Xiaomi joins the ranks of Chinese tech giants to work on EVs

After weeks of rumors, Xiaomi officially confirmed that it is making a foray into the electric vehicle space. The Chinese smartphone and IoT giant will set up a wholly-owned subsidiary to operate a smart EV business, the company said in a filing on Tuesday.

Xiaomi will inject an initial 10 billion yuan ($1.52 billion) into the venture with the total investment amount to reach $10 billion over the next ten years. Xiaomi founder and CEO Lei Jun will serve as the CEO of the new EV venture.

It’s unclear from the filing whether Xiaomi will sell cars under its own household brand and contract manufacturers to take care of production, as it has done for most of its hardware devices. The company has long billed itself as an “internet firm” with a light-asset business model. The goal is to generate a chunk of its profits by selling services powering a myriad of price-friendly hardware products it sells.

A representative from Xiaomi said the company has no further detail to share beyond the filing.

Xiaomi is the latest Chinese tech company to enter the red-hot EV industry. Chinese search engine giant Baidu recently announced it would be making EVs with the help of automaker Geely.

More to come…



from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/39o4ZVB

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Microsoft says it has no plans to add more backward compatible titles for Xbox One, but says Project Scarlett will run games from all four Xbox generations (Tom Warren/The Verge)

Image
Tom Warren / The Verge : Microsoft says it has no plans to add more backward compatible titles for Xbox One, but says Project Scarlett will run games from all four Xbox generations   —  No more Xbox 360 and Xbox additions to the catalog  —  Microsoft is winding down new additions to its Xbox backward compatibility catalog. from Techmeme http://bit.ly/2Iw9XkX
Read more

Internal docs: Facebook employees created a test account in 2019 and within days, it was recommended extreme and conspiratorial content, including QAnon Groups (Brandy Zadrozny/NBC News)

Image
Brandy Zadrozny / NBC News : Internal docs: Facebook employees created a test account in 2019 and within days, it was recommended extreme and conspiratorial content, including QAnon Groups   —  In the summer of 2019, a new Facebook user named Carol Smith signed up for the platform, describing herself as a politically conservative mother … from Techmeme https://ift.tt/3b2bRZh
Read more

Local officials, educators, and advocacy groups are frustrated by refusal of ISPs to provide data on how many customers they signed up via low income programs (Cyrus Farivar/NBC News)

Image
Cyrus Farivar / NBC News : Local officials, educators, and advocacy groups are frustrated by refusal of ISPs to provide data on how many customers they signed up via low income programs   —  Months into the school year, the one thing many families have learned is how much they rely on a functioning internet connection to access remote classrooms. from Techmeme https://ift.tt/32sgVSS
Read more