Price anchor point: "close combat" with HarmonyOS Intelligence
The pricing strategy of YU7 is a precision calculated 'psychological war'. According to Xiaomi's internal calculations, the starting price of YU7 is likely to fall within the range of 230000-24000 yuan, directly benchmarking against the 259800 yuan starting price of Hongmeng Zhixing's Zhijie R7. But Huawei's "trump card" lies in its incomplete release of cost-effectiveness potential - if the Zhijie R7 extended range version is reduced in price to 249800 yuan, the pricing advantage of YU7 will be instantly diluted. What's even more dangerous is that the brand premium and channel penetration of HarmonyOS may put Xiaomi in an awkward situation of "low price but not low quality, but users don't buy it".
In the fourth quarter of 2024, the monthly sales of the Zhijie R7 have exceeded 16000 units, while the Model Y has only grown by 5%. Huawei's ICT technology reserves and ecological collaboration capabilities make its cost control in intelligent cockpit and intelligent driving systems superior to Xiaomi. This means that if YU7 wants to replicate SU7's "substitution myth" for Model 3, it must widen the price difference to over 30000 yuan while ensuring that the core configuration is not reduced. But the reality is that Xiaomi's gross profit margin is around 20%, while HarmonyOS still has room for price reduction - in this game, Xiaomi's "price weapon" is not absolutely sharp.
Capacity Efficiency: The 'Time Trap' of Phase II Factories
Capacity is the biggest uncertain variable for Xiaomi Auto in 2025. According to the plan, the second phase of the factory will start production in July 2025, but the actual available production capacity is only 60000 vehicles (calculated based on a six-month ramp up). This means that if YU7 wants to contribute more than 100000 vehicles in sales, the capacity utilization rate needs to exceed 166%. Whether the "overload myth" of Xiaomi's first phase factory with a capacity utilization rate of 200% can be replicated depends on two key factors: supply chain resilience: Although Xiaomi's "investment+incubation" model has laid out more than a hundred suppliers, the complexity of SUV components is higher than that of sedans, and the difficulty of supply chain coordination is exponentially increasing.
Delivery cycle: The order pool for SU7 still has a backlog of over 100000 vehicles. If demand for YU7 explodes after its launch, Xiaomi may face a production capacity allocation dilemma of "dual line operation". From historical experience, in 2024, the delayed delivery of NIO ET5 due to battery supply issues directly led to a 30% decline in quarterly sales. In addition, Tesla's Shanghai factory took 2 years to stabilize its capacity utilization rate to 150%, while Xiaomi's Phase II factory only had 6 months. If the production capacity cannot be realized, the "explosive potential" of YU7 will become a mere talk on paper, and even drag down Xiaomi's annual target.
Ecological barriers:
Trust Transition from "Rice noodles" to "Family Users"
The success of SU7 is essentially the targeted explosion of Xiaomi's "user assets" - "digital geeks" born in the 1980s, 1990s, with a monthly income of over 20000 yuan, unmarried, and in first and second tier cities, highly overlapping with the image of Xiaomi phones. But the target users of YU7 are more rational "married families". The purchasing logic of this group of people is completely different: firstly, the priority of demand is space>intelligence>performance. At this time, the practicality of extended range models may outweigh pure electric vehicles.