Chinese Phone Company Just Humiliated Every Supercar on Earth
Image Credit: Xiaomi.
Right. I need you to sit down for this one. Pour yourself something strong. Are you comfortable? Good. A company primarily known for making smartphones, those little slabs of glass and metal we use to watch cat videos and argue with strangers, has just built a car. Not just any car. They've built the fastest-production sedan the world has ever seen. No, you didn't misread that. And no, I haven't been sampling the jet fuel again.
The car in question is the Xiaomi SU7 Ultra. And it has just waltzed over to Germany's most terrifying stretch of tarmac, the Nürburgring Nordschleife, and casually set it on fire. It lapped the legendary "Green Hell" in 7 minutes and 4.957 seconds. To put that into perspective, that's faster than a $2 million Rimac Nevera. It's faster than the pride of Stuttgart, the Porsche Taycan Turbo GT. It makes the Tesla Model S Plaid, once the electric bogeyman, look like it's stuck on a dial-up connection.
Image Credit: Xiaomi.
For decades, we've been told that ultimate speed requires Italian passion, German precision, or British eccentricity. It apparently came with a price tag that resembled the national debt of a small country. Ferrari, Lamborghini, McLaren, Pagani – these were the gods of the speed Olympus. It seems a tech giant from Beijing has just stormed the mountain, kicked Zeus in the shins, and stolen all the lightning. There's no other way to put it - this isn't just a new chapter; it's a completely different book, written in a language the old guard like myself may not entirely understand.
So what sort of witchcraft is powering this four-door family-hauler-turned-hypercar-slayer? It all comes down to a trio of electric motors that Xiaomi, in a brilliant flash of marketing genius, has called the "Super Motor V8s." These little dynamos spin at a dizzying 27,200 rpm, and the result is a frankly ludicrous 1,548 horsepower. In a sedan. A family car made in China by a company that, until yesterday, was making those annoying robo-hoovers that seem to have a fetish for chasing my cats around the house.
Image Credit: Xiaomi.
That colossal power figure translates to some truly face-melting acceleration. The sprint from 0 to 62 mph is dispatched in 1.98 seconds, borderlining on teleportation. It's the kind of acceleration that will make you question the structural integrity of your own skeleton. Keep your foot planted, and it won't stop pulling until it hits a designed top speed of 217 mph. These aren't just good numbers for an electric car; these are ridiculous numbers for any four-door production car on the planet.
And if you think they just built a one-trick pony for a single glorious lap of the 'Ring, that would be a fair bit of skepticism, and I like it. But you'd be wrong. Before it even booked its flight to Germany, the SU7 Ultra had already been on a victory tour of China's top circuits, setting production car records at the Chengdu Tianfu, Zhuzhou, Zhuhai, and Zhejiang International Circuits. This car isn't a fluke; the Chinese came to take our lunch, dinner, and everything else in between.
Xiaomi SU7 Ultra Prototype set Nürburgring record in October 2024. Image Credit: Xiaomi.
And just to rub salt, lemon juice, and possibly some ghost pepper extract into the wounds of the establishment, Xiaomi's stripped-out and track-ready prototype version of this car clocked a Nürburgring lap of 6 minutes and 46.874 seconds last year. That time didn't just beat other sedans; it shattered a seven-year record held by the most elite European and American brands, making it the fastest four-door vehicle, prototype or otherwise, to ever lap the track. Painfully, it was just over 5 seconds quicker than the glorious Ford Mustang GTD. They showed us the trailer, and now the main feature film is living up to the hype.
Here comes the punchline. Here's the bit that turns this whole story from impressive to utterly unbelievable. How much for this record-breaking, supercar-humiliating piece of engineering? Are you expecting a price that requires you to sell a kidney and a lung? Nope. The starting price for the Xiaomi SU7 Ultra is around $75,000. For the price of a nicely optioned BMW 5-Series, you can own a car that will embarrass vehicles that cost twenty or thirty times as much.
This is a seismic shift in the automotive world. For years, we've watched the electric revolution brew, with many traditionalists scoffing. But this feels different. This is a disruptive tech company doing what disruptive tech companies do best: entering an established field, ignoring the rules, and changing the game completely. The CEO, Lei Jun, has already said they plan to stick around the Nürburgring, aiming to get even faster. It's wonderfully, terrifyingly ambitious.
Of course, the big question remains: Is it a good car? Can a phone company build a vehicle with the soul, the comfort, and the reliability we expect? Or is it just a missile with four doors and a Bluetooth connection? I don't know yet. But honestly, for $75,000 and the eternal bragging rights of owning the fastest sedan on Earth, I'm willing to bet a lot of people in China are ready to find out. For the rest of us, we'll soon be able to drive it in Gran Turismo 7, which is probably safer for our driver's licenses anyway.
