- Carwow’s Mat Watson reviewed the Xiaomi SU7 Ultra in Europe and came away impressed.
- The SU7 Ultra is the world’s quickest EV around the Nurburgring, beating the Tesla Model S and the fastest variant of the Porsche Taycan.
- It offers remarkable performance and equipment levels given its price tag in China.
The Xiaomi SU7 isn’t on sale in Europe yet, but it’s eventually going to become available here—and maybe someday in the United States too. It’s the car that Ford’s CEO didn’t want to give up driving after driving it for six months, calling it “fantastic.”
Carwow’s Mat Watson got his hands on the top-of-the-line Ultra variant in the UK and was blown away by how much performance and quality it delivers for the price. In China, the SU7 Ultra costs 529,900 yuan or just under $75,000—about half the price of a base Porsche Taycan in the country.
Even if the SU7 Ultra hits Europe with a price tag of around $100,000, it will still be a strong value proposition that will undercut all rivals with similar levels of performance.
Watson was impressed by the SU7 Ultra’s high-quality interior, which packs plenty of carbon fiber and Alcantara. He highlighted the super responsive touchscreen, adding that most cars from China have high-powered processors and great tech as a result.
“Look at the cameras. Look at the definition of the cameras,” says in the video. Indeed, the image does look excellent.
The lights on the vanity mirror, he points out, can be adjusted for both brightness and tone. The Xiaomi badge up front is made of carbon fiber and 24-carat gold. At the end of the day, Watson says Xiaomi SU7’s value proposition is exceptional.
“Value for money-wise, you cannot fault it—how it looks, how it drives, how it’s built,” Watson says in the video. “This is my favorite car from China so far.”
That’s because for the money, you get a lot of stuff. The tri-motor powertrain with 1,526 hp features motors that can spin up to 27,200 rpm, which is more than most other electric motors in production vehicles. Its whiplash-inducing 1,305 lb-ft of torque pins you to your seat violently, although Watson says the power delivery is “nicely tuned” to be somewhat more gradual than in other EVs, like the Tesla Model S Plaid.
“It’s just berserk,” he says of the acceleration, while pinning it on the highway.
The SU7 Ultra has a claimed acceleration time to 62 mph of 1.98 seconds, which reviewers, including Watson in this video, struggle to come close to. But it keeps accelerating all the way to 217 mph and there’s no noticeable slowdown in acceleration at higher speeds.
Watson says the Xiaomi’s “stable and predictable” steering is the best he’s ever experienced in a Chinese car.
He does have a few gripes, though. The Ultra’s brakes are a bit squeaky and bite unexpectedly hard when the friction brakes take over from the regenerative system. Its rear-view camera gets dirty and doesn’t have a spray nozzle to wash it. It feels a lot like a Taycan in general, he says, but it doesn’t handle quite as confidently.
Overall, it’s clear that the Xiaomi SU7 is a lot of car for the money and it has upset the balance of power among top-tier performance EVs. In part, that’s because Xiaomi doesn’t skimp on equipment. It comes with standard air suspension, ceramic brake rotors and pretty much everything you could want from a performance EV. If you configured a Taycan to a similar level, it would cost close to three times more, and it still wouldn’t match its straight-line pace.
It’s currently the quickest EV around the Nurburgring and this achievement is likely what prompted Porsche to create an even more extreme version of the Taycan, with which it hopes to regain the ‘Ring EV lap record.
While it can handle track driving just fine—they explain the different driving modes and their respective power outputs in the video—it’s also a good road car that has clearly had a lot of engineering know-how poured into it. Even if it was Xiaomi’s first-ever car and a very ambitious project, it looks like the tech giant mostly nailed it on the first try, making automakers on all continents take notice. Its second act, the YU7 crossover, is also very good, we’ve found in our own testing.
Who would have thought that a tech company with no prior car-making experience would challenge seemingly Porsche overnight?
