The world's first Xiaomi YU7 GT show unmanned run in the Nurburgring 73-arc field, finishing in 10.29 minutes.

The world's first Xiaomi YU7 GT show unmanned run in the Nurburgring 73-arc field, finishing in 10.29 minutes.

Before Xiaomi YU7 GT made this record, no car in the world had ever driven around Nurburgring Nordschleife without a person sitting in the cabin, not because no one had yet thought to do it, but because the field was one of the most brutal tests in the world for both drivers and engineers, 73 curves, 20.8 kilometers, alternating up-and-down slopes, every hundred meters of road surface, and some wet ground conditions that day, causing the car to recalculate physics every second. YU7 GT passed all that in 10 minutes, 29.483 seconds, with no hands touching the steering wheel.

This statistic did not happen. Earlier in May 2026, Belgian driver Vincent Radermecker drove the YU7 GT with a time of 7 minutes 22.755 seconds, which is the fastest record for an electric production model SUV on the same field, surpassing the Porsche Cayenne Turbo GT and Tesla Model X Plaid that previously occupied this position. The autonomous lap is the conclusion that Xiaomi wants to say that its AI system understands this car as deeply as a professional driver.

The YU7 GT body comes with extraordinary numbers. The dual motor combines 738 kW or about 990-1,003 horsepower, with the front motor providing 288 kW and the rear motor providing 450 kW. Both are Xiaomi Super Motor V8s EVO, a motor that Xiaomi internally designed. It is not bought from an external supplier. The battery is a 101.7 kWh NMC or Nickel Manganese Cobalt on a 752-volt pressure platform, which is clearly higher than the 400-volt-based Tesla Model Y. The running distance according to CLTC, the Chinese standard, is 705 kilometers, but the figure from the manufacturer is often higher than the one. Actual use is about 20-25%, an acceleration of 0-100 kilometers per hour is achieved in 2.92 seconds, and a maximum speed of 300 kilometers per hour. Prices in China are 389,900-429,900 yuan, or about 57,000-63,000 US dollars.

Why is Nurburgring Nordschleife a test that no one wants to try autonomous without full readiness? The answer lies in the complexity of the field in multiple dimensions at the same time. Normal roads in cities already have variables that AI systems have to deal with, whether it's crossing roads, sudden-braking cars, or light signals. But typical road speeds are 50-80 kilometers per hour, which gives you a second of response time.

On the Nurburgring everything changed completely. The speed at some stage reached 250-300 kilometers per hour, which meant that the car was moving about 70-83 meters per second. The decision time was shrunk to just a few milliseconds. The fusion sensor system combining radar and lidar cameras had to process the position and road conditions fast enough to command before the car had already passed that point.

The most difficult thing in engineering is the limit handling or driving at the edge of physics performance. When the car is cornering at high speed, the lateral g-force forces pull the car outside. If the system forces the car to break too much, the car will oversteer, but if too little, the car will understeer running straight outside the line. The edge between these two conditions is a matter of milliseconds, and the force is only slightly different.

The system that allows the YU7 GT to handle this is torque vectoring, which is the ability to transmit different torque between the front and rear motors, including between the left and right wheels. When the car is left cornering, it can transmit more torque to the right rear wheels to help it turn the car into a curve, making control more upright than the car using the brakes alone. The Jiaolong Chassis Master Edition chassis with CDC shock absorbers or shock absorbers that are continuously retardant and closed dual-chamber air springs or double-chamber air springs, allowing the suspension stiffness to be adjusted gradually in all conditions. All of these must run simultaneously in 10 minutes. No driver helped fix the mistake.

In the autonomous driving world, there are two completely different visions. Waymo, Google's Alphabet subsidiary, chooses a safety-first approach, with Waymo's car running in the city at low speeds, emphasizing accident avoidance, predicting another driver's behavior, and using a pre-made high-resolution 3D map. The car can run safely in a defined area, but still can't handle environments that have never been mapped out before.

Tesla FSD, or Full Self-Driving, chooses the central approach: using a camera primarily without lidar and learning from real driver data millions of miles from Tesla's car fleet around the world. The advantage is that the system learns from real-world situations quickly, but the limitation is that it still needs driver supervision in complex situations.

Xiaomi chose the performance-first, which is completely different. The autonomous lap at Nurburgring says that the AI system needs to understand the physics of the car at a level deep enough to drive in limited conditions, which requires a real-time model of accurate car behavior rather than driving in ordinary cities. If the system can handle Nurburgring, driving on conventional roads is theoretically much easier.

More important than the statistic is that sales of the YU7 in its first month of launch achieved 37,869 vehicles, became number one in China, and pushed the Tesla Model Y to number 20 in the same month. This figure says that Chinese consumers see Xiaomi as a serious competitor, not just a brand trying to emulate Tesla. The autonomous development plan is clear and measurable by time figures on the field, allowing buyers to see the direction of technology in the cars they hold.

For Thais who are interested in the YU7 as an option, it is expected to launch in Thailand in September 2026 with a starting price of about 1.03 million for the Standard model, which overlaps the Tesla Model Y price range currently sold in Thailand. Comparing these two cars, be aware of many things.

The first is that the YU7 battery uses the NMC, which provides a higher energy density than the LFP used by some Tesla Model Y Standard Range models. The advantage of the NMC is that the running distance per charge is better in the same pack size, but the thing to check is that the NMC is more sensitive to high temperatures than the LFP in Thai hot weather, where high temperatures exceeding 35 degrees Celsius are common. The degeneration of SOH or State of Health, which is to say how much of the battery still stores energy compared to new episodes, may occur faster in Thai weather.

YU7's 752-volt platform allows for high-altitude DC Fast Charge or Direct Fast Charging, but currently chargers in Thailand that support 150-250 kW are limited. Buyers should check if regular routes have supported stations before making a decision. In addition, Xiaomi EV service centers in Thailand are in their infancy, as opposed to Tesla, which has a longer service center and spare parts delivery history in the Thai market. The quality and availability of after-sales services is a variable to ask the agent clearly.

For autonomous driving, the feature tested at Nurburgring is a system that Xiaomi developed for the market and infrastructure in China. The operation of the system in Thai roads with different conditions, including signage and different driving from China. It needs separate testing and tuning. The agent should ask if the ADAS of YU7 sold in Thailand is localized for Thai roads.

There are three obvious things to follow. The first is the announcement of the price and the model that Xiaomi will officially import in Thailand during September 2026. The GT models that make the Nurburgring and Standard models have very different prices and different specs bring different practical uses. The second is the number of EV registrations in Thailand during the third and fourth quarters of 2026, which tells whether the Thai EV market is expanding at a level that really supports the new brand. And the last is the SOH test of NMC in Thai weather from independent testing organizations. Because the numbers from Thai hot weather manufacturers and figures are often And the buyer with this set of information will make a more accurate decision than the person who reads the spec sheet.

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