Xiaomi launches next-gen SU7 with 902 km range and Lidar, still undercuts Tesla

https://electrek.co/2026/03/19/xiaomi-launches-next-gen-su7-902-km-range-undercuts-tesla/

by breve • 4 months ago

122 97 4 months ago

MrVitaliy• 4 months ago

Interesting that they prominently feature Lidar as an upgrade over whatever Tesla has. Sheds some light on the whole drama with lidar vs camera in self-driving.

winrid• 4 months ago

the sensors on my robot vacuum are an upgrade over whatever Tesla has

mikelitoris• 4 months ago

When you give a snake oil salesman the reign over technical decisions…

wolvoleo• 4 months ago

Those are generally lidar so that fits in with the above :)

Just 2D and much lower resolution and speed obviously

Havoc• 4 months ago

Tesla unnecessarily backed themselves into a corner there with Musks ego and publicly announcing no lidar stance imo

iknowstuff• 4 months ago

And yet FSD is the best adas so

dyauspitr3• 4 months ago

That’s wild with that range (560 miles) it probably gets atleast 300 miles in the worst case scenario. That’s game over for ICE. What a dream. I wish we could have them in the US but my patriotism also tells me that would be the death of almost all US auto companies.

hangonhn3• 4 months ago

I would be OK if we tariff or effectively ban Chinese EVs (as is the case now) for a little while to give our auto industry time to retool and catch up. The current situation with a ban but no long term EV adoption plan in place is just incredibly short sighted. We could end up like certain developing nations that has an indigenous auto industry that are nothing more than glorified assembler of foreign cars or the American consumer continues to buy cars that are more expensive and less performant to use and operate while making all of us vulnerable to oil price shocks.

torginus3• 4 months ago

I wouldn't encourage that and I don't think it will be necessary. In Europe, most Chinese brands aren't selling exactly well, while domestic manufacturers really sped up their timelines and pushed for competitive pricing, so generally I don't think there's much of a demand for Chinese EVs, except for the genuinely nice brands, like XPeng and Nio.

There's also the issue, it that in most places in Europe outside of Scandinavia, the charger infrastructure is lacking, and regular people are quite rightly averse of getting an EV if you step out of the tech bubble.

I have a friend who's a high-level manager in automotive retail, and he said he thinks Chinese EVs will be like Chinese smartphones - yes they are nice, and cheaper, but still the market looks like 70% of it is controlled by Apple/Samsung, and the rest of the manufacturers fight over what's left

cpursley2• 4 months ago

The only way to get American auto manufacturers to step up their game is completion. Worked when the Japanese cars came, American car quality improved dramatically in response because it had to.

9999000009992• 4 months ago

Ok.

So instead of being able to buy a 10K BYD car, Americans have to buy 30k cars that are inferior in many aspects.

It would be easier to just pay fired American Auto workers directly over protecting inefficient auto companies. I have no sympathy for Ford who keeps making the F-350 or whatever bigger and more expensive every single year. Nobody needs a $90,000 truck

peterfirefly• 4 months ago

The US car companies have been given decades to catch up. That's the problem: they have been shielded from competition.

knownastron• 4 months ago

I believe they'd be able to sell their vehicles in the US if they were willing to build it here (or Mexico/Canada due to USMA).

If that were the case they wouldn't have the cheap Chinese labor and I doubt the Chinese government would continue to subsidize US build vehicles for the US market.

It'd still be a compelling vehicle but it wouldn't be starting at $33k.

hangonhn3• 4 months ago

There's a non-zero possibility of that actually happening. It's already happening in Europe. Trump has mentioned the idea of a JV with Chinese companies. It is possible for this to happen in the upcoming Trump-Xi meeting. Chinese companies have started pursuing more foreign investments as a way to avoid "involution" -- fierce and unprofitable domestic competition. Their profit margins when going aboard is considerably better than at home. Maybe it won't be $33k but it might be $45k, which for a car with those kinds of specs, it would be a steal. China's EV advantage doesn't come just from labor costs but also from vertical integration of the entire supply chain. The mining stage is pretty low margin but China does it because it enables the next stage, which is batteries where profits are better, and then you get to even more profitable stage with cars, etc.

tzs3• 4 months ago

BYD was planning to do that, but Trump said he'd put 100-200% tariffs on Chinese cars made in Mexico and BYD cancelled those plans.

cpursley2• 4 months ago

And Mexican labor at this point is cheaper than Chinese. Makes sense to me.

markdown• 4 months ago

If that were the case they wouldn't have the cheap Chinese labor

I don't think labour costs are much of a consideration anymore. It's 2026; robots do most of the work.

Aurornis6• 4 months ago

The current gen SU7 is already available with an 830km CLTC range but doesn't actually get that range in real world driving.

This is about 9% better, so you could take the current real-world range and increase it by 9% and probably get a decent estimate for the normal driving condition range.

You will not get 560 miles of range out of this vehicle. The typical use is probably closer to your initial worst case guess at around 350-400 miles if I had to guess. Worst case scenario would be even worse than that. The numbers are good, but they're not in a completely different league

dyauspitr3• 4 months ago

It is in a completely different league as soon as you get 250 miles+ in the worst case scenario. I have an EV and 300 miles per charge is amazing. No American companies offer this right now.

xbar2• 4 months ago

They are in a completely different league when you account for the other full half of the story you missed:

"The company claims 5C supercharging capability, with a 10% to 80% charge completing in about 11 minutes."

Assume your worst case of 350 miles, 80% of that is 280 miles. Getting to 280 miles of no-exaggeration-real-world range in 11 minutes is actually game changing.

An 11 minute break after each chunk of 280 real miles of continuous driving does not feel like an interruption on a road-trip. 33 minutes every 200 miles definitely does.

11 minutes once per week to cover 5 days of 30 real miles of each-way commute is a forgettable amount of time.

The time/mile charge ratio is actually the story.

tzs3• 4 months ago

I wish we could have them in the US but my patriotism also tells me that would be the death of almost all US auto companies.

As an American it is not clear to me that I should care about US auto companies. I care about US auto workers but if they are working at a factory in the US owned by a non-US company making that company's cars that seems like it can take care of the workers.

Toyota, Volkswagen, Hyundai, Kia, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Honda, Nissan, Subaru, and Mazda all build cars in the US with US workers. Why not add some Chinese companies?

If there is a good reason to keep the big American companies around pass a law that makes any new non-US auto plants here be a joint venture with a big American company, with the American company having a minority ownership and getting a license to make their own version in their own factories of the cars made in the joint venture factory.

epolanski3• 4 months ago

They will scream national security.

While kidnapping foreign head of states, threatening allies and launching wars in the middle east.

jerlam• 4 months ago

My Japanese Toyota has a greater US/Canada parts content percentage than an American Chevrolet, and the former is assembled in the US while the latter is assembled in Mexico. The only advantage US companies seem to have is nostalgia.

The only way the US is going to get better at manufacturing is to learn/steal from the best - which is China now. It was Japan a few decades ago and we made a GM/Toyota joint factory (NUMMI).

KingMachiavelli• 4 months ago

The profits of auto manufacturing are distributed to US stock holders. The same won’t be true for foreign companies. For very large industries, this is a large amount of capital either staying or leaving the US.

Also, it’s unlikely that the low prices could be maintained while also paying US labor and US safety standards. If they can then it means we’ve lost our competitive edge completely in the manufacturing sector. At that point we’d be reliant on foreign companies to operate locally here.

FridayoLeary• 4 months ago

nah. electric is and always was a political fantasy. Perhaps its day will come, electric cars are here to stay and will find their niche, but the car manufacturers are reluctantly admitting that so is ICE. Electric cars can't compete on the figures, electricity is expensive, at service stations it's exorbitant. The electricity infrastructure is woefully inadequete to handle the large numbers needed. Not to mention enviromental benefits are not that huge either.

cmrdporcupine• 4 months ago

This is mind bogglingly delusional while people are staring at spiking oil prices... and even when oil prices were at record lows it cost 5x to fill up my wife's ICE car as it did to charge my EV.

thebruce87m• 4 months ago

Electric cars can't compete on the figures

My EV costs 1/4 pence per mile in fuel compared to my diesel - money saved.

I charge at home meaning I no longer have to visit a petrol station once a week - time saved.

It’s faster than my diesel. It preheats automatically so more time saved scraping ice off my windows every winter.

The national grid in the UK is actually running lower demand than it did 20 years ago due to efficiency improvements, and nighttime charging controlled by my power company means they can balance it as they need - so infrastructure is fine.

The environmental benefits mean that my car was break-even on carbon emissions after roughly 15k miles.

Seems like it competes on figures just fine.

Aurornis6• 4 months ago

The range is Chinese CLTC range, which is a more generous rating than the US range ratings.

It's an impressive range number, but don't try to compare it directly to range numbers for other EVs.

The current gen SU7 is available with an 830km CLTC range. If you drive one on real roads, you will not get 830km of range. :)

woleium• 4 months ago

what will you get?

Aurornis6• 4 months ago

Some of the reviews have been able to get as much as 80% of the rated range under ideal conditions.

The CLTC doesn't measure actual highway usage well at all. If you drive a lot on highways and use the air conditioning you could be closer to 60% of rated range.

CrimsonRain• 4 months ago

~30% less. So about 600km. Still a very good number.

bryanlarsen4• 4 months ago

Article says that'll be about 400 miles in the real world.

DetroitThrow• 4 months ago

300-400 miles depending on conditions

Bimos• 4 months ago

My car is 605km in CLTC and 492km in WLTP. And it runs for about 450km before battery totally die, so I have to charge for every about 400~420km. A bit cold and totally no hill here in Shanghai.

So for 900km CLTC, I think it will go like at least 600~650km easily.

dheera2• 4 months ago

The US ranges are also way overestimated.

My Tesla long range gets about 60% of advertised range in real world conditions. I'm talking stop signs every block, mountains you need to drive across, insanely hot days, i.e. the real world.

I knew that would be the case, but I really wish there was a crackdown on this. Advertised range should be the mean of the distribution, not the max.

In fact EV manufacturers should be required to publish the distribution and they should have to pay a KL divergence penalty on it that will be distributed to EV buyers as rebates. It would also require the courts to learn about KL divergence, which I would really love to happen. We need countries run by engineers, not clowns.

November_Echo2• 4 months ago

Advertised range should be the mean of the distribution, not the max.

Distribution of what? Assuming you mean the distribution of driving range achieved 'in the real world', how would that work before a car is sold? How often would it have to be updated in their advertising material? Over what sort of area would the distribution be calculated? How would anyone know if the advertised range of two different cars was even comparable?

Whilst the standardised tests could be improved, they are still the best way to compare products.

should have to pay a KL divergence penalty on it that will be distributed to EV buyers as rebates

I get about 15% more range than advertised, should I have to pay a penalty for this?

Aurornis6• 4 months ago

The US ranges are also way overestimated.

The same car measured under CLTC would have an even higher rated range.

A Chinese car rated under American regs would see a lower rated range.

epolanski3• 4 months ago

You don't get real mileage out of the declared Tesla ones either.

jigneshdarji91• 4 months ago

Yep, I get 240 mile range on my 330 mile range Model Y.

emmelaich• 4 months ago

AAA rates Tesla Y better than most.

https://www.aaa.asn.au/2025/12/new-test-results-to-help-ev-b...

AAA is the Australian Automobile Association

Aurornis6• 4 months ago

The Tesla would have higher CLTC rated mileage too.

My point is that you can’t compare ratings done to different standards.

Chinese CLTC exaggerates real world range a lot more than any other major measure.

yanhangyhy• 4 months ago

Recently, because of BYD’s fast-charging technology, I started paying attention to charging speed. Charging to 80% is actually not very difficult, so manufacturers usually like to highlight that number since it’s easier to make it fast. The difficult part is after 80%. Normally, a different charging mode is needed, and the speed has to be reduced. So charging from 80% to nearly 100% usually takes almost as long as charging from low battery to 80%. Only BYD’s selling point is that it can charge up to 97% much faster than other manufacturers.

(xiaomi cars are not bad but they are also famous for marketing skills)

illwrks• 4 months ago

Is that 97% really just the 80% of the full battery capacity?

breakpointalpha2• 4 months ago

Insta-banned in the US for "national security", not because it's a better car than anything the US can produce. /s

neogodless• 4 months ago

Was anyone able to discern from this (or official sources) what the actual battery capacity, and estimated efficiency / consumption is under ideal conditions?

(e.g. 100 kWh, 400 miles -> 10 kWh / 100 miles or 4 miles / kWh)

Xiaomi launches next-gen SU7 with 902 km range and Lidar, still undercuts Tesla

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