Xiaomi’s Two-Speed Reality: Record EV Orders Meet a 52-Week Low

Xiaomi faces a stark divide: 60,000 SU7 orders and a 2027 Europe launch, yet stock near 52-week low. New CTO, AI monetization, and 550k delivery target under scrutiny.

Xiaomi is living a split-screen existence. On one side, the company is fielding 60,000 binding orders for its SU7 sedan, plotting a European EV launch for 2027, and pouring 60 billion yuan into artificial intelligence. On the other, its stock is languishing near a 52-week trough, having shed roughly a quarter of its value since the start of the year. The disconnect between operational momentum and market sentiment has rarely been starker.

A New CTO and a Professionalised Auto Unit

The Beijing-based group used the city’s auto show to showcase its full electric vehicle lineup, but the most telling signal came on April 17, when it named Hu Zhengnan as vice president and the first-ever chief technology officer of its automotive division. The role had been vacant since the unit’s founding in 2021. Hu brings nearly three decades of experience, having led development of Geely’s Boyue SUV and its SEA electric architecture before advising Shunwei Capital on early SU7 development. Alongside him, Song Gang — a former Tesla factory director — was appointed vice president and chief of staff for the auto business.

The appointments mark a deliberate push to professionalise the technological leadership structure just as Xiaomi enters what it hopes will be a critical growth phase.

Delivery Dip Puts Annual Target Under Scrutiny

The first quarter of 2026 delivered a sobering reality check. Xiaomi handed over roughly 79,000 vehicles, a sharp drop from the more than 145,000 units delivered in the final quarter of 2025. The company has set a full-year target of 550,000 deliveries, which now requires an average of more than 52,000 units per month for the remainder of the year. CEO Lei Jun reported on April 23 that 26,000 SU7s had already been delivered — evidence that demand is holding up — but questions linger over whether production capacity can keep pace.

Over the first two years since production began, Xiaomi has delivered around 650,000 EVs in total. Lei has made no secret of the long-term ambition: to take on Tesla on a global stage.

Europe in 2027, Right-Hand Drive Markets in 2028

The management team laid out its most concrete international timeline yet. The official European market launch is slated for the second half of 2027, with right-hand-drive markets following in the first half of 2028. How competitive Xiaomi can be in Europe will depend heavily on how rising raw material and logistics costs eat into margins — a factor that remains largely outside the company’s control.

AI Monetisation Takes Centre Stage

On the technology front, Xiaomi used its Investor Day 2026 in Beijing to unveil its proprietary AI model, “MiMo-V2.5-Pro,” which it claims is currently ranked as the world’s leading open-source model in the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index. The conversion rate for paid token plans stands at 35 percent, a figure the company argues shows its AI strategy is moving beyond product marketing into genuine revenue generation.

To support this push, Xiaomi plans to invest over 60 billion yuan in AI infrastructure over the next three years. The goal is to build subscription revenue and higher-value product attributions to reduce reliance on traditional hardware sales. The first concrete product signal is expected in the second quarter of 2026 with the launch of the Xiaomi 17T series.

Smartphone Margins Under Siege

The core smartphone business remains a drag on investor sentiment. Memory chip prices surged by as much as 90 percent in the first quarter, hitting entry-level devices particularly hard. In the fourth quarter of 2025, gross profit in the smartphone segment collapsed by more than 40 percent, dragging group profit down over 27 percent year-on-year. Xiaomi is pursuing a dual-pronged strategy to defend its target segment margin of 8 percent, but has not disclosed specific details.

Buybacks and the Q1 Reckoning

Xiaomi has continued its capital return programme, with share buybacks totalling 7.4 billion Hong Kong dollars from the start of the year through the end of April. On April 27 alone, the company purchased a further 3.2 million of its own Class B shares.

The next major data point arrives on May 26, when the board meets to approve first-quarter 2026 results. The numbers will reveal how badly cost pressures and margin erosion have hit the smartphone and IoT core business — and whether the ambitious growth plans rest on solid enough foundations. Until then, the sequential delivery decline in the auto unit remains the central argument investors wield against a re-rating of the stock.