New buyers wait six months for electric car

Interest in Xiaomi’s first electric vehicle (EV), the SU7, appears to be high, following the company’s initial shipment to buyers.

Pre-orders for the EV opened last week, with Xiaomi chalking up almost 90 000 orders within the first 24 hours.

The first deliveries of the SU7 have already been made, with the vehicles coming from a pool of 5 000 that were manufactured and ready for shipping.

Everyone else on the pre-order list, which numbers well in excess of the 88 898 reported initial orders, has a fair while longer to wait. A little over six months, in fact.

That waiting time is specifically for Xiaomi’s SU7 Max, the speedier version of the EV that will nail 100km/h in a little over 2,7 seconds.

It’s also got an increased range (800km on a charge) and top speed (265km/h) over the standard model, so it’s hardly surprising that the vehicle is in demand.

The price point isn’t too shabby either.

The Max version of Xiaomi’s first EV starts at about R780 000, while the basic version of the car costs about R560 000.

It beats Tesla’s local pricing in China by a considerable margin, while offering similar or even superior capabilities.
The only tricky factor is that pesky waiting list – an issue that Tesla also faced when it released its Roadster in 2008.
The waiting list has not really gone away.

Xiaomi, however, seems a little more confident in its ability to deliver.

Its vehicle construction is handled by Chinese state automaker Baic.

The Beijing facility where the SU7 is made can output as many as 200 000 vehicles annually.

Whether it can do so with a brand new EV remains to be seen, but that’s the whole point of this exercise. – Stuff.co.za