Lei Jun, founder and CEO of Xiaomi, recently revealed that he bought three Tesla Model Ys earlier this year. But the purchase was not made for driving, rather to dismantle them piece by piece. But why? It was done in a bid to decode the engineering secrets behind Elon Musk’s bestselling electric SUV. Lei and his team meticulously studied every component.

Lei Jun on Tesla

Speaking to a packed audience at the Beijing National Convention Center this week, Jun revealed that the teardown was central to developing Xiaomi’s upcoming rival, the YU7 SUV. "We bought three Model Ys at the start of this year, disassembling the parts one by one, and studied every component, one at a time," Lei told attendees.

What happened next?

The exhaustive analysis of Tesla paid off as Xiaomi's YU7 racked up ov

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