A company best-known for making air fryers, microwaves and other household appliances has just set one of the fastest times ever recorded around the iconic Nurburgring Nordschleife.
The Nurburgring is the centre of the performance car world and the ultimate benchmark for performance brands like Porsche, Ferrari and Lamborghini. But now Xiaomi, a little known outside of China, has set a 6m46s lap around the 20km circuit to send a message to its competition.
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Xiaomi’s core business remains household appliances but it has branched into the electric vehicle space in recent years. Just last week Ford CEO Jim Farley was singing the company’s praises after driving one of its SU7 sedans for the past six months.
It was a special version of that model, dubbed the Xiaomi SU7 Ultra prototype, that set the lap time, which is almost a minute quicker than either the Tesla Model S Plaid Track Package (7m25sec) and the Porsche Taycan Turbo S (7m33sec).
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Remarkably, despite the very rapid time it appears the the SU7 Ultra could have gone even faster, with the car seemingly suffering a technical glitch shortly after exiting the famous Carousel and losing power momentarily.
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However, there is a large asterisk attached to this record run – this isn’t a production car record because this isn’t a production car. In fact, looking at the on-board footage it appears to be a stripped out example with a racing-style rollcage that would save a significant amount of weight, therefore helping with lap times.
Xiaomi acknowledged this and has made it clear it intends to return in 2025 with the production version of its high-performance SU7 Ultra to try and claim a production car record. Still, it’s an impressive lap time, so make sure you check out the video below of the on-board footage.
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