Xiaomi launched its first EV mannequin, the SU7, in early 2024. By the tip of the 12 months, international diplomats, buyers, and visitors from different Chinese language corporations 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 contributors every monthly.
However the tour proved extremely widespread, and Xiaomi rapidly started scheduling considerably extra slots. In July, the corporate stated it’ll provide one tour each weekday and 6 excursions most weekends, accommodating greater than 1,100 guests in whole. When July registration opened, nevertheless, over 27,000 purposes flooded in in a single day, in accordance with 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 find out about notable improvements in Xiaomi’s electrical automobiles. The guests then hop on a shuttle and go into three working manufacturing traces out of six whole to look at the employees and robots in motion.
Afterwards, they’ll take a look at experience a mannequin Xiaomi SU7 on a racecourse, the place a educated 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 reasonably priced meals on the manufacturing unit and souvenirs to finish the expertise.
One other customer notes that the shuttle will briefly cease if it will get in the best way 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 remembers that after the tour ended, her daughter remarked: “I would like to review tougher, in any other case I received’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 main instance of how Chinese language corporations are rapidly 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, which means the machines can toil away within the darkness with out anybody needing to show the lights on. Firms which have managed to attain this excessive degree of automation, from Foxconn to residence equipment giants, have turned their factories into advertising alternatives, inviting people to marvel on the know-how moderately than do work.
Nio, one other main EV maker in China, has been publicly showcasing one in every of its extremely automated factories since late 2023. In 2024, over 130,000 individuals visited the manufacturing unit, the place sure manufacturing traces just like the physique store have achieved one hundred pc automation, in accordance with 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 contributors had been capable of view three out of the 4 manufacturing traces. (The automotive portray course of, nevertheless, was excluded from public visits.)
