Xiaomi founder Lei Jun says he is inspired by Apple's Steve Jobs and ready to take on Elon Musk's Tesla in the EV market

Lei Jun, founder of Chinese smartphone brand Xiaomi, said he was ready to bring the company's first electric vehicle to the market, having spent over 10 billion yuan (US$1.4 billion) developing a prototype with a team of 3,400 engineers.

In an interview with China's state broadcaster aired on Sunday, the entrepreneur said he was inspired by Apple founder Steve Jobs. Lei also said he was confident that the debut vehicles, which cost 10 times the industry average to develop, would be competitive in a crowded market that includes Elon Musk's Tesla.

Lei said he was concerned about potentially lukewarm reception to Xiaomi's new cars, but he also worried that if demand proved to be high, the company's production capacity may be insufficient, leaving some buyers with wait times of one or two years.

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It remains to be seen whether Lei can repeat the success he has had in the smartphone market.

The billionaire founder launched Xiaomi in 2010 to a highly crowded market filled with established brands. Today, Xiaomi is the world's third-largest smartphone vendor by shipments, according to research firm IDC.

Lei said that as of early November, the Beijing company had sold more than a million units of the Xiaomi 14, its latest flagship phone released on October 26. For comparison, Apple shipped roughly 3 million iPhone 15 series devices in China within the month of launch, according to research firm Canalys.

Xiaomi has been trying to drum up excitement about its coming car models, the SU7 and SU7 Max. The 54-year-old entrepreneur grabbed local headlines last month after he donated 1.3 billion yuan to his alma mater Wuhan University.

Lei started a business venture in 1991 to develop a workplace software toolkit akin to Microsoft Office, before he dove into the smartphone industry. In 2021, Lei called Xiaomi's push into the electric car market "the last entrepreneurship of my life".

China's electric vehicle market is growing strongly. Total output of electric vehicles in the first 11 months increased 27.7 per cent from a year ago to 8.05 million vehicles, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, making China one of the world's top electric vehicle producers.

In November alone, China's new energy vehicle output rose by more than a third from a year ago to reach 1.01 million units, surpassing the one-million milestone, official data showed.

This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2023 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.

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