Xiaomi look-alike Luxeed RX goes on sale

Things do change awfully quick in China. It wasn't that long ago when domestic brands shamelessly copied the shapes of Land Rovers, pinched the quad headlamps of Mercedes sedans, and put Porsche Macan rear ends onto budget crossovers. They did it because everyone then agreed that Western engineering and design were the gold standard. How times have changed…

Today, China's domestic electric vehicle market is the most advanced and saturated on the planet. But the copycat instinct hasn't disappeared - it has turned inward. Local automakers stopped looking across the Pacific or over to Stuttgart for design inspiration - now they are cribbing notes from one another. Take five steps back from the newly unveiled Luxeed RX, and unless you have tunnel vision, you could swear you were looking at Xiaomi YU7.

The Luxeed brand's (joint venture between state-owned Chery and tech titan Huawei) fourth model was penned under the creative direction of former Pininfarina and Ferrari designer Werner Gruber. The RX wears its exotic inspiration with pride - you get a stretched, cab-rearward silhouette, an elongated hood line, and a hunkered-down roofline that deliberately echoes the muscular profile of a Ferrari Purosangue.

Yet in final execution, the sleek packaging feels so in-tune with Xiaomi's design playbook that you have to wonder whether both styling studios were peering over each other's shoulders.

The Luxeed RX is a substantial beast: 197.6 inches long, 79 inches wide, and 62.4 inches tall. It edges the Xiaomi YU7 out by exactly 0.83 inches in total length. Compare that to the Tesla Model Y, and the difference becomes comical. The Model Y is 187 inches long across a 113.8 inches wheelbase - leaving the American looking upright, truncated, and utilitarian next to the low-slung, road-hugging RX.

To finish off the looks, Luxeed fit staggered rubber as standard, wrapping 10 inches front tires and chunky 10.8 inches rear ones on a choice of 20-inch or optional 22-inch alloy wheels. Around back, the full-width taillight cluster packs 10,000 individually positioned crystal elements. It's a serious over-the-top styling garnish, but when you are fighting for attention in Shenzhen or Shanghai, subtlety is a death sentence.

When reservations for the RX originally opened back in August, Luxeed tested the waters with an opening estimate of RMB 299,800. By late September, pre-sale messaging shaved that figure down to RMB 269,800. By the time the official launch event wrapped up on Monday, the company had slashed the entry point even further, officially debuting the RX Max at RMB 259,800 (around $38,550).

In a bid to convince fence-sitters, early adopters can claw back an additional RMB 40,500 in limited-time perks and subsidies. That puts the RX right on the heels of the standard Xiaomi YU7, which kicks off at RMB 233,500 (roughly $34,780). The RX comes in six distinct trims - Max, Max LR, Ultra, Ultra LR, Ultra LR AWD, and the flagship Ultra+ with prices stretching all the way to RMB 389,800 (around $58,065). That ceiling sits right on par with Xiaomi's halo YU7 GT at RMB 389,900 - this is no coincidence.

The RX rides on Huawei's Tuling platform, focused on torsional stiffness. Thanks to a chassis crafted from 90.5% high-strength steel and structural aluminum alloys, the body shell achieves a rigidity exceeding 36,900 lb-ft/degree - that's as good as carbon-tub supercars. The core safety cell is fortified with over 125 ft of ultra-hot-formed steel, with ten critical components rated at 2200 MPa and another two forged from 2400 MPa metal.

Huawei's next-generation electric drive architecture uses electric motors that can spin up to a howling 21,000 rpm. The rear-wheel-drive configurations use a single permanent magnet motor generating 277 kW (371 hp). Step up to the dual-motor all-wheel-drive trims, and a 160 kW induction unit joins the party on the front axle, turning the combined output all the way up to 437 kW (586 hp). Plant your right foot from a dead stop, and the RX shoots from 0 to 62 mph in a savage 3.6 seconds. Thankfully, the braking hardware matches the straight-line thrust, hauling this heavy crossover from 62 mph down to a dead halt in {{32.4 meters}}.

Straight-line launches are easy to program into the car, but handling dynamics need old-fashioned chassis tuning, and here Luxeed chose to spend some serious time on development. Engineers took the range-topping RX Ultra+ to the demanding curves of the Zhejiang International Circuit. The result was a lap time of 1:43.210 - officially the fastest Chinese electric SUV around the venue.

The RX snatched bragging rights away from the Xiaomi YU7 Max, which posted a 1:43.384 around the same track. Shaving nearly two tenths of a second off a track time looks small on paper, but it reveals real composure in active suspension management, and clever torque distribution that resists chronic electric understeer. Xiaomi still has the wild card with their yet-to-be-timed YU7 GT, but for now, Luxeed gets to celebrate.

Entry-level models come with an 81.1 kWh lithium iron phosphate battery, and long-range editions get a beefy 100 kWh ternary lithium pack. Across the model range, rated CLTC driving ranges go from 418 miles to 529 miles. Real-world driving will never achieve those optimistic laboratory figures, but at least the 800V high-voltage architecture eliminates long highway waits. Plugged into an ultra-fast DC charger, the battery can go from 30% to 80% in about 15 minutes.

The interior perfectly demonstrates how Chinese cockpits are transforming into digital lounges. Ahead of the driver sits a 26-inch augmented-reality head-up display projecting directions onto the road surface, complemented by an instrument cluster and a digital rearview mirror. The center 16.1-inch floating touchscreen can swivel toward the driver or passenger, who gets a dedicated 8.88-inch display anyway.

The front seats come with zero-gravity recline modes, and they have 98 individual pressure sensors and 27 air bladders that change side support based on your posture and cornering G-forces. Take an unexpected left-hander, and the outer bolsters firm up to hold your body in place. On a practical side of things, the 22 ft³ of rear cargo space is backed by another 1.06 ft³ of hidden sub-floor space, complete with a quirky hands-free "Knock Knock" opening mechanism.

Huawei's fingerprints become unmistakable in the autonomous driving hardware, designed from the ground up to be true Level 3. The integrated four-LiDAR setup uses a high-precision 896-channel dual-optical-path imaging unit working with three solid-state LiDAR sensors. In total, there are 38 sensors monitoring traffic conditions.

To meet stringent safety standards for driver-off automation, the RX has full physical redundancy across eight essential vehicle systems, including steering, braking, computing, perception, communications, interaction, positioning, and high-voltage power. With official government road-testing permits already secured for urban expressways, the car can apparently handle address-to-address navigation through city traffic, but the driver still has to supervise.

The RX launch starts an interesting chapter for Chery and the HIMA ecosystem. Having already populated Chinese showrooms with the S7 sedan, the R7 coupe crossover, and the V9 executive minivan, the RX gives the partnership something to counteract Xiaomi's invasion. According to Luxeed executive director Zhao Changjiang, 70% of early reservation holders are buying the RX as an additional vehicle for established multi-car households - a metric indicating that affluent buyers see this as a high-tech lifestyle addition rather than a first-car compromise.

Via