Smart driving is a key battleground for EVs, and Xiaomi's goal is to be in the top tier of the industry within 2024, the company's CEO Lei Jun said.

(Image credit: Xiaomi)

Xiaomi (HKG: 1810, OTCMKTS: XIACY) founder, chairman and CEO Lei Jun continues to warm up for the SU7, with the company's first electric vehicle (EV) model two days away from its official launch.

In his latest Weibo post today, Lei talked about Xiaomi's focus on smart driving capabilities, re-emphasizing that the goal is to become one of the strongest players in the space within this year.

"Smart driving, is the key battleground for smart electric vehicles," Lei wrote in his Weibo post.

Xiaomi has invested heavily in smart driving, with its R&D team now exceeding 1,000 people and expected to surpass 1,500 by the end of the year, he said.

Xiaomi's smart driving R&D team is equipped with dedicated test vehicles and has accumulated more than 10 million kilometers of road testing, Lei said.

The company conducts full-stack in-house research for smart driving technology, and its EV will come standard with high-level smart driving features including highway pilot assisted driving, one-touch valet parking and smart parking assistance that are available across the country, he said.

"Xiaomi's smart driving is probably among the fastest and most intensively progressed in the industry. Our goal is to enter the industry's top tier within 2024," Lei wrote.

Lei said Xiaomi has some more progress on smart driving, which he will present at the launch event in two days.

The text of his Weibo post doesn't mention much more, but the image shows that the driver assistance system for the Xiaomi SU7 will have two options -- Xiaomi Pilot Pro, and Xiaomi Pilot Max.

Xiaomi will officially launch the SU7 on Thursday, March 28, with the event set to begin at 7 pm Beijing Time. The model's show cars became available at 60 stores in China yesterday.

Xiaomi made the SU7 debut on December 28 at a tech launch event, where Lei said that Xiaomi hopes to become one of the top five global car makers in 15-20 years and is aiming to be one of the top-tier players in the smart driving space in 2024.

A latecomer to the EV industry, Xiaomi has expedited its R&D progress in the smart driving space through an acquisition.

On August 25, 2021, Xiaomi announced that it had acquired DeepMotion Tech Limited, an autonomous driving technology company, for a consideration of about $77.37 million.

Founded in July 2017, DeepMotion was seen as a company in the field of high-precision mapping and positioning technology, and several of its executives, including its co-founder, worked at Microsoft Research Asia.

Wang Xiang, then president and CFO of Xiaomi, said the acquisition would fuel Xiaomi's progress in smart cars, particularly in the area of smart driving technology. Wang retired on December 30, 2022.

In August 2022, Lei said Xiaomi would invest RMB 3.3 billion ($460 million) in research and development for the first phase of its self-driving program, when the proprietary team was already more than 500 people in size.

In addition to the proprietary team, several other teams, including Xiaomi's artificial intelligence lab, intelligent voice assistant Xiaoai, and mobile camera, are providing support to co-create the self-driving technology, Lei said at the time.

The first phase of Xiaomi's self-driving program was planned to put in 140 test cars, Lei said in August 2022.

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