Xiaomi launched its first EV mannequin, the SU7, in early 2024. By the tip of the 12 months, international diplomats, traders, and visitors from different Chinese language firms had already began arriving on the firm’s manufacturing unit in Beijing to take part in one-off excursions, however the firm didn’t create a standardized expertise for the general public till the beginning of 2025. At first, Xiaomi provided simply three excursions with 20 members every monthly.
However the tour proved extremely fashionable, and Xiaomi shortly started scheduling considerably extra slots. In July, the corporate stated it would supply one tour each weekday and 6 excursions most weekends, accommodating greater than 1,100 guests in complete. When July registration opened, nonetheless, over 27,000 purposes flooded in in a single day, in keeping with the Xiaomi app—so the possibilities of snagging a ticket stay slim.
These fortunate sufficient to safe a spot can count on to first be taken to an exhibit corridor to find out about notable improvements in Xiaomi’s electrical vehicles. The guests then hop on a shuttle and go into three working manufacturing traces out of six complete to watch the employees and robots in motion.
Afterwards, they will take a look at trip a mannequin Xiaomi SU7 on a racecourse, the place a educated racecar driver demonstrates how the automotive can speed up from 0 to 60 mph in just some seconds. “It felt superior—takes off actually quick, with an immediate kick,” Zhao tells WIRED. Just lately, Xiaomi additionally began promoting inexpensive meals on the manufacturing unit and souvenirs to finish the expertise.
One other customer notes that the shuttle will briefly cease if it will get in the way in which of a robotic, which is programmed to do its job on a strictly timed schedule and is thus much less versatile than a human employee. Yuanyuan remembers that after the tour ended, her daughter remarked: “I want to review more durable, in any other case I received’t be capable to discover a job sooner or later. It’ll be robots doing all of the work.”
Xiaomi’s manufacturing unit is a first-rate instance of how Chinese language firms are shortly evolving from labor-intensive manufacturing to extremely automated manufacturing, because of new developments in robotics and synthetic intelligence. Lately, the Chinese language authorities has been closely selling the thought of “lights-out factories” that require no human labor, which means the machines can toil away within the darkness with out anybody needing to show the lights on. Firms which have managed to realize this excessive stage of automation, from Foxconn to house equipment giants, have turned their factories into advertising alternatives, inviting people to marvel on the know-how somewhat than do work.
Nio, one other main EV maker in China, has been publicly showcasing one in every of its extremely automated factories since late 2023. In 2024, over 130,000 folks visited the manufacturing unit, the place sure manufacturing traces just like the physique store have achieved one hundred pc automation, in keeping with a press release despatched by the corporate. Zhang says when her newest tour group visited Nio’s manufacturing unit within the metropolis of Hefei final month, the members had been in a position to view three out of the 4 manufacturing traces. (The automotive portray course of, nonetheless, was excluded from public visits.)
