Xiaomi launched its first EV mannequin, the SU7, in early 2024. By the tip of the yr, overseas diplomats, buyers, and visitors from different Chinese language corporations had already began arriving on the firm’s manufacturing facility 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 contributors every per 30 days.
However the tour proved extremely standard, and Xiaomi shortly started scheduling considerably extra slots. In July, the corporate stated it can provide one tour each weekday and 6 excursions most weekends, accommodating greater than 1,100 guests in whole. When July registration opened, nonetheless, over 27,000 functions flooded in in a single day, in accordance with the Xiaomi app—so the probabilities of snagging a ticket stay slim.
These fortunate sufficient to safe a spot can anticipate 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 whole to watch the employees and robots in motion.
Afterwards, they will 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 just some seconds. “It felt superior—takes off actually quick, with an on the spot kick,” Zhao tells WIRED. Just lately, Xiaomi additionally began promoting inexpensive meals on the manufacturing facility 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 would like to check tougher, in any other case I received’t be capable of discover a job sooner or later. It’ll be robots doing all of the work.”
Xiaomi’s manufacturing facility is a first-rate instance of how Chinese language corporations are shortly evolving from labor-intensive manufacturing to extremely automated manufacturing, due to new developments in robotics and synthetic intelligence. In recent times, the Chinese language authorities has been closely selling the thought of “lights-out factories” that require no human labor, that 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 know-how fairly than do work.
Nio, one other main EV maker in China, has been publicly showcasing considered one of its extremely automated factories since late 2023. In 2024, over 130,000 individuals visited the manufacturing facility, the place sure manufacturing traces just like the physique store have achieved 100% automation, in accordance with an announcement despatched by the corporate. Zhang says when her newest tour group visited Nio’s manufacturing facility within the metropolis of Hefei final month, the contributors 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.)
