Sales soar for EV car with 500-mile range with 315K orders in 72 hours
Sales recently soared for a new Electric Vehicle (EV) with an impressive 518-mile range which rivals a petrol car with a full tank of fuel. The remarkable model can go from nought to 60 mph in just 3.23 seconds and can hit a top speed of 157 mph.
According to a recent survey by Motorfinity, around 44 per cent of motorists in the UK are thinking about changing to an EV. In recent years, many have been put off by an EVs limited range, however, this is now changing.
In 2011, Nissan launched their Leaf EV. This could only be driven around 100 miles before needing charged.
Chinese smartphone giant Xiaomi is now changing everything the EV world with its dramatic entry into the electric market. According to the Mirror, they have achieved a remarkable milestone with just its second ever model.
Within just three minutes of their launch, they received more than 200,000 pre-orders for its new YU7 electric SUV.
Xiaomi later announced on social media that this number had climbed to more than 289,000 within the first hour. And after 72 hours, Xiaomi's 351 retail stores across China reported up to 315,900 locked-in orders for the YU7. This surge in demand is a significant achievement for Xiaomi — outpacing the annual deliveries of many other EV manufacturers — as the company only started making EVs in 2024, when the SU7 sedan was launched.
The YU7, which is priced at roughly £25,790 (253,500 yuan), is positioned to compete directly with Tesla's Model Y — and it's almost four per cent cheaper than its American rival. Following the opening of pre-orders, Xiaomi's shares on the Hong Kong stock exchange surged to an all-time high, rising by a staggering eight per cent in early trading, before closing up 3.6 percent.
The YU7 may only be Xiaomi's second vehicle, but it has already demonstrated the company's ability to disrupt China's highly competitive EV market. BYD currently leads China's new energy vehicle market with a 29 per cent share and sales — just shy of one million cars from January to April. In contrast, Tesla holds just under five per cent of the market, while Xiaomi has quickly captured a 3.5 per cent share.
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Xiaomi's shares have risen by more than 70 per cent so far this year, making it one of the top-performing companies on the Hong Kong stock exchange with a value of around £139 billion. The rapid growth of China's EV industry on the whole is also evident, with production of new energy vehicles — including EVs and hybrids — increasing by more than 46 per cent in the first four months of the year.
Meanwhile, sales of internal combustion engine (ICE) cars have declined by six percent, highlighting a dramatic shift toward domestic EV manufacturers. Foreign brands, once dominant in China, now hold just 31 per cent of the market across both EVs and traditional fuel-powered cars, underscoring the rise of domestic companies like Xiaomi.
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But the plaintiff says their deal was based on a multiple of all compensatory damages, not just Tesla´s, and the figure the jury awarded is the one the company will have to pay. It´s not clear how much of a hit to Tesla´s reputation for safety the verdict in the Miami case will make. Tesla has vastly improved its technology since the crash on a dark, rural road in Key Largo, Florida, in 2019. But the issue of trust generally in the company came up several times in the case, including in closing arguments Thursday. The plaintiffs´ lead lawyer, Brett Schreiber, said Tesla´s decision to even use the term Autopilot showed it was willing to mislead people and take big risks with their lives because the system only helps drivers with lane changes, slowing a car and other tasks, falling far short of driving the car itself. Schreiber said other automakers use terms like 'driver assist' and 'copilot' to make sure drivers don´t rely too much on the technology. 'Words matter,' Schreiber said. 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'I trusted the technology too much,' said McGee at one point in his testimony. 'I believed that if the car saw something in front of it, it would provide a warning and apply the brakes.' The lead defense lawyer in the Miami case, Joel Smith, countered that Tesla warns drivers that they must keep their eyes on the road and hands on the wheel yet McGee chose not to do that while he looked for a dropped cellphone, adding to the danger by speeding. Noting that McGee had gone through the same intersection 30 or 40 times previously and hadn´t crashed during any of those trips, Smith said that isolated the cause to one thing alone: 'The cause is that he dropped his cellphone.' The auto industry has been watching the case closely because a finding of Tesla liability despite a driver´s admission of reckless behavior would pose significant legal risks for every company as they develop cars that increasingly drive themselves.
