Last year, Xiaomi officially announced its entry into the electric vehicle segment. The company also promised to invest $10 billion towards the development of a new EV card brand. Now Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun confirmed big development progress. The company has announced Xiaomi Pilot Technology, which is Xiaomi’s in-house developed autonomous driving solution.
Xiaomi has also promised to invest RMB 3.3 billion ($490 million) in this new technology and create a team of 500 professionals in its R&D team. The company has also completed several acquisitions and strategic investments to ensure its technology is going on the right track. One of the notable acquisitions was Shendong Technology, an autonomous driving start-up. This acquisition gave Xiaomi access to already developed technology and a team of expert engineers.
Xiaomi also shared a demo video of its Pilot Technology. The video displays a live test video of Xiaomi’s self-driving technology. This technology has been completely built by Xiaomi engineers.
Xiaomi is also working on autonomous valet parking and automatic robotic arm charging. So, it will be really interesting to see how Xiaomi manages to compete against big rivals such as Tesla.
In the first phase, Xiaomi will create a fleet of 140 test vehicles and aims to become the industry leader in 2024. I am not sure how Xiaomi could aim to be the industry leader in the EV segment in less than years when the company is still in the early stage of development.
