The Xiaomi SU7 Is a Bargain Chinese Luxury Sport Sedan

this is the xiaomi su7 the Su stands for Speed Ultra and it's a Chinese electric luxury sedan with amazing acceleration in performance consider it a budget pric Chinese rival to the Porsche tyon and Tesla Model S this car is not for sale in the United States it's not going to be for sale in the United States and yet here I am reviewing it bringing you the cirks and features of the sh [Applause] su7 today's video is sponsored by cars and bids which is my online car auction website for modern Enthusiast cars so far cars and

bids has sold almost $500 million worth of cars all sorts of special and cool stuff like this and this and this and this if you're looking to sell your Enthusiast car reach a vast audience at carsand bids.com all right time for the cirks and features of the xiaomi su7 although the Chinese people who brought me this car they say xiaomi sue7 instead of su7 you can say whatever you want more importantly you're probably wondering what is this car and why should I care about it so this is a Chinese market performance perance luxury sedan a

few interesting things for one a couple of years ago xiaomi was making cell phones and not cars they didn't have a single automobile in their product lineup at all and then in 22 they were like let's develop a car and now like two and a half years later here it is it exists and more interestingly a couple of months ago I read an interview with the CEO of Ford Jim Farley and he said that he's been driving one of these around Detroit as his personal vehicle just to check out what's going on in other markets

with the competition so I figured that's interesting I want to check it out too and so here it is okay so the basics and we'll start with size in terms of overall length this is very comparable to a Tesla Model S or a Porsche tyon in fact it's sized right in between those vehicles and within an inch of either one so that gives you an idea of how big it is now there are three versions of the SU 2 7 the base model rear wheeel drive has about 300 horsepower the midlevel trim has about 665

horsepower and all-wheel drive and then there's an ultra version which has about 1,500 horsepower obviously an absolutely insane number now this is the midlevel version which strangely enough is called the max indeed it is not Max it is mid but 665 horsepower is nothing to scoff at that's still a really serious figure now amazingly despite this car's size and its performance level it's priced more like a model 3 than a Model S xiaomi sells this in China for the equivalent of around4 to $45,000 but again that's based on Chinese pricing and there are no plans

to sell this car here with import costs and regulations and tariffs who knows what it would sell for in the States but it seems like a pretty good value as far as range figure 400 to 500 Mi curb weight is a little over 6,000 lb and acceleration this does 0 to 60 in 2.8 seconds while the ultra version does it in under two seconds in fact a prototype version of the sue7 ultra just set the alltime lap record at the nurburg ring for a four-door vehicle so this is fast so let's talk through quirks and

features starting with the exterior St styling of this car which frankly I think looks really nice that's especially true in comparison to the Tesla Model 3 which is sort of bland and dull and familiar this looks more aggressive more exciting more emotional it certainly is a nicer more impressive looking car than a model 3 which I guess would be a close competitor with that said one interesting design touch the radar sensors for all the driver Assist Technology in this car mounted right here at the top of the windshield that gives it sort of a taxi

cab look if you look at that and notice it looks like a taxi light which frankly isn't really all that great the black tint on the outside of this car kind of hides it but if you do notice it it's not particularly attractive now one other interesting thing about this car despite its teardrop shape unlike most other EVS with a similar shape this is not a hatchback instead it's a four-door sedan with a trunk you open up the trunk you can see it's just a trunk no hatchback and the trunk itself is not particularly interesting

or quirky or exciting but normal sized for a vehicle like this and since we're opening stuff how about the charge port door you go over to the rear driver side of the car there's a little place where you put your finger you tap on it the charge port door automatically pops open which is kind of a cool Quirk now also on the outside of this car one thing you'll notice is fairly dark tint this is factory tint apparently legal in China might be legal here in the states too the darkness of it but they're especially

bragging about how much light The Tint filters in fact they're bragging on the outside of the car this top icon shows that it blocks 99% of UV light coming into the car and the lower icon talks about how much heat is blocked by the tint on this car interestingly those icons are displayed on all sue7 models to show just how much work the tint is doing in case you were forgetting also worth pointing out on the outside the lighting I like the lighting in back you have this sort of dual row light bar that goes

across the whole car and makes kind of an oval shape it looks cool certainly distinctive and also when you put on the turn signal you can see this sweeping turn signal that sort of sweeps in the direction you're planning on turning you can see that in the back and also in the front you have a sweeping front turn signal as well that certainly looks cool and exciting just like the color combination of this car itself you can see this car is turquoise on the outside with a red interior which isn't the type of color combination

you normally see in fact this reminds me of the very famous Volvo s60r color combination flash green with the atakama orange interior these are two colors turquoise and red that you don't normally see next to each other in a car but here they are in this one turquoise over red certainly very interesting and so now since we're talking interior let's go inside and see all the quirks in there ah yes sitting inside the xiaomi sue7 that's not something I was expecting but actually I joke about it but this is a pretty nice interior I'm surprised

just how nice it is inside this car considering the price point 44 to $45,000 equivalent in the Chinese market this is a nice interior nice materials high quality surprising they were able to deliver an interior that looks like this for the price in fact I just had old felipo sit inside the car I asked him what he thought this cost and he said around $70,000 which frankly I would probably guess too given the performance level size and interior quality of this car it seems like a pretty impressive value especially compared to the model 3 you

certainly have a higher quality nicer interior in here and you have some rather unusual quirks for example you climb inside and you will notice that the gauge cluster screen shows an image of the side profile of the su7 but once you put your foot on the brake to start the car that panel flips up and out of place and reveals a screen a gauge cluster screen that shows you all the information you'd want while you're driving along when you stop the car and turn it off again you put it in park and get out the

screen again goes away flips down to once again reveal the side profile of the car which is always there when the car is off and resting next up how about these silver circles on the dashboard what exactly is that apparently they are mounts for GoPros that little silver dial you can buy a mount and stick a GoPro on there and then film while you're driving along in your sue7 which is certainly interesting for a luxury sedan also interesting the sun visors open them up and you can see giant sun visor mirrors if you want to

look at yourself and everybody behind you and all around these are the sun visor mirrors you want they are really really massive so you can really really see stuff and if you want to get out of the Sue 7 interestingly you don't have traditional door handles that you pull and open up instead these doors are electronically popped so you push this button here and the door pops open and then you can open it up the rest of the way another interesting Quirk inside this car is the storage capacity which is absolutely gigantic you have a

glove box in the usual spot in the dashboard like you'd expect and you have another one in the center armrest like you'd expect but below the center console there's additional storage and there's more storage Cubbies kind of hidden in the front and rear Parts below the center console so if you want to use this car to hide stuff you certainly could because it would be hard to know those compartments are even there if you were performing a search of the S7 for example now speaking of hiding stuff it's also worth pointing out this car has

no visible climate vents you can't see them anywhere no big vents that you can move around like most other cars they've hidden them within kind of the folds of the dashboard and so they're not visible and they don't take up space or visual space when you're looking here it looks sort of minimalist and on the subject of hidden stuff take a look at the headrest in the front seats and apparently hidden in there is a speaker but only for the navigation system so the driver cruising along listening to the directions you don't have to like

mute the rest of the speakers the navigation voice can just come into the driver's ear and tell where to go next which is pretty cool and speaking of sound in this car I'm told that the voice control system in here is area based so if for example the rear passenger in back says like roll down the window the car will know based on where that command came from to roll down the rear window on the side whatever side they're sitting on which is a pretty neat feature as is this check this out this car has

a giant screen in the center that controls basically everything I'll show it to you in Greater detail in a second but for people who don't love giant screens in cars that controls everything xiaomi offers an accessory a physical control panel that mounts on the bottom of this screen and plugs in as an attachment that has physical controls where you can also change the vehicle settings and what's on the screen it even has a physical volume knob so if you don't want to have to use the screen to do everything in this car this accessory can

mount to the bottom of the screen so you can use physical controls it's actually a pretty cool idea for people who say they hate the screens that do everything here's an option to have both now on the subject of physical controls in this car like most Chinese vehicles this is basically all screen but there are some physical controls and the most important ones are here in the center console you can see at the top you have the start stop button of course you know what that that does starts up the car so you can drive

it now below that you have temperature that's climate control temperature and below that is fan speed so your two most frequently changed climate control items are right here the rest you got to go into the screen below that this little switch will raise the rear spoiler in case you want to go into flexing mode and below that this switch will raise the car this has air suspension and so you can raise the car up if you're on some rutted or rough road and you're afraid that it might scrape or raise it up with that switch

the center Beyond those switches though pretty much everything is controlled through the touchscreen now this Giant Center touchscreen is primarily in Chinese so I don't understand a lot of it and I can't show you a lot of what it does but it works well it's tremendously responsive to your touch it basically does exactly what you'd expect all the time it's quite intuitive at least for the parts that I can understand and the camera system mounted within this screen is really excellent high quality cameras that show you pretty much exactly what's going on all throughout the

outside of this car now beyond the Giant Center screen that does everything you also have a gauge cluster screen mounted directly behind the steering wheel like I showed you before that gives you kind of the basics it tells you like how much charge you have left what gear you're in sort of the simple easy stuff you might want to see mounted directly below your eyesight line while you're driving along now as for the steering wheel itself it has a few additional basic controls on it you can see like dials to adjust the the volume and

to change various menus on the center screen and you have your drive mode selector here it's a dial coming off the center of the steering wheel and you can just move it left or right to go from like sport mode to Sport Plus to comfort to more efficient modes all your drive mode selected through there coming off the other side of the center of the steering wheel you press this button and it allows you to make adjustments to the settings for your driver AIDS exactly how sensitive they are how quickly they come on or if

you want to turn them off entirely and next up we get into the back of the sue7 and you have decent space back here good leg room and knee room and head room it's not huge back here especially given the overall size of this car similar to Tesla Model S it doesn't quite feel that big in back but there's decent space for adults back here and it's totally fine and reasonable amazingly you have a refrigerator in the back seat of this car this panel that opens up in the back of the center console slides out

and reveals a refrigerator that you can have running to keep your stuff cool while you're driving along in your S7 there's something you you don't have in your Tesla Model 3 now interestingly the result of the refrigerator is you don't really have a lot of storage in the back of this car in fact they've even eliminated the storage pockets on the backs of the front seats so you don't have any storage there and you don't have any storage in the center unless you want to put it in the refrigerator to keep it cool but to

address that xiaomi has provided a rather interesting storage solution in the back seat of this car there for extra storage compartments under the seat under the seat bottom you can see it here one on the passenger side and one more over on the driver side these are surprisingly large and they do have decent storage capability in a place where you normally wouldn't expect to see storage in the back seat of a car and additionally going back to the back of the front seat bags you have a little panel back here that slides down to reveal

a slot where you can mount an iPad or a tablet for Backseat passengers to stay entertained there's little accessory Mount that can go in here Mount the tablet and then your rear passengers can watch while you drive along you also have charge ports back here on the back of the front center consoles you can see and you have climate vents back here which also adds to the comfort and convenience of rear passengers of course you also have a fold down armrest in the back you can put it down to add to your comfort and it

includes cup holders which is obviously nice to have in back one interesting drawback of this card has a giant window over the entire passenger compartment that you can use to see out except the tint that I mentioned earlier they're so proud of their tint but that means that it kind of darkens this whole window and it kind of diminishes the whole experience even though there's a big window above you you can't really see out all that well because it's so dark on top it's actually a little bit claustrophobic despite having a giant massive glass panel

above the passenger compartment and finally I already showed you the trunk the storage compartment in back but this car also has a surprisingly large front storage compartment to access it you go into the center screen and you tap the sort of front trunk opener icon and it unlatches it you come around and open it up and you can see it really is decent storage space up front where you can put a decent amount of stuff a lot more front trunk space than I see in most electric vehicles up here you also have a plaque that

brags about this car's accomplishments 495 Kow that translates to roughly 665 horsepower like I mentioned earlier 838 Newton met of torque translates to about 615 lb feet and then you have 21,000 RPM the electric motor spinning apparently that's impressive and then of course the side profile design of the Sous 7 that's what's under the front trunk but you're probably wondering how does this drive this Chinese made Ultra powerful the sue7 max what's it like on the road let's find out all right driving the xiaomi su7 which is not something I thought I would be saying

really obviously this car is not sold in the states haven't ever seen one until this morning and here I am behind the wheel it's definitely an interesting experience my first impression on this car is that it's nicely put together honestly the interior is pretty good and the quality feels nice I think there's a perception uh among a a lot of Americans that Chinese products are inferior quality Etc just based on you know years of buying cheap stuff on Amazon made in China Etc but the vehicles they've taken huge strides in their Auto industry in China

and the vehicles are now quite competitive and impressive at least from a styling standpoint technology standpoint and like M materials and build quality now the question is you know does it drive competitive compared to other EVS that are on sale here in the states let's find out out the ride quality is pretty good and that's even true as I go into sort of the more sporty Drive modes it's not all that harsh it it it feels good it feels compliant and comfortable on the road um like I would expect from a luxury car although it's

worth pointing out at the price point where this car is it's not really deep into luxury territory it's actually a fairly affordable and reasonable car I'm going to try the boost mode here we go that's fast not surprising I mean that's what you expect from electric vehicles these days with a lot of power you know that was a crazy party trick three years ago these days a lot of EVS have it uh this car gets a little squirly when you get going that fast well it's worth pointing out this particular one is on allseason tires

so it probably doesn't have quite the best level of grip that you might expect but it's still pretty good and it's really fast it definitely will kick you back in your seat just like you'd expect from a model 3 Performance or sort of similar electric cars now one thing I'll say that I did notice driving this car around is that when you get up to higher speeds the steering which is very precise at lower speeds um retains that precision and as such it makes the car feel a little bit Twitchy at higher speeds when you

get going pretty quickly and and you steer it does respond very quickly it's generally nice to have but it's not quite as linear of a steering response it's actually surprisingly quick to respond and when you're going faster that's could potentially cause a little bit of an issue or at least surprise you um at higher speeds not really the ideal situation although it's worth pointing out as we know the ultra version this car has this amazing nurburg ring lap time so the steering and handling is pretty dialed in I think you would get used to that

and and get used to expecting it but as someone who's kind of more used to sort of a lazier steering steering field as you get going faster this car doesn't necessarily have that it certainly is maybe one would call it maybe a little bit Twitchy as you're as you're going fast now with that said on the subject of Driving Experience and steering they've done a pretty good job of neutralizing the weight of this car when it comes to handling um this car like other EVS is pretty heavy uh and yet it does doesn't really feel

like that when you're kind of pushing it around corners it actually feels surprisingly Dynamic and quick part of that is the quick steering which I was just complaining about it's actually a benefit in terms of you know feeling like it's Dynamic and quickly tossable it's also worth pointing out this car is relatively quiet with the windows up it feels almost kind of like luxury car quiet you don't really hear much that's going on around you which is nice um you don't really hear much in terms of tire noise or feel dramatically much and when you

switch into more of a comfort-based drive mode then you can really the ride really kind of be becomes more compliant you lose some of the EV sound that happens when you accelerate the car is just a little bit more cushy and comfortable and frankly nice to be behind the wheel for like a daily driving type situation overall this is a pretty impressive car as far as you know sedans go and especially sedans at the price point where they claim to be selling it like this is a pretty good overall vehicle I think it checks a

lot of boxes it's fast it looks cool the texts good it's fun it has some cool quirks the question I think is you know again do American buyers are American buyers ready to accept sort of a Chinese vehicle and I think that's that's a harder one right regardless of quality new brands and especially Chinese Brands is a little bit of a not sure we're going to go there thing but Korean car companies showed up you know 10 20 years ago 20 30 years ago now and had significant success by making great products and so you

can imagine how it could happen um if the Chinese did decide to sell cars here there's a in the Tariff environment they might have to build them here but nonetheless if they did that the cars could be successful and this is a surprisingly excellent car and surprisingly competitive with other EVS that we've become acclimated to the Chinese certainly aren't behind and this car definitely proves that and so that's the xiaomi su7 I got to be honest this was better than I was expecting with some attractive styling nice technology and a surprisingly good Driving Experience I'm

not sure if us buyers would really be interested in Chinese cars but if they were this one is certainly competitive with other EVS that are already on sale here in the United States and now it's time to give the su7 a Doug score and the Doug score is here 69 out of 100 which puts the sue7 shockingly high among electric sedans losing out only to the tyon turbos s and the Lucid air which cost a lot more than the sue7 truth be told the sue7 isn't a standout in any big area until you factor in

the price then it becomes amazing it offers excellent technology styling and performance for a shockingly affordable number this won't be sold in the US due to tariffs on Chinese cars but you do have to wonder if the Chinese can make a car like this at this price point why can't it be done in North [Applause] [Music] America for