Xiaomi recently announced that the company is set to mass produce its first car in 2024, two years earlier than anticipated, the Times of India reported. Earlier last year, Xiaomi established the EV (Electric Vehicle) unit and revealed its plan to set up a plant in China. Upon the completion, the plant is anticipated to churn out 300,000 EVs annually. Xiaomi plans to invest close to US$10 billion on its EV business in the next 10 years, 10 billion RMB (US$1.6 billion) of which will be allocated for R&D. In Last August, the company acquired Deepmotion Tech, a Beijing-based startup that develops digital mapping technology for autonomous vehicles, for S$77.37 million. Thus far, the company has recruited a batch of 1,000 experts after kicking off its EV project in March last year.
Sales of global EVs accounted for over 10% of the global auto industry for the first time in 2021. Sales of global EVs are estimated to grow from 11 million units in 2020 to 145 million-230 million units by 2030 and the CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) over the period is 30%, according to MIC (Market Intelligence & Consulting Institute), a major government think tank and IT research institute in Taiwan.