On June 26, Xiaomi officially started received pre-orders for the YU7, the company’s first all-electric SUV model positioned to compete against the Tesla Model Y.

And in just 3 minutes, Xiaomi made history, receiving an astonishing 200,000 pre-orders. Later in an interview, Xiaomi’s CEO Lei Jun confirmed the numbers, explaining that of the 200,000 pre-orders, 120,000 were locked-in orders. Meaning buyers paid a non-refundable deposit and is considered a “firm order”.

By the full first hour, the Chinese phonemaker received 289,000 units, easily topping annual sales volume of some of the best-selling vehicles in China.

Source: Xiaomi

The YU7 comes in three variants, Standard Edition priced at 253,500 RMB, the Pro Edition at 279,900 RMB, and the Max Edition at 329,900 RMB.

That puts the YU7 at nearly 12,000 RMB cheaper than the entry-level Tesla Model Y in China, priced at 265,350 RMB.

The YU7’s Standard Edition is also over 37,000 RMB more expensive that the Xiaomi SU7, its sedan sibling that has outsold Tesla Model 3 since launch.

Now back to the 289,000 Xiaomi YU7 pre-orders. To put things into perspective, Tesla sold 480,309 Model Y in all of 2024. YU7’s 1 hour volume of pre-orders exceeds the 275,223 units of BYD Yuan PLUS sold last year, a SUV that starts at less than half of its price (115,800 RMB).

When Tesla launched the much anticipated Model Y facelift, codenamed as “Juniper”, domestic reports suggested that it had accumulated a total of 200,000 pre-orders by end of February (a full month after pre-orders started in January 10).

As of end of May, Tesla has yet delivered 100,000 Model Y “Juniper”, reaching a monthly peak in March with 48,189 units sold in China.

Important to note that only a share of pre-orders ultimately convert to sales for a multitude of reasons, one of which is wait time.

Another point of reference is Xiaomi’s very own first all-electric sedan, the SU7, which had an astonishing debut of its own with Xiaomi SU7 sells out in 24 hours with over 88,000 orders pre-orders within the first 24 hours on March 28, 2024.

Basically, the Xiaomi YU7 received 2.5x the number of pre-orders the SU7 received (in 24 hours), but in just 3 minutes. Or over 3x the order volume in just 1 hour.

This is unprecedented in the Chinese electric vehicle market (or in any given market for any type of vehicle).

But one thing is sure, Xiaomi will struggle to match that demand. The company originally targeted 300,000 vehicle deliveries in 2025 and is ramping up capacity to produce that many across two factories.

That capacity is for both the SU7 and YU7.