Xiaomi, Tesla’s biggest challenger in China, unveils refreshed sedan with higher prices

Lei Jun, founder and CEO of the smartphone maker and electric vehicle (EV) start-up, said on Wednesday that the updated SU7 – priced higher than existing variants – would demonstrate superior performance to sustain strong sales growth.

“Given the sizzling sales of the SU7, we have been making great efforts to ensure the facelift can also be a success,” he said at a virtual briefing. “We do hope the upgraded SU7 can be good enough to convince the market of its excellent fundamentals.”

The refreshed SU7 starts at 229,900 yuan (US$32,920) in presale – 14,000 yuan, or 6.5 per cent, higher than the version that hit the mainland market in March 2024.

All versions are fitted with a lidar sensor and 4D millimeter-wave radars, whose self-driving systems are powered by advanced chips delivering 700 tera operations per second – a unit of measurement for the trillions of operations it can perform in one second.