Chinese automaker has shipped 500,000 EVs since last year, but not a single American will get to drive one

Xiaomi, the Chinese automaker that used to only make smartphones, is having quite the successful year, shipping half a million EVs in a feat no one saw coming.

And, the company has pulled it off in record time, quietly becoming one of the fastest-growing EV makers on the planet.

Remember, this is a company that didn’t exist in the car world before 2024.

However, before you get too excited, not a single American will see one of these cars on their driveway anytime soon.

SBX CARS – View live supercar auctions powered by Supercar Blondie

The Chinese automaker only entered the fray in 2024

Globally, the auto industry moves at a relatively glacial pace.

Even major players like Toyota produce around 11 million vehicles a year, while most startups struggle just to survive.

Xiaomi entered the EV game in April 2024 and promptly ignored that reality, setting a sales goal of 350,000 vehicles for 2025.

This was an ambitious goal, but the Chinese carmaker somehow blew straight through it.

And in late 2025, the company revealed that it had already built and shipped over 500,000 EVs.

The hero of that surge is the Xiaomi YU7, a sleek electric crossover widely seen as a Tesla Model Y rival.

Demand was so intense that early buyers faced wait times of over a year, forcing Xiaomi to move production from its smaller Phase 1 factory to a high-output Phase 2 facility.

Even with supply bottlenecks, the YU7 outsold the Tesla Model Y in China in October 2025, marking the first time the Chinese automaker managed to edge out its American rival.

Chinese EVs won’t enter the US market anytime soon

So why won’t you ever see a Xiaomi EV in the US?

History, politics, and design all play a role.

Xiaomi’s smartphones were once seen as near-carbon copies of Apple’s devices, and the company recently introduced a $630 phone to rival the Apple iPhone 17.

As a result, legal landmines have long kept the brand out of America.

Its cars raise similar eyebrows, with the YU7 and SU7 sedans bearing unmistakable resemblance to Tesla’s lineup.

Add regulatory hurdles, trade tensions, and looming tariffs, and the US becomes an unattractive battlefield.

To be fair, Xiaomi is not the only Chinese carmaker that can’t enter the US market, given that rivals like BYD are also locked out.

This is despite the fact that a new study found that just over half of Americans are open to buying a Chinese car.

In China, though, Xiaomi’s EVs make perfect sense.

Think of it as the Apple Car that never existed, except Xiaomi actually built it, and wait times are so long that Xiaomi’s CEO is recommending Tesla to buyers instead.

DISCOVER SBX CARS: The global premium car auction platform powered by Supercar Blondie