Xiaomi has spent 16 years growing from a smartphone start-up into a company that writes its own software, builds its own chips, runs its own factories, and now makes electric cars.
Most Filipinos only know the smartphones. After all, it’s where the company built a name for itself with its excellent value for money products that defy norms. But to learn more about what’s happening behind the scenes, Xiaomi Philippines invited NoypiGeeks, along with other PH media and influencers, to visit their Smart and EV factory in Beijing, China.
The weather in Beijing last week was autumn: trees and leaves look like something from a movie, temperatures around 5 to 10 degrees Celsius, and winds that penetrated even our thickest jackets.
In two days, we toured three sites: the Xiaomi headquarters campus, the electric vehicle factory in Yizhuang, and the smartphone factory in Changping.
So how does a company go from making phones to making cars, appliances, and the software for all of it? The tour answers that question, and it does it in numbers. Here are the interesting bits, in a quick to digest fashion.
Day 1: At the Xiaomi headquarters
The first stop was Xiaomi’s headquarters campus, where a presenter walked the tour through the features of the innovative Xiaomi SkyNomad, the company’s electric SUV, with the Xiaomi YU7 and SU7 also on display. After the cars came the phones: the Xiaomi 18 Fold and the Xiaomi 18 Pro Series, the current flagships, in all their usual and limited edition colors.
1. 47.2% of Xiaomi staff is in R&D
Nearly half of Xiaomi’s workforce is engaged in research and development. By June 30, 2026, R&D headcount made up 47.2% of the company’s employees, and research spending reached RMB18.2 billion during the first six months of the year, an increase of 25.6% over the same period in 2025. In a recent earnings call, the company said artificial intelligence accounted for close to 30% of that outlay.
Day 2: Inside the smartphone factory
2. RMB 2.4 billion invested in the Smart Factory
About USD 330 million was invested to build the new plant. Construction began in June 2021 and production started in February 2024: 32 months, with two of ten planned buildings complete. Building through the industry’s worst demand years tells you the plan is long-term. Even with the memory-cost pressure the AI boom has put on the whole industry, it looks like there’s no stopping Xiaomi in expanding their reach.
3. 11 production lines, 1 smartphone every 6 seconds
Xiaomi’s smart factory in Changping finishes one smartphone every six seconds, on average. The model running on the line during our visit was the POCO F9 Series.
Some quick math: 11 production lines producing more than 10 million phones a year works out to roughly 27,000 phones per line per year, about 74 a day per line. That’s the whole plant averaging one finished handset every six seconds, which gives you some idea of the scale behind a brand like Xiaomi.
4. 81% automation, by design
That is the factory’s overall automation rate, and it stops there on purpose, not just because it can’t be fully automated (at least according to Xiaomi). The critical processes, 100% of them, run entirely without human intervention.
The remaining 19% is where human inspectors enter the loop, making sure that every unit passes quality control. With this setup, the company claims that they were able to reduce the failure rate to as little as 1%.
5. 100% self-developed software, 96.8% for hardware
The software that runs the factory, which watches quality, spots anomalies, and orders materials when a bin runs low, is entirely self-written by Xiaomi, and 96.8 percent of the hardware running it is self-built, the company says.
The effect is visible on the floor: the equipment is largely custom gear made by Xiaomi itself. To be honest, we had not seen anything quite like it, at least not yet. Perhaps other brands have already upgraded their equipment and production line as well, but that’s a different story for another day.
6. 2,400 units stress-tested in one go
One chamber near the end of the line ages more than 2,400 phones at once, running simulated long-term use: battery, performance, appearance. A QA (quality assurance) chamber sized for that many units is endurance screening at a scale few phone makers publish, and for a market that keeps its phones for years, it’s pretty important.
7. 1.1 billion connected devices on its platform
Xiaomi’s AIoT platform had 1,160.8 million connected devices registered — not including smartphones, tablets and laptops — with a 17.4% increase over a year earlier.
As of June 30, 2026, there are 175 million users and households, 24.6 million of them with five or more connected devices, and 124.1 million monthly actives on the Xiaomi Home app. With the company’s vast array of IoT products, it’s no surprise that its ecosystem usage is growing exponentially. It’s no accident this company ranks 232nd on the Fortune Global 500, up from 468th when it entered in 2019, the youngest company on the list at the time.
Day 2: The EV factory
The Xiaomi EV factory in Yizhuang opened with the same three electric vehicles from day one, now with context: a display of parts and history from the car program, engine components, the car’s frame, and then the production facility itself, where robots do most of the work building cars. Cameras were not allowed inside, so there are no photos of the line to show you aside from what they gave us, so let’s let the numbers do the talking.
8. 800,000 electric vehicles built since 2024
Xiaomi had delivered more than 800,000 electric vehicles by September 7, 2026, 29 months after the first SU7 shipped in April 2024. Some quick math: 800,000 over 29 months is roughly 27,600 a month, about 900 cars a day, every day, for a little over two and a half years. Take note that these cars are only sold in mainland China for now, with a European entry planned for 2027, but the company is still struggling to keep up with local demand.
For a manufacturer that entered the automotive business only four years ago, it’s very impressive how they quickly became a powerhouse when it comes to electric cars. Its plant stamps, welds, paints and measures a vehicle to a tolerance of ±0.05mm, and the company has described the same operating principles in both businesses: build the hardest components internally, measure everything, and hand repetitive work to machines.
9. 6,900 tons, a part every 4 seconds
The stamping line at Yizhuang presses flat steel sheets into car body panels with a total force of 6,900 tons and it spits out a fresh part every 4 seconds. The presses can bend panels to curves of 175 degrees, where a conventional line manages 130 to 155. This results into smoother body shapes, with fewer pieces welded together to fake the curve. Xiaomi’s published drag coefficient for the SU7, 0.195, starts on a stamping press. The molds that cut these panels are machined to tolerances of 5 to 10 micrometers — about a tenth of a human hair.
10. 91% automation in the body shop
Back inside, the numbers do the talking. More than 700 robots weld, rivet and glue the car’s skeleton; 181 driverless transport robots bring them parts. Ten joining techniques, 2,340 connection points, 92 meters of structural adhesive per car. Key processes run fully automated, and overall the shop sits at 91% automation — the highest in the industry, the company says.
In the roof, there are solar panels that could generate 16.4 million kWh a year, about 9,900 tonnes of CO2 kept out of the air, around the annual absorption of 540,000 trees.
The test drive
The tour ended with a ride in the Xiaomi SU7 Ultra, with a Xiaomi driver behind the wheel because we can’t legally drive in China without a valid license there. It’s incredibly fast: the car went from 0 to 80 km/h in around two seconds.
Fun fact: every Xiaomi SU7 gets driven before they get delivered to the customers. There’s a 2.5-kilometer test track that sits on the factory grounds itself, with 18 simulated road conditions and designed for speeds of up to 120 km/h.
11. 47,000 patents worldwide
The worldwide patent count passed 47,000 by June 30, 2026. The portfolio backs the company’s in-house tech: the XRING chip line, which started with a self-designed 3nm flagship chip in 2025, the MiMo AI model, and HyperOS, the operating system that ties its smartphones, home products, and vehicles together.
12. 22% market share in PH
Xiaomi’s share of Philippine smartphone shipments in Q2 2026, second in the market, from the research firm Omdia. The number counts units, not revenue, which means the position is built mostly on budget and midrange phones. The premium segment is about to be tested, as the tour’s main focus, the 18 Fold and 18 Pro Series, are flagship devices. We’re not sure yet if the Fold will ever make it to PH, but we hope that Xiaomi is considering it especially with the recent launch of the iPhone Duo and Samsung Galaxy Z Fold8.
See also: 8 things you probably didn’t know about Xiaomi
By the end of this Xiaomi trip, most of us were left in awe as to how this supposed to be ‘young’ tech brand built and expanded their empire from phones, to home appliances, and then to electric vehicles in less than 2 decades.
When MIUI (Xiaomi’s old custom ROM for Android) and Mi 1 first launched back in the 2010s, who could’ve thought that they are going to be as big as they are right now? Maybe Lei Jun. Maybe the other founders. But definitely not me and other tech enthusiasts who used their ‘buggy’ iOS-inspired ROMs almost 15 years ago.
Today, Xiaomi is without a doubt a tech giant. And with their growing ecosystem and wide range of products, it looks like they are just getting started.