BEIJING, August 25 (TMTPost)— Xiaomi Corporation seems close to kick off electric vehicle (EV) production as reports suggested its long-anticipated businesses has achieved some milestones.

Credit：Visual China

The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), China's top economic planner that regulates production capacity and investments in auto industry, has approved Xiaomi’s venture to produce EVs, Reuters reported, citing people familiar with the matter earlier this week.

Xiaomi announced in March, 2021 to set up a wholly owned subsidiary to make EVs, with the initial investment of RMB10 billion and the total input in the coming decade expected amount to US$10 billion. Xiaomi Auto is the fourth to get NDRC’s green light since late 2017, as NDRC has been cautious in approving new EV production plans due to concerns on overcapacity and slowing demand in the sector, Reuters noted.

The regulatory approval effectively reduces uncertainty of Xiaomi’s EV output timeline, though the leading smartphone maker didn’t comment on the report yet. Soon after the reported milestone, Chinese news media outlet Sina Tech learned from a recruiting firm that Xiaomi Auto started to hire general workers this month, and the hiring process is very fast. The EV unit was reported to have more than one hundred job openings, including operators and maintenance workers at the painting facility, the battery facility and the welding facility.

All the jobs were said to be located in Xiaomi Auto’s facilitory in Yizhuang, a town in the southeast suburbs of Beijing. The facility, built in two phases, is expected to have a total annual capacity of 300,000 vehicles, with 150,000 units of each phase, and construction of its first phase has completed and passed acceptance testing in June. 

In addition to these reports, news circulated at social media showcased Xiaomi has changed its low-profile approach to its EV business, which also signaled the company is more likely to launch its first vehicles as schedule. Xiaomi founder and CEO Lei Jun last week posted a picture at Weibo, showing a group of people held a banner that said Fight for Xiao Auto. The picture was taken in Xinjiang, an autonomous region in northwestern China. Then local netizens revealed four Xiaomi EVs are under driving test in the region.

Xiaomi has established an R&D team of more than 500 talents, and plans to create a fleet of 140 test vehicles in the first phase of the technology development, targeting to become a leader in the smart EV industry in 2024, the founder and CEO Lei Jun said in last August.

Xiaomi aims to become one of the top five automakers in the world within the coming 15 to 20 years, Lei Jun said in an interview in March. “We are on track to achieve our goal of mass production in the first half of 2024,” Xiaomi disclosed in a filing with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange the same month. According to the filling, expenses related to smart EV and other new initiatives amounted to RMB3.1 billion in the year 2022, and there were around 2,300 research and development (R&D) employees in the EV business, compared with more than 1,800 people that Xiaomi said at an earnings call for the third quarter in last November.

At an earnings conference for the first quarter in May, Xiaomi management said development of EV project is still very well, so they maintained the previous target of mass production in the first half of 2024. Lei Jun said R&D in the quarter ended March increased 17.7% year-over-year to RMB4.1 billion, and investments in initiatives including EV totaled RMB1.1billion. The annual R&D expense is expected to be more than RMB20 billion.