait and see what happens on Monday. The Mi 11 and Mi MIX series (officially making a comeback) were already very exciting products, which we are looking forward to seeing. Now, next week’s event just got real.
