Xiaomi Makes Further Progress in Car Development

On July 28, Sina Tech reported that Xiaomi‘s car production project will enter the offline stage of a “soft model” car in September, followed by field tests and a winter test cycle as scheduled.

According to information disclosed by relevant individuals, Xiaomi Auto has obtained some of the latest scarce materials from its supply chain partners. At the same time, the car project has been extended from the R&D team of Xiaomi Auto to relevant business departments within the wider Xiaomi Group, including a preparatory project for sales and operations in China.

Xiaomi said in an earnings report that its current progress in building cars has exceeded expectations when announcing its full-year results in March this year. Meanwhile, it will continue to expand R&D in core areas such as autonomous driving and intelligent cockpits in the future. According to the plan, the Xiaomi car is expected to be officially mass-produced in the first half of 2024.

At the beginning of July, a group of photos of Xiaomi‘s automated driving test vehicles was exposed online. According to the photos, the test car was modified from a BYD Han, and the roof was equipped with a laser radar developed by Hesai Technology.

Not long ago, at an internal meeting of Xiaomi Auto, founder Lei Jun also named and praised the engineering R&D team of Xiaomi Auto. Despite the impact of the pandemic and working from home for a long time, the related R&D progress was not delayed. The number of Xiaomi Auto employees has now exceeded 1,600.

In addition, in terms of patent layout, it can be seen that the highlight of Xiaomi‘s R&D investment lies in automated driving. From 2012 to 2020, Xiaomi‘s automobile-related patents focused on wireless communication networks, electronic digital data processing, digital information transmission, image communication, traffic control system, distance measurement, navigation and other fields.

SEE ALSO: Xiaomi Denies Lei Jun Will Debut Car Prototype in August

From December 2021 to June 2022, the company applied for 73 patents. Among them, there are 42 patents related to automatic automated driving, 21 patents related to battery motor and four patents related to intelligent cockpits.