Ford EV Rival Xiaomi Announces Plan To Sell Vehicles Globally

Along with fears from officials over potential national security risks associated with Chinese EVs, automakers like Ford have long seen those vehicles as a major threat to their business, in general. This stems from the fact that Chinese EVs are seemingly a bit ahead of the curve compared to those made in other parts of the world in many ways, and they’re often sold at far lower prices, too. Ford CEO Jim Farley has praised Chinese electric vehicles on numerous occasions, even admitting that he loved driving the Xiaomi SU7 so much that he didn’t want to give it up. Now, that same company is planning to sell vehicles across the globe.

According to CNBC, Xiaomi President William Lu recently announced that the automaker plans to begin selling its EVs outside of the Chinese market at some point in the near future. “I cannot share too many details but I am so excited to tell our global users that Xiaomi will be releasing EVs for the sale in global markets within the next few years,” Wu said at the company’s product launch at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Such a move marks a quick expansion for Xiaomi, which just launched its first all-electric vehicle – the SU7 – back in 2021. It has since been followed by the new, more premium SU7 Ultra, which just launched this week and accumulated 15,000 pre-orders in just 24 hours, according to Wu. Before it got into the car business just a few years ago, Xiaomi was known for being the world’s third-largest smartphone vendor, but it still managed to deliver 100,000 SU7 models in 2024 alone.

Though Chinese EVs face tariffs in many parts of the world, a recent study found that a large portion of Americans would be willing to purchase such models, if they’re more affordable than domestic alternatives, at least. This is precisely the driving factor behind Ford’s skunkworks EV team, which is working to drive down the cost of its own future electric vehicles to better compete with Chinese rivals.