Xiaomi lines up German dealers as China deliveries slow

Illustrative image: a vehicle showroom, not a Xiaomi dealership or model display.

On 3 September, at IFA Berlin, Xiaomi Auto put its name on memoranda of understanding with eight German dealer groups. Ernst Dello, Autohaus Dinnebier, Emil Frey Germany, Fett & Wirtz, Hahn Automobile, LUEG Mobility, Penske-Jacobs Innovation and SPT Avior are not obscure outfits. They are the incumbent retailers of premium German brands, and Xiaomi has recruited them before it has announced a single European model, price or delivery date.

Five days later, the China Passenger Car Association published Xiaomi's August number. It delivered 30,153 cars, down 17.15 percent on August 2025 and down 3.56 percent on July. It was the second consecutive monthly fall and the first year-on-year decline since March.

Xiaomi set a 2026 target of 550,000 vehicles, a 33.8 percent lift on the 411,082 it delivered last year. Through August it has delivered 246,475, or 44.8 percent of the goal, with two-thirds of the year gone. The remaining 303,525 units require an average of about 75,900 a month for four straight months.

The two-model line-up's monthly record is 50,212 deliveries, set in December 2025, according to the CPCA series compiled by CnEVPost. The remaining target requires 75,881.25 a month, about 51 percent above that record and 2.52 times August's pace, for four months running.

Growth has not stopped. Year-to-date deliveries are up 9.65 percent, slowing from 14.83 percent through July, according to CnEVPost. But a positive cumulative growth rate does not make the annual target comfortable. Xiaomi needs a much faster finish than its delivery record so far supports.

A new source of volume arrived on 7 September, when Lei Jun launched the Sky Nomad series, as reported by CnEVPost and CARBA's EV publication. The Sky Nomad series is Xiaomi's first departure from pure battery-electric powertrains, an extended-range line-up built around a 1.5-litre turbocharged range extender the company calls Kunlun, paired with either a 52 kWh or 76 kWh battery. The five-seat N70 Pro starts at 209,900 yuan. The all-wheel-drive N70 Max is 239,900 yuan and the seven-seat N90 Max 269,900 yuan. The flagship claims 1,705 km of combined CLTC range.

The Max versions landed 20,000 and 30,000 yuan below their July presale prices, and Xiaomi says locked-in orders passed 10,000 within four minutes. It has pre-built an initial batch so buyers can take delivery in one to five weeks, which would allow those vehicles to contribute to the remaining delivery target.

There is an awkward detail underneath. The extended-range segment Xiaomi has just entered is shrinking. Chinese retail sales of EREVs fell 15.85 percent year-on-year to 616,000 units in the first eight months, and the 200,000 to 300,000 yuan band Sky Nomad targets is where Li Auto and Huawei-backed Aito already live. CARBA reports that Xiaomi's Beijing plant received clearance to build extended-range models in June.

CARBA's reporting on Xiaomi's second-quarter results adds a profitability constraint. Deliveries rose 28.2 percent year-on-year to 104,199. EV revenue rose only 15.9 percent to 23.9 billion yuan, while average selling price fell 9.6 percent to 229,312 yuan as the expensive SU7 Ultra shrank as a share of the mix. Chief financial officer Alain Lam attributed the decline to product mix rather than a change of strategy.

Gross margin for the segment that houses the car business dropped to 19.2 percent from 26.4 percent a year earlier, which Xiaomi put down to component costs and AI infrastructure spending. Segment operating loss widened to 2.6 billion yuan, a second consecutive quarterly loss after the unit posted its first full-year operating profit in 2025.

The German dealer partnerships address a different problem: how to establish retail and service coverage before customers arrive. Existing groups bring workshops, trade-in experience and local relationships. The announcements do not disclose the investment terms, so they cannot yet support a claim that Xiaomi is paying more than it would for a direct-sales network.

Yu Liguo, the Xiaomi Auto vice president who runs the international business, framed it as a long-term commitment, pointing to the company's Munich R&D centre and promising sustained investment in Europe. He said Xiaomi was “pleased to begin this new chapter with eight of the most respected automotive dealer partners in Germany.”

What he did not say is how many stores each group will open, what territories they cover, what the investment terms are, which models arrive first, what they will cost, or when in 2027 any of it happens. These are preliminary MoUs, with definitive dealership terms still undisclosed. The international website launched on 26 August still has no configurator, no local pricing and no purchase path.

Xiaomi does have scale to bring to those discussions. Lei Jun said cumulative deliveries had passed 800,000 at the September launch, CnEVPost reports. That record may help the company recruit partners; it does not settle which cars German customers will be offered or at what price.

The domestic and European timetables now ask different things of Xiaomi. Before December ends, it needs delivered cars in large numbers. Before its German launch, it needs functioning sales and service arrangements. Signed MoUs are progress on the second task, but contribute nothing to the first on their own.