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Xiaomi, the world’s second largest smartphone maker, just lately launched its electrical sportscar, the Xiaomi SU7 sedan. Now, the corporate has simply introduced it’s going to quickly try a quick lap on the Nürburgring Nordschleife utilizing a devoted SU7 track-ready prototype.
Xiaomi’s founder and CEO, Lei Jun 雷军, at this time (July nineteenth) held the corporate’s annual presentation to indicate off new merchandise. In the course of the first ~70 minutes, Lei Jun instructed the story of the inception and improvement of Xiaomi’s first auto, the SU7 EV, which was launched in late March 2024.
The story included Lei Jun’s technique of personally driving over 180 different auto fashions through the improvement technique of the SU7. He additionally acquired a racing licence and spent a variety of time on racetracks, as did round 100 different members of Xiaomi’s car engineering crew. This enabled them to rapidly develop their experience in car dealing with and efficiency, and iteratively apply enhancements to the SU7 throughout its improvement.
The 4-door sports activities sedan, which begins from RMB 215,900 (€27,270 or $29,700) is already an in a single day success, promoting at a price of over 11,400 items per 30 days.
After additionally spending time presenting Xiaomi’s new smartphones and different client merchandise, in the direction of the top of the present, Lei Jun introduced “one more thing.”
He revealed that the corporate has been engaged on a prototype track-focused variant of the SU7, referred to as the “Ultra.”
The Extremely has already been largely designed, constructed, and undergone monitor testing, however its parameters and dynamics are being additional developed and improved.
As soon as the SU7 Extremely monitor prototype has set a benchmark Nürburgring Nordschleife lap time, deliberate for someday in October 2024, Xiaomi will finalise the design and specs of a road-legal retail model of the Extremely. It will go on sale someday in 2025.
What are among the efficiency specs of the monitor prototype Xiaomi SU7 Extremely?
It has a complete of 1,548 horsepower, from 3 electrical motors. In depth use of carbon fibre has allowed Xiaomi to maintain the car weight all the way down to 1,900 kg — spectacular for a strong 4-door BEV. For context, the Tesla Mannequin S Plaid weighs 2,162 kg, and the newest Porsche Taycan Turbo GT weighs 2,234 kg. Each have considerably much less energy than the SU7.
On the similar time, the SU7 Extremely prototype’s racecar aerodynamics give it a large downforce of two,145 kg at excessive pace, which ought to make for some spectacular grip by means of high-speed corners.
The facility-to-weight ratio offers the car spectacular acceleration, with 0 to 100 km/h taking simply 1.97 seconds (sooner than the Tesla or the Porsche). Equally spectacular, 200 km/h comes up in simply 5.96 seconds! Prime pace is over 350 km/h (>218 mph).
We now have mentioned Porsche’s EV lap occasions, and Tesla’s lap occasions, on the ‘ring beforehand, so in case you are not accustomed to this iconic race monitor (and why it’s extensively used for car improvement), take a look at these articles. What lap time will the Xiaomi SU7 Extremely prototype do on the Nürburgring Nordschleife?
A lot will depend upon how highly effective the SU7 Extremely’s cooling methods are, and thus how a lot of the lap distance these unimaginable headline 1,436 horsepower can be found for. Each the Tesla, and even the newest Porsche, are thermally restricted on a single lap of the ring, when pushed to their most energy. Which means, when referred to as upon for ~7 minutes (and ~20 km) of this demanding monitor, the powertrain cooling (for some mixture of motors, inverters, and battery pack) can get overwhelmed and the car compensates by decreasing the system energy output.
In the event you watch the Porsche Taycan Turbo GT lap, for instance, you may see a number of locations (notably at Kesselchen and Dottinger Hohe) the place the car’s 10 second “boost mode” is requested however unavailable because of the car already being at its thermal limits. That is regular stuff — there’s all the time a steadiness in mechanical methods between energy output and thermal limits (in addition to interacting with different components like effectivity and reliability).
On the finish of the day, the Taycan and the Mannequin S Plaid are designed primarily as highway vehicles, and solely a really small fraction of householders will ever push them to ranges that bump up in opposition to the cooling functionality that the engineers lastly settled on.
Lap occasions additionally rely quite a bit on the selection of tires. Producers of highway vehicles, like Porsche, normally take the sincere and clear choice of asserting official ‘ring lap occasions that are run on the identical tires that are supplied on the market to regular clients of the showroom car. Musk made the rookie mistake of hinting about lap occasions which had been in the end solely achievable on race compound tires, which had been thus by no means achieved through the formally sanctioned lap time on avenue tires.
Xiaomi might be not desiring to promote this actual track-special prototype model to common clients as a road-going automotive. It subsequently may in principle run with race-biased rubber (like Trofeo R or Pilot Sport Cup 2 R) and declare that’s authentic as a result of this can be a race automotive. If that’s the case, a time of below 7 minutes needs to be nicely inside attain. That is as a lot because of the light-weighting and downforce as anything.
With a road-biased sport tire (like P-Zero, or Pilot Sport Cup 2), which is much less sticky and extra lengthy lasting, round or simply over 7 minutes would already be spectacular.
As talked about above, as soon as the crew has discovered a very good setup with the prototype for the October lap time efforts, Xiaomi will transfer on to designing, manufacturing, and promoting a road-legal model (which can possible need to have barely much less aggressive aero) to satisfy highway security (particularly pedestrian security) rules. They will even possible run this on street-biased rubber.
If the ultimate road-going model of the SU7 Extremely can get anyplace near the lap time of the Porsche Taycan GT, that might be a exceptional achievement for the primary automotive Xiaomi has ever made. You may also guess that the corporate will worth it to undercut the Taycan!
We must wait and see.
Twist of Destiny
Lei Jun recounted that the corporate’s journey to launching its first car began on January 15, 2021. Why this date?
In 2014, Lei was named businessman of the yr by Forbes, and in 2019 obtained a nationwide award for “Outstanding Builder of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics.” (This isn’t unusual — for instance, BYD’s chairman Wang Chuanfu has additionally obtained this nationwide recognition.)
The US authorities — which has been famously hostile to Socialism and labour actions because the late nineteenth century, and significantly hostile to China — determined to answer that award by banning Xiaomi from getting funding from inside the US, and in the end, from doing enterprise within the US, as reported by the Wall Avenue Journal at the moment.
This restriction was put in place on January 14, 2021, proper on the finish of the Trump administration, and thereafter stored in place by the Biden administration. It was this hostile transfer by the US authorities which triggered Xiaomi to discover new areas of enterprise — by aiming to make an vehicle — and to maintain its staff employed.
This, and different fascinating particulars, are recounted in at this time’s presentation, which you’ll watch on Xiaomi’s web site. The lengths the corporate went to so as to study through the improvement course of are noteworthy, and go an extended option to explaining how a client electronics firm was in a position to make its first ever auto such a right away success story.
Article photos courtesy of Xiaomi
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