The Human Cost of Xiaomi's Race From Smartphones to Electric Cars

267 stores, eight months and a family's loss

Wang Peizhi, a 34-year-old retail project manager at Xiaomi, worked on at least 267 stores in eight months as the smartphone company prepared to sell electric cars. In late summer, he collapsed while shopping with his young son. He died of a heart attack days later, on August 25.

Local authorities ruled that his death was not related to his job. His widow disputes that finding, pointing to months of extreme hours and stress while he helped turn shops built for phones and gadgets into spaces capable of displaying and servicing full sized sedans and sport utility vehicles.

Wang's widow said she rarely saw him during those months. He often came home after 9 p.m., with work messages still arriving on his phone. She described the loss of time with their family:

The work took all his time when he was needed as a father, as a husband.

Xiaomi expressed condolences, described Wang as a valued employee and said it supported his family. It denied wrongdoing. People who worked with him said his death did not bring a company wide change to working hours.

His story places a human cost beside Xiaomi's rapid move into electric vehicles. The company launched its SU7 sedan in 2024, introduced the YU7 sport utility vehicle in 2025 and pursued plans to reach Europe by 2027. Behind those milestones, a reduced retail team faced the task of preparing a nationwide showroom network.

How phone shops became car showrooms

Xiaomi's existing stores were central to its car strategy. Customers already knew the brand through phones and household gadgets. Bringing vehicles into that familiar network offered a way to connect the new business with an established consumer audience.

A shop conversion involved much more than moving displays. Many locations needed structural changes to support vehicle weight, entrances large enough for cars, charging and ventilation equipment, and upgrades to electrical systems and fire safety. Teams also had to change branding, retrain staff and coordinate with landlords and local inspectors.

Crews often worked through the night to finish before inspection windows and launch events. Each store brought its own practical problems, while the national schedule required many projects to move at once.

Xiaomi had reduced the retail team during the pandemic. As the SU7 launch approached, the smaller group had to manage an expanding workload across China. Wang handled major conversions while keeping routine maintenance running at existing stores.

Internal records reviewed by people familiar with the work showed his involvement in at least 267 stores over eight months. That amounts to more than 33 stores a month on average. Colleagues said he frequently took on the most complex projects, alongside the continuing demands of a large retail network.

Internal notes and photographs showed repeated travel and long routes through multiple cities as deadlines converged. Colleagues praised Wang's output and initiative, but the volume of work did not ease. Late nights, travel and constant problem solving became routine.

The final messages and disputed support

Wang was ill when he sent one of his last messages to a contractor, asking for help to meet a deadline. The retail project manager described the commitment in stark terms:

What I signed up for was a life or death commitment. Do not leave me hanging.

Days later, he collapsed while out with his son. His death left his widow with significant debts. She has sought recognition of what happened to her husband and of his contribution to Xiaomi's expansion.

His widow says a hardship payment discussed after his death never arrived and that some of his stock options were rescinded. Xiaomi maintains that it provided support and denies wrongdoing. The disagreement covers both the family's treatment after his death and the working conditions that preceded it.

The local ruling that his death was not related to work remains central to the dispute. His widow's account instead focuses on the sustained pressure, long days and limited family time during the showroom rollout.

A smartphone company takes on car manufacturing

Xiaomi announced in 2021 that it would build cars. Co founder Lei Jun called the venture his last entrepreneurial push. Moving from consumer electronics into automotive manufacturing required heavy investment in suppliers, software and a factory of its own.

The company invested more than $1 billion across its supply chain between 2021 and 2024. It recruited talent from established carmakers to shorten the learning process and brought the SU7 onto the road by early 2024.

Xiaomi presented the sedan as part of a connected digital ecosystem linking the phone, home and car. Its software and electronics experience became a central part of its pitch to buyers, alongside the consumer brand it had already built.

Early demand was strong, with deliveries climbing into the hundreds of thousands within the first year. The retail conversion programme helped create the physical network needed to support that growth.

The main milestones show how quickly Xiaomi added new responsibilities:

• In 2021, Xiaomi announced its plan to build cars.
• Between 2021 and 2024, it invested more than $1 billion across the automotive supply chain.
• In 2024, the SU7 sedan reached the market as stores were prepared for vehicle sales.
• In 2025, Xiaomi introduced the YU7 sport utility vehicle and said the car business could become profitable in the second half of the year.
• By 2027, Xiaomi plans to bring its cars to Europe.

Speed reaches beyond the showroom

Lei Jun's role extends into the organisation of vehicle development. Xiaomi created an Architecture Department that reports directly to him and drives decisions on the next generation of vehicle platforms, the underlying engineering foundations used to build cars.

Centralising those choices can reduce decision time and repeated work as hardware and software come together across different models. It can also concentrate deadlines and pressure around the teams responsible for delivering those decisions.

Xiaomi also studied rival vehicles through teardowns, taking them apart to examine their engineering. Executives described the practice as a way to learn quickly from leading designs before applying Xiaomi's own strengths in software and electronics.

Recruiting experienced automotive staff and studying competitors can shorten development. The remaining work still includes validation and safety testing. Cars also bring constraints such as crash tests, supplier contracts lasting several years and strict regulatory calendars.

The demands extend from design teams to the people preparing stores, maintaining facilities and supporting customers. Xiaomi's move into a new industry meant that the speed of a consumer technology business had to meet the responsibilities of an automotive operation.

Long working days across China's technology sector

A 2024 survey by job platform Maimai reported that Xiaomi employees averaged about 11.5 working hours a day. Reports in April 2025 said some teams were expected to work at least that long and that employees who recorded fewer than eight hours were asked to explain their shorter day. Xiaomi did not respond to questions in those reports.

Across Chinese technology companies, workers describe schedules of 11 hours or more as routine. Competition at home, rivalry with American companies in artificial intelligence and chips, and national ambitions in electric vehicles, e commerce and advanced manufacturing all contribute to the pressure.

China's National Bureau of Statistics put the average working week at 49 hours in 2024, compared with 47.9 hours in 2022. That was an increase of 1.1 hours a week over two years.

Mary Gallagher, a University of Notre Dame professor who studies labour and law in China, described the pressure in successful industries, including electric vehicles, and their importance to the country's economic confidence:

These industries that are doing so well, including on export markets, are so important to the confidence that Xi Jinping wants to see in the economy. There is enormous pressure in those places.

Work and family life have become frequent subjects of discussion on Chinese social media. Posts about extreme schedules and burnout circulate, although many are difficult to verify. The debate centres on how corporate targets and national ambition fit within the limits of human endurance.

What labour rules and health guidance say

Chinese labour law caps standard working time at 44 hours a week, while allowing employers to negotiate extensions with unions and employees. Enforcement varies and often depends on local regulators.

Recognition of a death as a work injury requires proof that it happened at work or was directly caused by work. Families rarely obtain that designation when a person collapses away from the workplace and dies days later. For Wang's family, the official ruling and his widow's account place that legal test at the heart of their disagreement.

The World Health Organization defines overwork as more than 55 hours a week and links such schedules to higher risks of heart disease and stroke. The health concern is the sustained amount of time spent working, a threshold that employees in fast moving sectors say they regularly exceed.

In 2025, China's central government issued an action plan to curb what it called unhealthy work culture and asked provinces to do more to prevent excessive hours. Earlier deaths had already brought public attention to demanding schedules.

An investigation followed the death of a young employee at a major e commerce company in 2021. In 2022, a content moderator at a leading video platform died of a brain hemorrhage. The companies denied wrongdoing, and both cases renewed debate about working conditions.

Periodic crackdowns have not ended long days. Engineers at some companies skipped vacations to meet new deadlines after breakthroughs in artificial intelligence changed competitive timelines. Government concern has continued alongside the pressure to deliver new products quickly.

The price war behind the delivery targets

China is the world's largest electric car market, and Xiaomi entered a crowded field. Market leader BYD cut prices in late May 2025, renewing a price war that had already squeezed margins across the industry.

A state newspaper warned that extreme competition on price could threaten supply chain security and damage the reputation of Chinese goods if quality deteriorated. Manufacturers launching a new model face a short period to attract buyers before competitors introduce the next wave of vehicles.

Xiaomi is pursuing the premium segment, where software, infotainment and driver assistance features help shape buying decisions. Strong demand for its first car in 2024 and 2025 encouraged the company to broaden its range with the YU7 and target deliveries of hundreds of thousands of vehicles in 2025.

The car unit nevertheless reported a loss of about 500 million yuan in the first quarter of 2025, an improvement from the previous quarter. Lei Jun said the business could turn profitable in the second half of the year. Profitability remained a target rather than an achieved result in the account of its expansion.

Xiaomi framed its automotive investment as a long term undertaking built around software capabilities and a connected consumer brand. That strategy still required the company to meet immediate demands for production, new features, showrooms and customer support while competing on price.

Safety scrutiny and a wider technical push

An SU7 crash in Anhui province killed three people early in 2025. Reports said assisted driving was engaged. The crash intensified attention on software updates, testing procedures and driver education.

Xiaomi also used public technology demonstrations to promote its engineering. In one video, Lei Jun dropped watermelons coated in material used on the vehicle's battery pack. The demonstration was intended to showcase durability and reflected his direct involvement in the company's public image.

European expansion adds another set of technical and regulatory demands. Xiaomi has opened an electric vehicle research and design hub in Munich as it prepares to bring cars to Europe by 2027.

The Munich teams focus on driver assistance systems, vehicle dynamics and user experience, with the aim of meeting strict European rules. Vehicle dynamics concerns how a car moves and responds, including its handling.

Xiaomi has also pledged to invest 50 billion yuan over a decade in developing its own chips. Potential American limits on access to chip design software could affect that effort. The car programme, European plans and chip investment together increase the number of complex projects its teams must deliver.

Building capacity without exhausting people

Wang's workload shows how a rapid expansion can place heavy demands on a small team. His responsibilities combined major store conversions, difficult individual projects, national travel and routine maintenance, while launch deadlines kept approaching.

Automotive businesses need to sustain performance across repeated product cycles. Larger teams, schedules based on available capacity, rotation of staff handling frequent travel and enforced rest around major milestones are ways to distribute the work more evenly.

Transparent overtime pay, predictable days off and mental health support can also reduce staff departures and keep experience inside a company. Burnout affects more than individual wellbeing: it can weaken quality and increase warranty costs when products need repairs.

Xiaomi's centralised engineering decisions and study of rival cars may help accelerate development, but safety validation and dependable customer support still require time and staff. Premium buyers and European regulators bring further expectations for reliable performance in everyday use.

Wang's death has made those pressures personal. His widow continues to challenge the finding that his death was not related to work, while Xiaomi says it supported the family and denies wrongdoing. The company's expansion has brought commercial momentum alongside a dispute about the demands placed on the people who helped make it possible.

What to Know

• Wang Peizhi, a Xiaomi retail project manager aged 34, worked on at least 267 stores in eight months and died of a heart attack on August 25 after collapsing while shopping with his son.
• Local authorities ruled his death was not related to work. His widow disputes that ruling and points to months of long hours and stress.
• His widow says a discussed hardship payment did not arrive and some stock options were rescinded. Xiaomi says it provided support and denies wrongdoing.
• People who worked with Wang said his death did not lead to a company wide change in working hours.
• A Maimai survey put Xiaomi's average working day at about 11.5 hours in 2024. National statistics put China's average working week at 49 hours that year.
• Xiaomi launched the SU7 in 2024 and introduced the YU7 in 2025. Its car unit lost about 500 million yuan in the first quarter of 2025, while Lei Jun said profitability could come in the second half.
• BYD's price cuts in late May increased competitive pressure in China's electric vehicle market.
• Xiaomi plans to enter Europe by 2027, has opened a vehicle research and design hub in Munich and has pledged 50 billion yuan for chip development over a decade.