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Xiaomi launched its first EV mannequin, the SU7, in early 2024. By the tip of the yr, international diplomats, traders, and company from different Chinese language firms had already began arriving on the firm’s manufacturing facility in Beijing to take part in one-off excursions, however the firm didn’t create a standardized expertise for the general public till the beginning of 2025. At first, Xiaomi supplied simply three excursions with 20 contributors every per 30 days.
However the tour proved extremely in style, and Xiaomi rapidly started scheduling considerably extra slots. In July, the corporate mentioned it can supply one tour each weekday and 6 excursions most weekends, accommodating greater than 1,100 guests in complete. When July registration opened, nevertheless, over 27,000 purposes flooded in in a single day, in response to the Xiaomi app—so the probabilities of snagging a ticket stay slim.
These fortunate sufficient to safe a spot can anticipate to first be taken to an exhibit corridor to find out about notable improvements in Xiaomi’s electrical automobiles. The guests then hop on a shuttle and go into three working manufacturing strains out of six complete to look at the employees and robots in motion.
Afterwards, they’ll take a look at experience a mannequin Xiaomi SU7 on a racecourse, the place a skilled racecar driver demonstrates how the automobile can speed up from 0 to 60 mph in just some seconds. “It felt superior—takes off actually quick, with an instantaneous kick,” Zhao tells WIRED. Just lately, Xiaomi additionally began promoting reasonably priced meals on the manufacturing facility and souvenirs to finish the expertise.
One other customer notes that the shuttle will briefly cease if it will get in the way in which of a robotic, which is programmed to do its job on a strictly timed schedule and is thus much less versatile than a human employee. Yuanyuan recollects that after the tour ended, her daughter remarked: “I would like to check tougher, in any other case I received’t be capable of discover a job sooner or later. It’ll be robots doing all of the work.”
Xiaomi’s manufacturing facility is a chief instance of how Chinese language firms are rapidly evolving from labor-intensive manufacturing to extremely automated manufacturing, because of new developments in robotics and synthetic intelligence. Lately, the Chinese language authorities has been closely selling the thought of “lights-out factories” that require no human labor, that means the machines can toil away within the darkness with out anybody needing to show the lights on. Firms which have managed to realize this excessive stage of automation, from Foxconn to house equipment giants, have turned their factories into advertising and marketing alternatives, inviting people to marvel on the expertise fairly than do work.
Nio, one other main EV maker in China, has been publicly showcasing certainly one of its extremely automated factories since late 2023. In 2024, over 130,000 individuals visited the manufacturing facility, the place sure manufacturing strains just like the physique store have achieved 100% automation, in response to a press release despatched by the corporate. Zhang says when her newest tour group visited Nio’s manufacturing facility within the metropolis of Hefei final month, the contributors had been in a position to view three out of the 4 manufacturing strains. (The automobile portray course of, nevertheless, was excluded from public visits.)
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