Xiaomi YU7 Performance

You may never have heard of Xiaomi, but with cars as good as the YU7, it could soon be a houshold name

- Dirk Branke

FROM fridges to tablets, air-con units and even ultrasonic toothbrushes, Chinese brand Xiaomi has an incredibly wide remit when it comes to its product range.

But its venture into the world of electric cars seems to have pushed it right to the forefront of European attention. Twelve months after the release of its first EV, the impressive SU7 saloon, comes the ambitious brand's next natural step: the YU7 SUV - a model that’s already been setting the sales chart alight in its native China.

This large, stately and well formed SUV might have a design that's reminiscent of a few European brands — we're thinking a little McLaren 720S around the nose and Ferrari Purosangue at the side — but this is hardly a bad place to start when designing a new brand from scratch. Size-wise, it’s actually quite a large SUV, being slightly longer and wider yet lower than a Porsche Cayenne. This also makes it significantly larger than its more direct rival from Porsche, the Macan Electric.