By WU Yangyu, ZHU Xiaoyu

Xiaomi has obtained approval from China's national planning authorities to manufacture EVs, a big step forward to its goal of starting mass production in early 2024, sources said. It has chosen CALB and CATL as the battery suppliers for its EV endeavors.

Jiemian News sought confirmation from Xiaomi regarding this matter. As of the time of writing, Xiaomi has not provided a comment. Open data showed the company has registered and filed the domain name "xiaomiev.com" for its website.

Sources said until the lawsuit between CALB and CATL settles down, CATL will be the primary supplier, and Xiaomi has little bargaining power. Earlier this month, a patent dispute between CATL and CALB came to a conclusion and CALB’s batteries are now cleared for use, but CATL is not exactly overjoyed by the turnaround.

One battery pack will cost Xiaomi at least 80,000 yuan (US$11,000), about half of the cost of the car. With such high prices, the EV is going to be a lot more expensive than the very ordinary midrange phones that are Xiaomi's stock in trade. Xiaomi has internally tagged its first model, a sportscar, at as much as 300,000 yuan, a pretty luxurious ticket.

Sources also revealed that Xiaomi is not planning to make money from selling cars. The idea is to sell software, which is quite an unusual step considering Xiaomi has no experience in such high-level software design.

Last year, the phone maker spent 3.1 billion yuan on R&D of EVs. This year, Xiaomi plans to double the investment.