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Time of India
22-05-2025
- Automotive
- Time of India
Xiaomi founder touts new Chinese chip to rival Apple silicon
Xiaomi Corp.'s billionaire founder outlined plans Thursday to outfit its top-end devices with advanced homegrown mobile processors , showcasing the company's ambitions to expand its tech portfolio and compete with American heavyweights. Lei Jun , who shot to fame with bold plans to unseat Apple Inc. in China, gave online viewers a sneak peek at its Xring O1 chip , which he said would power three devices including the Xiaomi Tablet 7 Ultra , another product launched at the same event, livestreamed from Beijing. At 3nm, that processor is aimed at matching Apple and Qualcomm Inc. chips. 'We also want to become one of the top chipmakers, with our phones targeting iPhones, can our chips also be compared against those of Apple's?' he said. Lei admitted the Xring lags Apple's own chipset in some respects such as processor speed—but stressed it was an achievement for their fledgling design team. The entrepreneur, who often personally hosts product launches, is expected to trot out Xiaomi's first electric sport utility vehicle—the YU7—at the same event. Xiaomi is keen to push deeper into tech arenas beyond the affordable smartphones and appliances it's best known for. Lei announced plans at the Thursday event to invest 200 billion yuan ($27.8 billion) in research and development over the next five years. It wants to move past a fatal March accident involving one of its signature SU7 sedans that sent orders plunging the following month. Xiaomi had raised its 2025 delivery target for electric vehicles to 350,000 units days before that incident, which prompted scrutiny over Xiaomi's self-driving advertising claims. It stoked concerns that the YU7 would be delayed. Lei's most important project is EVs — a $10 billion attempt to take on Tesla Inc. and BYD Co. that the founder has called his final endeavour as an entrepreneur. The market for SUV was more intense than that for sedans, Lei wrote in a social media post, but he believed that the YU7 has its own unique qualities. It won't officially hit the market until at least July, with no pricing released at the Thursday event. Xiaomi won't take pre-orders for the vehicle yet, Lei wrote in a separate post. The company has also announced a $7 billion investment to develop and enhance its own mobile processor over the next decade. Xiaomi's goals mirror Huawei Technologies Co.'s breakthrough a few years ago, which spooked Washington and raised concerns about Chinese advances in strategic technologies such as AI and chips. Among the hard-tech initiatives it's touted since the March incident was an in-house large language model dubbed the MiMo. Executives have reportedly talked about investing in AI in the past, though MiMo is the first real product to emerge. Its foray marks the second big project in as many years for a company best-known for making affordable smartphones and appliances from robot vacuums to rice cookers.
Bloomberg
15-05-2025
- Automotive
- Bloomberg
Xiaomi EV Sales Fall After Deadly Crash, False Advertising Claims
Xiaomi Corp. electric vehicle sales in China have taken a hit since March after a fatal highway accident and consumer unhappiness around the marketing of one version of its car. Orders for Xiaomi's SU7 sedan plunged to around 36,000 units in April, down 55% month-on-month, Deutsche Bank AG wrote in a note. 'This trend extended into May,' auto analysts led by Bin Wang said.
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Business Standard
23-04-2025
- Automotive
- Business Standard
Here's why Huawei's expansion in smart driving stirs competition, scrutiny
Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi Corp.'s pivot into cars has become a high-profile success story. Its SU7 is a hit, forecast to sell 350,000 units this year and even Ford Motor Co. CEO Jim Farley has heaped praise on the model. Less well-known is how rival smartphone maker Huawei Technologies Co. has also cemented a dominant position in China's intensely competitive electric vehicle market — not by making cars of its own, but by creating the intelligent driving software that's found its way into the cockpits of marques from BYD Co. to BMW AG. Its smart driving solutions unit turned profitable last year, after revenue more than quintupled. Huawei's software doesn't just help sell cars to Chinese drivers who are highly attuned to intelligent driving features, it also collects vast amounts of data that may ultimately help the company crack the holy grail of autonomous driving. Huawei's 'background in hardware and software definitely shows,' Tu Le, founder of Detroit-based automotive advisory firm Sino Auto Insights, said. 'People I trust tell me it's one of the best systems in China. Their aggressiveness points to how important being a player in the space is for them.' In the EV era, companies are reconfiguring how cars are designed and function. The 'brains' of a vehicle have a power that extends way beyond cruise control, emergency braking or parking sensors. And who gets to be in control of that is a topic sure to be high on rotation at this year's Shanghai auto show, which kicks off Wednesday in China's financial capital. But Huawei and other intelligent driving software providers are under pressure after a fatal crash involving a Xiaomi EV late last month. That's sparked a renewed focus on the claims around assisted driving technology and how such features are marketed to consumers. Officials have laid out rules to avoid describing advanced driver assistance systems as 'self-driving' and to encourage drivers to keep their hands on the steering wheel while using such features, people familiar with the matter said. The new rules could mean the roll out of upcoming smart cockpit and driver assistance systems are delayed for months. Huawei's insistence on maintaining control over its intelligent driving ecosystem also means that it's unlikely to be able to sign up customers overseas. Intelligent driving technology overlaps with issues of national security and data privacy. Western governments, especially the US, are already wary of Huawei due to its alleged ties to the Chinese government. Fears that autonomous driving software, which processes real-time data from public roads, could be accessed or exploited may see countries block or restrict Huawei's technology in foreign-made cars, clouding the company's growth ambitions just as it's getting started. 'As long as Huawei's solution continues to improve, they can continue to be a leader,' Tu said. 'The wild card is, can they convince a foreign manufacturer to use their system outside of China?' At the heart of Huawei's strategy is the Harmony Intelligent Mobility Alliance (HIMA). It's a factory floor to showroom approach whereby end-user consumers can order vehicles with Huawei's software through its online stores or authorized distributors. At its most basic, Huawei just provides the hardware to automakers that facilitates smart cars. At the auto show, several of the brands on display will be part of Huawei's alliance. There's Aito (a partnership with Seres Group Co.), Luxeed (in collaboration with Chery Automobile Co.), Stelato (with BAIC Motor Corp.) and Maextro (with Anhui Jianghuai Automobile Group Corp.). Deliveries under the HIMA framework approached 445,000 units in 2024 and Huawei has set an ambitious target of 1 million units across more than a dozen models in 2025. Beyond HIMA, Huawei Inside has found its way into the cockpits of Audi's Q6 e-tron and A8 L models, Chongqing Changan Automobile Co.'s Deepal and Avatr ranges and even BYD's Fang Cheng Bao 8 and 5 models, even though BYD has its own suite of advanced driver-assistance systems that it calls God's Eye. BMW and Huawei meanwhile are collaborating to develop smart applications based on the Harmony operating system while Huawei's HiCar system (the company's mobile app that connects devices with vehicles) should go into made-in-China BMW models in 2026, the German automaker said last month. It noted that approximately a quarter of BMW's app users in China use Huawei smartphones. Some in the industry have chafed at Huawei's dominance. Chen Hong, the former chairman of SAIC Motor Corp., famously stated in 2021 his unwillingness to cede the 'soul' of the vehicle to companies like Huawei. 'It's unacceptable,' Chen said during that year's shareholder's meeting. 'We have to grasp the soul in our own hands.' But with the winner-takes-all nature of artificial intelligence and the high barriers of entry to producing a system that can rival Huawei's, resistance seems to be fading away. In February, SAIC announced a strategic partnership with the Shenzhen-headquartered tech giant, completing Huawei's client list so that it now covers every one of China's state-owned auto manufacturers. Representatives for Huawei declined to elaborate about the company's smart driving solutions and philosophy. However Eric Xu, Huawei's deputy chairman, told Chinese media in September that considering not all automakers can afford the investment in smart car technology, 'we'll make the systems and make them well, and carmakers can use them directly.' 'We hope to build an open platform that all carmakers can participate in,' Xu said. 'Under these new cooperation models, carmakers and component providers are more than just in a simple buy-and-sell relationship. Instead, it's an in-depth partnership where all parties share the risks and benefits, and get things done together.'
NDTV
21-04-2025
- Science
- NDTV
China's Humanoid Robots Race Against Humans
Beijing: Some of China's best humanoid robots took on the challenge of racing against human marathon runners on Saturday. One fell at the starting line. Another's head fell off and rolled on the ground. And one collapsed and broke into pieces. In what was billed as the world's first half-marathon for androids, just four out of 21 robotic runners completed the race in Beijing's southern tech hub of E-Town within the allotted four hours. The winner was five-foot-ten Tiangong Ultra, who made it to the finish line in two hours and 40 minutes, far behind the hourlong performance of the human gold medalists. It took more than three hours for the other three bots that managed to complete the 13 mile (20.9 kilometer) course to come in. The man-versus-machine competition was presented as a showcase for China's ambition in areas from AI to robotics to semiconductors. President Xi Jinping's government has made the development of the key technologies a priority, ratcheting up trade tension with the US. Yet the result was often comical, with accidents and dropouts throughout the race. While Tiangong paced around five miles per hour and looked like a proper athlete, many of its robotic peers weren't designed to run quickly enough to finish the race within the time. The Tiangong Ultra model was tailor-made for the race by Beijing-based X-Humanoid, a government-backed research institute that also has funding from Xiaomi Corp. and robotics upstart UBTech Robotics Corp Ltd. Winner of the world's first robot half marathon in Beijing: Tiangong Ultra developed by UB Tech 🤖🏃 — Zheping Huang (@pingroma) April 19, 2025 "I'm very happy with the results, and everything met my expectations," X-Humanoid's Chief Technology Officer Tang Jian said in an interview. "This has been an extreme test of the robots' resilience and stability. Our hope is that, whatever tasks robots perform in the future, they will be capable of operating around the clock, 24/7." Still, it took one fall and three batteries for Tiangong to score the win, with the jersey-sporting machine leading the robot contestants throughout the race. A human instructor - wearing a signaling device on his lower back - ran ahead of the bot for it to mimic his moves. Most of the other androids were controlled with joysticks by human operators running alongside them. Some even had leashes. Two dozen teams crossed the starting line in succession, followed by mini shuttle buses with substitutes and engineers on stand-by. To qualify for the race, the robots had to have a humanoid appearance and run on two legs. They were allowed to replace batteries mid-race or even have a substitute take over, though with time penalties for each substitute used. Bystanders, including parents with toddlers, cheered them on, and even some of the human contestants paused near the start to take photos of their mechanical counterparts. The robots varied in appearance, height and weight. One giant contestant resembled Japanese fictional anime bot Gundam, with fans attached around its arms. It lost control and crashed onto the barricade separating the human and robot runners. The only female-looking robot, Huan Huan - equipped with mannequinesque head and Storm Trooper-style armor - collapsed shortly after the start, scattering body armor on the track. Neither recovered to continue the race. Little Giant, developed by local college students, was the shortest contestant at a mere 75 centimeters (30 inches) high. It paced around 1.4 miles per hour and supported voice control, one of its engineers said in a live broadcast on national television. At one point, the machine paused briefly after smoke spewed out of its head. The team only intended for Little Giant to run the first three miles as it's too slow, the engineer said. Jiang Zheyuan, 27-year-old founder of Noetix Robotics, stood on a stool and chanted slogans as he watched his N2 robot come second. Despite many sleepless nights, the race paid off for the Tsinghua dropout's startup as it helped clients discover the firm, he told reporters at the finishing line. His firm is slated to deliver 700 robots next month at $6,000 apiece, a below-market rate. 2nd place finished almost 1hr later: the N2 bot developed by startup Noetix Robotics. Founder is a Gen-Z who dropped out of Tsinghua — Zheping Huang (@pingroma) April 19, 2025 Another Noetix N2 robot, using a different algorithm, was third to cross the finishing line, but was demoted to fourth having used three substitutes and incurring more than an hour penalty. The team grumbled that the rule had been changed to their disadvantage and said they planned to lodge a complaint. Some of China's most promising robotics firms didn't sign up for the race. Hangzhou-based Unitree put out a statement after its G1 bot fell at the starting line that a client had used the machine without deploying Unitree's algorithms. The company - whose founder was among Xi's guests of honor at a prominent meeting with entrepreneurs in February - is busy prepping for a fighting bout, according to the statement. (Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
Bloomberg
10-04-2025
- Bloomberg
Oppo's New Ultra Phone Leans on Camera Specs in Crowded Market
Chinese hardware maker Oppo on Thursday unveiled its new Find X8 Ultra flagship phone, firing the latest salvo in a camera-technology arms race among premium Chinese brands. With domestic consumers growing ever more discerning about specs and performance at the high end of the market, Oppo seeks to stand out with a multicamera system comprised of 50-megapixel shooters at four different zoom levels. There's also an additional sensor dedicated to measuring color temperature. The Guangdong-based brand deviates from rivals like Xiaomi Corp. and Vivo by also slimming down the profile of its Ultra device to make it more manageable in everyday use.
