The 1500 Horsepower Supercar Built By A Phone Company??
Welcome to Everything Electric Cars. Now, as many of you will know, the wonderful Elliot Richards is busy testing as many new Chinese electric cars as he can on Everything Electric Asia-Pacific. Now, many of these cars are exported to various parts of Asia, some to Australia, and every now and then, we get some coming to Europe and the UK. We thought this episode is relevant to viewers of Everything Electric Cars for two reasons. Xiaomi are coming to Europe and the UK, and so is the Xiaomi SU7 Ultra, which is a totally insane version of their already incredibly popular SU7 range. Let’s see what Elliot thinks. Topline stats, 1548 horsepower, 0 to 60 in less than 2 seconds, $73,000. Now, this is this is the kind of car that puts a fizz in your pants. I want to know if there’s any substance behind this clickbait car. Of course, my name is Elliot Richards and this is the Xiaomi SU7 Ultra. Our three free YouTube channels [Applause] [Music] Chinese EV makers have been experts at creating attentiongrabbing headlines. A,000 watt charging, BYD. Champagne glasses on the top of a car. Neo with their ET9 and now Xiaomi with the SU7 Ultra decimating the TYON at the Nord Schlife. But I want to know what’s behind this. Is there any passion behind these projects or is it just a numbers game? Throw out the numbers, but the actual car doesn’t drive that well. Is this car just about speed? That’s what we’re going to find out today. [Music] That’s right, speed. Now, you may have seen lots of videos on the internet already of this car crashing, doing ridiculous speed on public highways, generally just being a bit of a nuisance and generating lots of press attention. I won’t be doing any of that today. For starters, the car is limited to around 800 horsepower, which is still plenty underneath my right foot. I need to do some training and actually go on a track to unlock the full 1,500 horsepower. What’s more important to me is not speed. Speed is quite easy. Bigger motors, bigger battery, straight line, easy. It’s how it really handles around the corner. And that takes it from being a fast Chinese EV to being a general real competitor against the likes of the German M cars and that poster child for performance sedans that people really want. I want to know, can this car really compete in that arena? Cuz that’s where the real challenge lies. Germany’s had a long history of modifying their fairly plain sedans. BMW with the M division, Mercedes with AMG and places like Brabus. And now Xiaomi’s gone away and looked in the parts toolbox, the Max Power parts toolbox, and beitted this car with all of these extra features. Cue the ’90s music. But I actually think this car looks quite dorky from down here. I’m still not a big fan of its looks. I just think it’s not quite as refined as some of its competitors, especially the TAM, which is very striking, very bold design. Now, there’s an additional arrow kit on this car, which adds 73 mm to the size of the car, plus 7 mm wider. But that’s not all. This is active arrow and increases cooling efficiency by 10%, which is important when you’re blasting it around the Nord Life, which this car realistically is never going to go to. But most importantly, it has racing stripes and that famous lightweight material, carbon fiber, and gold. Yeah, gold badge. Bigger wheels, bigger wings, scoops, and side skirts. Now, despite this car’s obvious drawbacks, it still feels really good. Now, my benchmark for handling really is the Lotus Elise. If you can get close to that, that’s kind of perfection for handling for me. Now, of course, that’s 725 kg car. It’s petrol. It’s completely different experience. But if your car can get close to that or within the realms of that, then I think you’re on to a good thing. Now, I think for me, electric cars, one of the best performing electric cars is actually the Tesla Model 3 performance. I still think the handling in that is really good. Also like the Polestar as well. This beats both and I’m very surprised. I was not expecting Xiaomi to come out with their first car and be able to produce a really nicely handling car like this. Now, you can’t come to the championship of speed with a car like this without things like carbon fiber. But I want to talk about carbon fiber and weight. Now, this car weighs 2205 kg. So, quite a hefty car. It’s got that huge battery and it’s got three electric motors. So they have to try and save as much weight as possible. Now across the car there’s 17 bits of carbon fiber. Probably the most important is up here. Now this has got the glass roof but you can have a carbon fiber roof. Saves around 12 kg. Carbon fiber mirrors, carbon fiber side skirts, lots of carbon fiber bits. Does it really make that much difference when you got over 1,500 horsepower? I don’t really think so. I think it’s mostly cosmetic. It does look quite good. Let me just show you the drive mode. The scary button. If I press this, all of this changes and it’s got ready for boost and it gives me time that I need to do the boost. I’m turning that off because it’s I’m in stuck in traffic. There’s no point in using it in the city. But I do have the ability using these dials down here. It does have self-driving as well. I have to mention that. Um it’s got NOA, so it does some variation of self-driving on on highways um and through the city. So again, it’s very feature- packed other than the speed. Comes with all the same features that the Xiaomi SU7 normal version had. So really, you’re getting a lot of value for your money for your $73,000. Wallops of tech and wallops of speed. I feel so good. I feel completely in control. A lot of electric cars don’t have this sense of connection to the road, but this one really does. Soon as you turn that wheel, you get an instant you get an instant response. Not many EVs have that, especially even the more sporty ones. This they’ve really thought very hard about how this handles. Yes, it’s all about the numbers. Yes, it’s all about the top speed, but oh my god, is it about the handling as well. This is an absolute joy. Oh my word, this is nuts. Honestly, what you really need is a helmsman like Chris Harris to really test the limits of this on a track. So Chris, if you’re listening, here’s an open invite to come and test the Xiaomi SU7 Ultra and scare the living daylights out of me. So on a normal city streets like this, this does give me an experience like no other electric car. And not only that, but it gets very close to emulating the the real all-time greats, the BMW M3 or the M5. You know, this is a car that is really beginning to push the boundaries in terms of handling even on city streets like this. Just it vomits up torque and power and it continues to come even if you’re just feathering the throttle. And that’s just an absolute delight driving something like this. But it is the pin sharp, the tack sharp handling that I can’t get over. You quickly turn the wheel and it really does adjust. Yes, I am just changing lanes in a city, but it has all of the right ingredients to make a truly great sports car. Now, if I put it into sports mode, which I will for you guys, or ultra mode, Yundong sports mode, we’ll see what it’s really actually like. I already feel literally if I dropped a hair onto the throttle, it would jump forwards like this. But we’re going to try on a a little bit of a more free flowing road here in Shanghai. Whilst we wait for that, this car has three electric motors. It has something called a V8 motor. Uh that’s their name, naming convention. Okay, that was um scarily impressive going around that corner just then. It absolutely gripped. Now that’s obviously because of its three electric motors really helps it um uh grip the road. So it has two uh motors called V8 motors and one called a V6 motor using traditional ice engine kind of naming conventions. [Applause] [Music] Now, the interior. This is the Ultra model, right? Called Ultra Top, Mega, most impressive. But they’ve fallen into the same trap of making this more luxury than Ultra. Now, obviously, we’ve seen the the prototype Ultra driving around the track, and I of course don’t expect that to be exactly like this, but I would expect a bit more of that intelligent thinking coming into this cabin. Now, a lot of the weight in this car will be from the interior. I’ve got active seat bolsters. I’ve got my cup holders. I’ve got phone chargers. I’ve got speakers. I’ve got Alcantara everywhere. And yes, I do have a carbon fiber steering wheel. It saves a kilogram of weight. Of course, it’s also bathed in Alcantara for grip. I just wish they’d thought a little bit more about the interior and how to make this really raw, but then perhaps it wouldn’t sell so many. I’m not the consumer for this car. It’s the Chinese market and this is what they want. This is what they demand. This is what they like. A few other features in here. I’ve got two screens. I’ve got heads-up display. I’ve got my very scary drive mode uh toggle here. And if I press the red button, it puts it into that very scary get ready for insane acceleration mode. Don’t want that right now. But the most important thing is yellow means sports. So, there isn’t a great deal to talk about the rear of the SU7 Ultra. Very much like the original. Of course, in front of me is these carbon fiber seats, which do look very nice. Very impressive stuff. Now, there isn’t that much to talk about the rear of the SU7 Ultra. It’s pretty much like the original car, except I’ve got this carbon fiber piece in front of me, carbon fiber trim down here, and that’s about it. But this, I think this must be the only family car with two ISOIX with 1,500 horsepower. The fastest ISOIX car in the world. That is a good claim to fame. Although, I would not want to put my child in here doing those incredible speeds. Now, it’s probably important to talk about the app and how do you unlock that 1,500 horsepower. Now, there is a racetrack app and it’s got the racetracks in China saved on it where you can check your lap times. You can change the driving mode. Now, you do have to have training to unlock the full 1,500 horsepower and that’s only in track mode as well. It’s also got lots of normal driving modes uh for the road. Economy, custom, you know, sporty, it’s got those standard ones as well. So, you’re not going to be going out on the road really unleashing the full power of this beast. But then it begs the question, why bother having it in the first place? But what really means sports? Well, it’s all to do with the battery. Now, this comes with a 93.7 kWh battery, and it’s one of CL’s best. It’s the Chile 2.0 zero battery and this can dispense almost 1,330 kW of power in one go. So really giving those mount motors a lot of power. It’s also got 5.3C charging. So can charge from 10 to 80% in about 11 minutes and it has about 630 km of CLTC range. So certainly no slouch. It does have some elements of the Elise about it. the the road handling characteristics um when you’re driving in the city obviously is very difficult to judge but when I’ve driven it around the corners it feels extremely planted I feel connected to the road I get a lot of feedback through the steering wheel and I think they’ve overcompensated on every area which you think would suffer so for example the suspension it’s got their dual chamber setup with bilstein suspension the brakes something this big this fast has carbon ceramic brakes with huge brake discs and huge rotors. This really is overcompensating in every single place because it has to. If you’re going to impress the petrol heads from their M cars and their AMG cars, then you have to go all out in something like this. So, you may be wondering how they’ve actually built this car for racing. What differs it from the original SU7? Well, there’s actually quite a lot, and there’s quite a lot of thinking behind it as well. This wing is obviously carbon fiber, but it adds up to 285 kg of downforce, equivalent to a supercar. Of course, it’s got the active arrow down here, as you can see, which moves up and down depending on what you’re doing on the track. But that’s kind of about speed, but what I really want to talk about is the handling. So, if we come around here to the wheels, because this is where the biggest difference makes. boot. It’s got Bilchstein suspension uh inside carbon ceramic brakes. It’s got some of the biggest rotors I’ve ever seen on the market about 430 mil. Uh these are four pistons in the rear and six pistons in the front. So, it’s got the stopping power, it’s got the suspension, it’s got everything set up. This is why it can become a Nord Schlife winner. Now, initial impressions on this car is there’s a lot to actually enjoy. first of all is the rumbling kind of V8 sound on the interior. Now I’m in uh one of the sporty modes and I can adjust my drive modes on this button here. Just twist it around. Now it’s in like the ultra mode which is actually a bit scary. I don’t really want 800 horsepower under my foot. But anyway, I’m going to put it in the more regular kind of normal mode. But there’s this very deep guttal rumbling and that’s inside the car and outside the car and it just fills me. I don’t know maybe it connects it to the the petrol part of my brain that you know always wants a big V8 petrol sports car but then this has characteristics which are so much better than that. I really like that. I think yes it’s a gimmick but I do enjoy it a lot. And the whole feeling of this seat as well. I’m really tucked into the sides here with the um active kind of bolsters which squeeze you as you go around corners, but it feels like a sports seat. Materials are very high quality like a luxury fast sedan. And again, steering wheel feels like a sporty steering wheel. It’s got the flat top. It’s got the line on the top so I know where the center line is. It’s got all of the right ingredients, but having all the right ingredients doesn’t mean you can make the cake. And that’s what we’re here to really test. And I just want to mention as we’re driving through the city how many looks this car gets. It’s really surprising. Young people are staring, pointing, taking pictures. They’re like, “Wow, it’s actually one of those Xiaomi SU7 Ultras. Everyone is staring at the car. It’s just created so much buzz, so much headlines.” And isn’t that what M cars, AMG cars should be doing is the highlighting the best of the best. What Xiaomi have done with this is create a new Halo car for a young generation of Chinese to be really proud of to say we can compete with the best of the best. And that’s what this car really is all about. Question is, would I buy one? No. For me, I still prefer something smaller, a bit more lightweight, perhaps with only two seats. This is why I’m still holding out for the SEO1. For me, that really will be the great. I haven’t driven it. That will be the greatest test of can electric cars really eventually replace their ICE counterparts. I don’t know. But this is the closest to replicating that experience. Oh boy. Tell you what this car reminds me of. It reminds me of driving a powerful ice car. It’s kind of all this low down like torque which kind of pushes your bum and then when you’re going around corners it it feels very similar to a petrol car. It just the way it’s feeling, the way it’s handling, the way the car responds to my inputs, and the outputs on the road are just incredible. Listen to that sound. I can’t get enough of it. Here we go. Quick turn like this. This is dangerous. I can see why people have crashed. I just wish I could get this out on a track, really stretch its legs, cuz at the moment, this is not stretching its legs. We’re probably using about a tenth of its potential power, but even that is fun. Are there any annoyances about this car? Would I be happy if I bought one though? I don’t know. Because yes, you’ve paid a lot of extra money for the motors, the battery, etc., etc., you know, the speed and the suspension and all of that. But sitting in here doesn’t feel that significantly different to the normal SU7, which is, I don’t know, a third of the price. And that’s pro probably its biggest weakness is the jump obviously on the power is definitely worth the money but the jump on the interior that’s where we’re struggling a little bit more. I don’t know what the solution is. I wanted a stripped out more prototypey kind of version but then Porsche charges more for the stripped out versions. I just wish it was a bit more yeah GT3 on the inside and less kind of BMW 7 series. That’s for me is its biggest weakness. Very minor. Does anyone really care? No, I don’t think so. And this really is the life of a Xiaomi SU7 Ultra owner. Sitting in traffic in somewhere like Shanghai where everyone looks at you, you’re just sat on the brake cuz you can’t go anywhere because of traffic jams. Great. But if you want people to look at you, it definitely has that in spades. So, whilst we’re sat here in traffic, not moving. Um, just want to show you the screen because it’s pretty decent as you would expect from Xiaomi, you know, primarily software and mobile phone hardware company. This is nothing short of brilliant. So, yes, it does have Apple CarPlay and um Android as well, but then the native maps here in China, extremely responsive, extremely good. Um, you got all of your settings. No English setting for now. Um, depends if they take this overseas, but very fast and very intuitive to use, even if you don’t read Chinese. So, I’ve got my kind of liar radar view here, which is quite useful, showing me how close cars are. The one behind me is almost touching my bumper. Um, and I got my maps and then things like that. So, fairly straightforward. There’s nothing particularly different about this in the Ultra. There’s some updated graphics of course for the screen in front of me. As you can see, we’re in sports mode. So, yes, it’s got the kind of funky ultra RPM thing uh in front of me, which shows you how many RPM I’m doing, which is at the moment is about three. So, it’s just stuck in traffic. What a boring little journey this is. My god, it’s nuts. And with that rumbling sound in the background, it really delivers a icelike experience. I is that a good thing? I don’t know. If you’re trying to get people out of their German super saloons and into something like this, wow, this is so compelling. So compelling. I don’t care about the numbers. I just care about how this makes me feel, which is very, very good. I like this car a lot. For me, it really is the culmination of the last 10 years of development of all electric cars in China. Oh my word, this is nuts. But there are other cars which do fast. There are other cars which do handling. There’s very few cars which do electric fast and extremely good handling. This is one of them. And this is it’s more than a car. It represents a high point for Chinese EVs and really is the starting point of performance car revolution with electric cars. Now visit electric vehicles.expert expert where you can follow everything electric and keep current with clean technica, the driven electric and many
Elliot takes a spin in the outrageous Xiaomi SU7 Ultra. With over 1,500 horsepower, and a Nurburgring lap record to its name, is this the most extreme performance EV to date?
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