Xiaomi has spent two years proving it can sell electric cars faster than it can build them — in China. On August 26 the company quietly took its first concrete step beyond its home market, launching an international website at xiaomiauto.com and a set of overseas social media accounts under the “Xiaomi Auto” brand, ahead of a planned European market entry in 2027.
A storefront before the store
The new site is a shop window rather than a shop: it showcases the SU7 sedan, the track-focused SU7 Ultra, the YU7 GT crossover, the Sky Nomad, and the Vision Gran Turismo concept, but offers no country-specific sales plans, no pricing, and no way to actually order a car. What it does include is telling — a portal inviting dealers and distribution partners to submit inquiries, the clearest signal yet that Xiaomi is assembling a retail network rather than betting on a direct-sales-only model abroad.
Europe is confirmed as the first overseas destination. Xiaomi EV president William Lu has said the company will formally begin its automotive overseas expansion in the third or fourth quarter of 2027, and the company’s stated playbook is deliberate: developed markets before developing ones, the mid-to-high-end segment first, and right-hand-drive markets prioritized ahead of left-hand-drive ones. The groundwork in Europe is already visible — Munich hosts one of Xiaomi’s five global R&D centers, alongside Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, and Wuhan.
The numbers behind the ambition
The expansion push comes at an interesting moment for Xiaomi’s domestic business. The company delivered 31,267 vehicles in China in July 2026 — up 2.7 percent year over year, but down about 10 percent from June. First-half deliveries totaled 216,322 units, which puts Xiaomi at 39 percent of its ambitious 550,000-unit target for the year with six months on the clock. And the car division is still buying growth: the EV and AI business posted an operational loss of 2.6 billion yuan, roughly $383 million, in the second quarter.
None of that dims the strategic logic. Xiaomi’s phones and smart-home gear already have massive brand recognition in Europe, a distribution and service footprint most Chinese EV newcomers can only envy, and a Munich R&D operation that has been tuning cars — including the Nürburgring-lapping SU7 Ultra — on European roads for years.
What it means
A holding-page website with no prices might seem like thin news, but this is how Chinese EV export campaigns start: brand first, dealers second, cars last. By opening a distributor portal eighteen months before its stated launch window, Xiaomi is effectively holding auditions for a European retail network right now — and doing it while EU tariffs on China-built EVs remain a moving target. The company that turned smartphone hype cycles into an art form is about to run the same playbook against Volkswagen, Tesla, and BYD on their most contested turf. European buyers won’t see a Xiaomi showroom until 2027, but the land grab has already begun.
Giant Fleet 
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