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Cellphone maker Xiaomi Corp plans to invest around $ 10 billion over the next decade to make electric cars, embarking on its biggest ever investment to enter China’s burgeoning electric car market.
The company said in a statement to the stock exchange that billionaire co-founder Lee Jun will lead a new autonomous division that will initially invest 10 billion yuan ($ 1.5 billion) in the manufacture of smart cars.
The Chinese smartphone maker is joining tech giants after Apple and Huawei announced the breakthrough in the auto industry.
A person familiar with the matter said before the announcement that Xiaomi could invest a total of 100 billion yuan equivalent to $ 15.23 billion in the project over the next three years, including external funding. The person who asked not to be identified as the plans include said the company will contribute around 60% of the projected amount and plans to raise the rest of the funds, according to what Bloomberg said, and which was seen by Al-Arabiya. Report.
Xiaomi has become the latest company to announce its entry into the already crowded electric vehicle arena, as a host of automakers from Tesla to local start-ups such as Neo and Xpeng vie for a share of the bigger picture. global electric vehicle market. .
Chinese research giant Baidu is also planning to cooperate with Geely to build electric cars. It is estimated that sales of electric vehicles in China will increase by more than 50% this year alone.
While Xiaomi has announced that it will cooperate with external suppliers to assemble its electric car as it does on its smartphones, Reuters revealed last week that Great Wall was rejecting plans to cooperate with Xiaomi to manufacture its electric car.
Another person familiar with the matter said Lee conducted a review of the potential of the electric car industry several months ago and a final decision has been made to enter the arena in recent weeks. The person added that Xiaomi has already hired engineers to work on software to be included in its cars.
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