Xiaomi SU7 Ultra smashes Taycan GT 'ring time
Chinese firm needed a Prodrive-fettled prototype to set an astonishing 6mins 46.874 lap. But it'll be back
If the Chinese carmaker Xiaomi hasn’t made much of an impression on you yet, don’t worry - the Nordschleife lap time it set yesterday is all part of its plan to change that. And Xiaomi is nothing if not a maker of plans. The Wikipedia page devoted to its list of products makes the summation of the Hundred Years’ War look like a Christmas card. But all you need to really know (if you don’t already) is that despite only getting started in 2010, the wider corporation is the second-largest maker of smartphones in the world and a global giant in consumer electronics. And now it’s making cars.
Its automotive division, Xiaomi Auto, established in 2021, announced its battery-powered SU7 saloon - a Porsche Taycan rival with up to 673hp - last December, and started selling it in March of this year. Clearly, though, this is not the sort of company that pauses to pat itself on the back for getting a product to market in the equivalent of a nanosecond, so it has followed it up with something called the SU7 Ultra - reportedly the first recipient of Xiaomi’s new HyperEngine V8S electric motor, which, doubled up on the rear axle, contributes the lion's share of the car's 1,548hp output. And to make its intentions crystal clear, it also took it upon itself to (sort of) break the four-door lap record at Porsche's preferred proving ground.
Now, there are a number of provisos to its 6mins 46.874 lap time. Yes, it is official in the sense that it was overseen by the Nurburgring itself, but the custom-made prototype version - first shown back in June - is very much built with very fast lap times in mind. As evidenced not just by the total absence of anything resembling an interior, but also the all-carbon body that has helped it to achieve a 1,900kg kerbweight despite the enlivening presence of a 1,330kw battery output. So while the Ultra finished inside the 7mins 07.55 set in March by the Taycan Turbo GT by an eye-popping amount, this has more than a little something to do with the 2,145kg of claimed downforce that the production version definitely isn’t going to reproduce.
Nevertheless, it’s worth a watch because a) the silliness of its acceleration (0-124mph is claimed to take just 5.86 seconds) is something to behold, and b) the company plans to start selling the Ultra in China before the end of the year. So the work required to get it to that stage is already very much in hand, with some of it handed to Prodrive, the firm being responsible for developing a chassis that now sports Bilstein dampers and an AP Racing braking system. Its involvement probably accounts for British racing driver David Pittard’s place behind the wheel of the prototype - congratulations to him for seven minutes of what looks like exceptionally hard work. And of course there’s more to come: Xiaomi confirmed that the second phase of its plan is to target production lap records next year. By which time you’ll probably remember the name.
For those thinking about getting one.
1) Under-braked for a car with performance marketed as a selling point
2) Air bags failed to deploy
3) Chair broke in the crash.
At those speeds the performance over a Taycan is massive.
Retailing at 50% of the price of a Taycan Turbo GT with Weissach Package which is bonkers.
That Youtube video is funny complaining about under engineered brakes. It’s cooked fluid and pads gone on their daily driver model same as any production car would be expected. Seat going is weird, though wasn’t the Civic Type R recalled for bad welding on seats and Porsche 911 for dodgey seatbelts so matches with traditional manufacturers at least.
Hopefully comes to the U.K with a 5 star NCAP rating and bring a great shake up to the market and force some price reductions from legacy manufacturers to compete.
These are early days for Chinese cars in Western markets so my view is to have a conversation in ten years time and see how much of the global market had been captured by China.
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