BYD
The factories are becoming the new showrooms for Chinese electric brands, with visits to be very crowded. The automation of most work is the main attraction.
Visits to electric vehicle factories are becoming an unexpected phenomenon in China, attracting tens of thousands of visitors enthusiastic every month. Leading the trend is Xiaomi, the technology giant that became an electric car manufacturer, which began to offer public visits to its factory in Beijing in early 2025. The experience not only includes a close view of the company’s highly automated production lines, but also a high speed test in the SU7 EV.
What started as a limited offer of Three visits per monthit quickly turned into a large -scale initiative. Xiaomi now offers visits on business days and weekends, receiving more than 1100 visitors per month. However, demand still far surpasses the offer – More than 27 000 applications They were sent on a day after the opening of the vacancies for July.
The visits have won the public, many of which are not even potential car buyers. Instead, they are attracted to Advanced Robotics Showby the elegant production lines and the lectures and interviews of the charismatic founder of Xiaomi, Law Jun. Visitors visit three active production lines and experience the speed and acceleration of SU7 firsthand on a running track, explains.
The Xiaomi factory, with 91% automation, exemplifies the change from China to the “lights-out” manufacturing-so advanced factories that they can Operate without human workers. Yuanyuan, a mother resident in Beijing who visited the factory with her 13-year-old daughter, observed the shortage of human labor: “They were just robotic arms doing the job,” he said. Your daughter came out with worrying thinking: “I need to study more, or I won’t find work in the future. It will be the robots to do everything.”
The boom of the factory tours is also being embraced by other car manufacturers. Nio, another Chinese leader in electric vehicles, opened its factory in Hefei to the public in 2024, receiving More than 130 000 visitors. Its workshop has fully automated production lines. Nio tours cost about 14 dollars or can be accessed through loyalty points, which makes them a marketing and customer involvement tool.
Experts say these experiences are part of a broader strategy of emerging Chinese car manufacturers to directly bind to younger and technology -attentive consumers. Some companies are really Invite the students of basic education Visiting your factories, a long -term strategy to build affinity with the brand early on.
