Phone maker Xiaomi completes business registration of electric vehicle unit

Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi on Wednesday announced that it has completed the official business registration of its electric vehicle unit, to be called Xiaomi EV Inc. This marks the electronic giant's latest milestone in its push into the automotive industry.

Xiaomi opened the new unit with a capital expenditure of around 10 billion yuan ($1.55 billion) and the company's CEO Lei Jun will become the legal representative of the entity. The electronic company has already hired around 300 staff to join the electric vehicle unit and the talent recruitment spree is still on.

The company also informed that it has conducted more than 2,000 interview surveys and visited over 10 industry peers and partners to push forward with its electric vehicle ambition. It recently also acquired an autonomous driving technology startup Deepmotion for over $77 million, in an effort to boost research and development.

Xiaomi's deal with Deepmotion is important as it intends to develop Level 4 self-driving technology for its electric offerings. The latter develops driver assistance software and will speed up the time to market for Xiaomi's product. “Through this acquisition, we hope to shorten the time to market for our product," Xiaomi President Wang Xiang had said.

Xiaomi's Co-founder and CEO Lei Jun is personally leading the project to make electric vehicles and the company has already pledged an initial investment of $10 billion over the next decade in the field. A Reuters report had earlier stated that the Chinese company has plans to build electric vehicles using one of Great Wall Motor's factories.

Earlier in August, it was reported that Xiaomi had entered talks with beleaguered real estate giant Evergrande Group to purchase a stake in the latter's automotive unit. The phonemaker later mentioned in on its social media that it is in touch with several automakers but has yet to decide which one to work with.

(with inputs from Reuters)