Xiaomi launched its first EV mannequin, the SU7, in early 2024. By the top of the yr, international diplomats, traders, and friends 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 supplied simply three excursions with 20 individuals every per 30 days.
However the tour proved extremely fashionable, and Xiaomi shortly started scheduling considerably extra slots. In July, the corporate mentioned it is going to provide 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 functions flooded in in a single day, in response to the Xiaomi app—so the possibilities of snagging a ticket stay slim.
These fortunate sufficient to safe a spot can anticipate to first be taken to an exhibit corridor to study notable improvements in Xiaomi’s electrical automobiles. The guests then hop on a shuttle and go into three working manufacturing traces out of six complete to look at the employees and robots in motion.
Afterwards, they’ll check journey a mannequin Xiaomi SU7 on a racecourse, the place a skilled racecar driver demonstrates how the automotive can speed up from 0 to 60 mph in only a few seconds. “It felt superior—takes off actually quick, with an instantaneous kick,” Zhao tells WIRED. Not too long ago, Xiaomi additionally began promoting inexpensive meals on the manufacturing unit and souvenirs to finish the expertise.
One other customer notes that the shuttle will quickly 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 recollects that after the tour ended, her daughter remarked: “I want to check tougher, in any other case I gained’t have the ability 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. In recent times, the Chinese language authorities has been closely selling the concept 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. Corporations which have managed to attain this excessive degree of automation, from Foxconn to residence equipment giants, have turned their factories into advertising and marketing alternatives, inviting people to marvel on the expertise reasonably than do work.
Nio, one other main EV maker in China, has been publicly showcasing one in all 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 response to 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 individuals have been in a position to view three out of the 4 manufacturing traces. (The automotive portray course of, nonetheless, was excluded from public visits.)
