Xiaomi officially enters electric vehicle market with the completion of its business registration

Xiaomi first entered the business sphere as a Chinese smartphone maker in 2010 and after 11 years, it is venturing into something new. The Beijing-based company just filed its registration to begin its electric vehicle (EV) business.

This marks Xiaomi’s official entrance to the auto market and it said that its EV division has arrived in the “substantial development phase.” The company simply named its electric vehicle manufacturing business Xiaomi EV, Inc., and as previously reported, ¥10 billion or around $1.55 billion was invested for it.

As per CNBC, it was in March when Xiaomi first announced that it will be launching its EV biz and revealed the amount allotted to fund the project. The firm also shared that so far, Xiaomi EV, has 300 employees now and it is being headed by Xiaomi’s founder and chief executive officer, Lei Jun.

The well-known smartphone said that in the last five months, its team in the EV business division carried out massive user research that involved interviewing more than 2,000 individuals for the survey and visited at least 10 business peers and partners. At this time, Xiaomi EV is said to be continually hiring as it is also in the stage of forming teams in the company.

Last month, Xiaomi confirmed during its financial report for the second quarter of 2021 that it will acquire Deepmotion, an autonomous driving solution provider that includes an intelligent advanced driver assistance system, for $77.37 million. The company is also said to be in talks to buy a stake in real estate giant Evergrande Group’s auto unit and apparently, these moves are related to its plans of expanding into the EV biz.

Now, as it jumps into the EV bandwagon, Xiaomi will now be competing with other startups in China such as Xpeng and Nio. It will also be facing the foreign brand, Tesla, as it is already being sold in the region.

Finally, Reuters reported that the electric car business will be CEO Lei Jun’s “last major entrepreneurial project” and he said this himself. Currently, he is leading the firm well, with the Xiaomi brand finally becoming the second top-selling smartphone brand in the world after South Korea’s Samsung.