The Auto Focus channel spent a few weeks living with the Xiaomi SU7 Max, the electric sedan from the company better known for phones and home appliances. The thesis: strip the badge off, ask anyone what it costs, and nobody guesses right. It retails in China around $40k to $45k but feels like a $70k to $75k car, maybe more. Two angles run through the review: Chinese EVs would dominate if they reached the US, and this is the closest thing yet to an "Apple car" because of how tightly Xiaomi's phone, accessories, and software fold into the vehicle.
What the car is
The review unit is the SU7 Max, the dual-motor all-wheel-drive trim. There's a base SU7 below it and an SU7 Ultra above it. Core hardware:
| Battery | ~100 kWh pack under the floor |
| Drivetrain | Dual-motor AWD, ~700 hp |
| Motors | 21,000 RPM, 838 Nm torque (specs printed under the rear wing) |
| 0-60 mph | ~2.5 to 2.8 seconds |
| Quarter mile | Feels like ~10.5 sec (not measured in the review) |
| China price | ~$40k to $45k |
| Perceived value | $70k+, "starting to feel like a six-digit car" |
Design is deliberately understated. The silhouette reads Porsche Taycan, with borrowed cues across the car: a roof lidar box for the self-driving stack, McLaren-style headlights, Lotus-like frunk lines, big yellow Brembo brakes. There's an active rear wing, and the charge port uses the Chinese standard, so US charging needed a serious adapter.
Where it gets interesting: the interior and software
The reviewer's point is that the exterior is the least impressive part. Inside, the cabin is spacious and clean: tinted panoramic sunroof, heated and ventilated leather seats, Alcantara headliner, ambient lighting, contrast stitching, a Porsche-like wheel with low stalks. A driver-facing camera handles self-driving monitoring. Build quality reads far above the price.
The software is the headline. A 16-inch center display runs almost everything, with a few physical buttons kept for suspension height, the wing, and HVAC. The UI uses resizable panels you expand or contract. There's an app store for installing more apps. Wireless Apple CarPlay runs full-screen and huge.
The "Apple car" integrations
This is what the reviewer hasn't seen elsewhere:
- Phone screen mirroring. Sign a Xiaomi phone into the same account as the car, hit the interconnectivity button, and the phone's interface takes over the car screen for remote use. Exactly the move he'd expect Apple to make.
- 50W cooled wireless charger in the console, fast and actively cooled.
- Modular hardware accessories. Optional snap-on modules talk to the car's software: a top-screen smart dashboard, a bottom module with USB cables for rear passengers, a walkie-talkie system, underglow lighting, music-reactive side light strips, a karaoke microphone, and a magnetic phone mount slot. You add or remove them and they appear as toggles in the car's smart-devices menu. He calls it a modular car interface he's never seen before, minimalist or maximalist by choice.
- Rear-seat Xiaomi tablet that controls HVAC and more of the car from the back.
How it drives
Drive modes run comfort, sport, sport plus, all deeply customizable: front/rear bias, creep behavior, wing deployment, custom profiles. In comfort mode the air suspension is pliable and erases bumps, good enough that he'd happily ride in the back. The catch is the "wolf in sheep's clothing" framing: the tame cruiser hides ~700 hp, launch control, and a sub-3-second 0-60. A 20-second power boost is available outside sport mode by tapping the drive-mode button, handy for highway merges, then cancel it.
His favorite feature is the quiet. 25 speakers run active noise cancellation, window sealing keeps it silent, and navigation voice routes only to the speaker behind the driver's head so music keeps playing at full volume instead of ducking. Works with any paired phone, and he doesn't fully know how.
The verdict and the bigger point
The summary: extremely well-built, strong fundamentals, strong specs, strong software, and basically no downsides. The two theories land. If Chinese EVs like this reached the US, "it would cook." But tariffs and import fees mean it isn't coming to the US anytime soon. Europe gets it around 2027, and parts of Asia already sell it. His closing line: he's "seen the light," and wouldn't be shocked if you pulled the trigger.
Key takeaways
- Price-to-feel gap is the whole story. A ~$42k car that reads as $70k+ and arguably six figures against a Taycan, Model S, or Lucid.
- Software is the moat, not the sheet metal. Resizable panels, an app store, full-screen wireless CarPlay, and phone-to-car screen mirroring put it ahead of legacy interfaces.
- Modular accessories are genuinely new. Snap-on hardware (dashboards, walkie-talkie, underglow, karaoke mic) that registers in the car's software is a format he hasn't seen before.
- Sleeper performance. Understated looks hiding ~700 hp, ~2.5s 0-60, and a tap-to-activate 20-second power boost.
- Smart audio. 25-speaker active noise cancellation plus navigation voice isolated to one speaker so music never ducks.
- The trade barrier, not the product, is the limit. Tariffs keep it out of the US; Europe is the 2027 path.
Notable quotes
- "If I took the badge off of this car... there is no way you would get it right. In fact, I think the more you know about cars, the less likely you would be to get it right."
- "This feels like the closest thing to an Apple car that I've been able to review so far."
- "It kind of doesn't have any downsides, and it's like a wolf in sheep's clothing."
Why it matters for me
The Xiaomi angle is the lesson worth keeping: a phone-and-appliances company out-executing incumbents on the software layer of a hardware product, because integration and ecosystem are where it competes, not the chassis. That's the same pattern playing out across enterprise tech, where the platform that ties the pieces together wins over the one with the best single component.