After nearly a decade of trying, Apple finally gave up its effort to produce an electric car last year, canceling a project that soaked up $10 billion.

在近十年的努力之后，苹果公司终于在去年放弃了生产电动汽车的计划，取消了一个已经耗费100亿美元的项目。

But last year in China, the electronics maker Xiaomi launched its first electric car after just three years of development and delivered 135,000 vehicles. It has vowed to double that number in 2025.

但去年在中国，电子制造商小米经过仅三年的开发，就推出了第一款电动车，并交付了13.5万辆。该公司宣称这个数字将在2025年翻倍。

Xiaomi’s ability to succeed where Apple could not shows how thoroughly China has come to dominate the supply chain for electric vehicles. Chinese companies have mastered electric vehicle manufacturing. By tapping that infrastructure, Xiaomi was able to get components quickly and cheaply.

小米在苹果未能成功的领域取得成功显示了中国在电动汽车供应链方面已经占据了多么大的主导地位。中国企业已经掌握了电动汽车制造技术。通过利用这个基础架构，小米能够以低价迅速获取零部件。

More Chinese electric vehicle companies — including Leapmotor, Li Auto and Seres Group — are starting to turn a profit after burning cash for years in their intense competition for the world’s largest auto market.

多年来，在这个全球最大的汽车市场，包括零跑汽车、理想汽车和赛力斯集团在内的许多中国电动汽车公司烧钱展开了激烈竞争，现在它们开始获得盈利。

And Xiaomi is not the only Chinese consumer electronics company that has branched out to electric vehicles. The telecommunications giant Huawei, which the U.S. government has targeted with sanctions and legal action for years, is making autonomous driving software. Huawei has teamed up with multiple Chinese automakers, including Seres Group and the state-owned firms SAIC Motor, BAIC and Chery.

小米并非唯一一家拓展到电动汽车领域的中国消费电子公司。多年来一直受到美国政府制裁和法律行动打击的电信巨头华为正在开发自动驾驶软件。华为已经与包括赛力斯集团和国有企业上汽集团、北汽集团和奇瑞在内的多家中国车企建立了合作关系。

Xiaomi has long been compared to Apple. It made bets that its rivals rushed to imitate, like selling its low-cost, high-design phones mainly online. Its chief executive, Lei Jun, even dressed like the Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, in jeans and a black shirt, for Xiaomi’s first phone launch in 2011.

小米长期以来一直被拿来与苹果公司相比较。它所下的赌注被竞争对手竞相模仿，比如主要通过线上渠道销售的低成本、高设计感的手机。该公司首席执行官雷军在2011年推出首款手机时，跟苹果联合创始人史蒂夫·乔布斯一样身着牛仔裤和黑色套头衫。

在去年的北京车展上，小米展示了其首款汽车SU7的设计元素。

Xiaomi’s first electric car was brought out last March: the SU7, a four-door sedan with artificial intelligence features that can help with parking, play movies for passengers and program Xiaomi home appliances from the road. Mr. Lei said it looks like a Porsche. But at $30,000, it’s a quarter of the price.

小米的第一款电动车SU7于去年3月推出，这是一款具有人工智能功能的四门轿车，可以辅助停车，为乘客播放电影，以及在到家之前操控小米的家用电器。雷军说，这款车看起来像保时捷。但21万人民币的售价是保时捷的四分之一。

Xiaomi makes all kinds of electronics, from robot vacuum cleaners to air-conditioners, which are connected through its operating system and controlled in its app. The SU7 is, in some ways, just another gadget. It can use data collected from other devices about a driver’s daily routine to determine the best time to charge the car’s batteries.

小米生产各种电子产品，从机器人吸尘器到空调，这些产品通过小米的操作系统连接，并通过小米的应用程序进行控制。在某种程度上，SU7只是另一个电子产品。它可以利用从其他设备收集的关于驾驶者日常习惯的数据，来确定为汽车电池充电的最佳时间。

“Xiaomi has really started infiltrating your home,” said Gary Ng, an economist with Natixis Corporate & Investment Banking. “Everything is linked together, and this is something other companies couldn’t do.”

“小米确实已经开始渗透到你的家中，”法盛投资管理的经济学家吴卓殷说。“所有的东西都连接在一起，这是其他公司做不到的。”

While the SU7 earned Xiaomi just a small fraction of the sales of China’s top electric vehicle makers, it puts Xiaomi among the Chinese companies that are dealing a major blow to foreign automakers’ long command over China’s market for premium cars. In the year since the SU7 went on sale, Porsche deliveries in China were down nearly 30 percent.

SU7的销量与中国顶级电动汽车制造商相比不值一提，但它使小米跻身于那些对中国市场上外国豪华汽车制造商长期统治地位造成重大打击的中国公司之列。自SU7上市一年以来，保时捷在中国的交付量下降了近30%。

On Thursday night in Beijing, Xiaomi released a high-end version, the SU7 Ultra, alongside a premium version of its latest smartphone. The company staged a flashy teaser for the car by racing a prototype around Germany’s Nürburgring racetrack, where, Xiaomi said, it set a record for “fastest four-door sedan.”

上周四晚，小米在北京发布了高端版SU7 Ultra，此外还有小米最新款智能手机的高端版。该公司让一款原型车在德国纽博格林赛道上竞赛，为其上演一场华丽的预告，小米说，该车在那里创造了“最速四门车”的纪录。

Xiaomi also plans to release a sport utility vehicle, the YU7, this year, according to regulatory filings in China.

根据中国的监管文件，小米还计划今年发布一款运动型多用途车YU7。

Chinese electric vehicle companies have benefited from billions of dollars in government support, which has helped them gain control of the supply chain down to the very minerals inside the car batteries. This early edge helped two Chinese companies, BYD and Contemporary Amperex Technology Company — known as CATL and added to the Pentagon’s list of Chinese military companies in January — become the biggest electric battery makers in the world.

中国电动汽车企业受益于巨量的政府支持，这帮助它们控制了供应链，甚至包括汽车电池内部的矿物质。这种早期优势帮助比亚迪和宁德时代这两家中国公司成为世界上最大的电池制造商。今年1月，宁德时代被五角大楼列入中国军工企业名单。

Xiaomi used this supply chain to its advantage. Its cars contain batteries from BYD and CATL. It was able to quickly start production by taking over a factory from Beijing Auto Group. Construction workers in Beijing are working around the clock on a second factory.

小米充分利用了这条供应链。其汽车使用来自比亚迪和宁德时代的电池。通过收购北京汽车集团的一家工厂，小米得以迅速投产。建筑工人正夜以继日地在北京建设第二家工厂。

All this manufacturing capacity helps Chinese electric vehicle firms move from development to production in far less time than traditional automakers in China, enabling them to bring new models to market quickly and focus on making software that they can continually update, said Stephen W. Dyer, head of Asia Automotive at AlixPartners, a consultancy.

咨询公司艾睿铂的亚洲汽车业务主管戴加辉(Stephen W. Dyer)说，所有这些制造能力，令中国电动汽车公司可以用远少于中国传统汽车制造商的时间，完成从开发到生产的工作，使它们能够迅速将新车型推向市场，并专注于开发可以不断更新的软件。

Intense competition at home has pushed many Chinese carmakers to flood the global auto market with affordable electric cars. Last year, BYD sold more than four million new cars worldwide.

国内激烈的竞争促使许多中国汽车制造商向全球汽车市场投放价格低廉的电动汽车。去年，比亚迪在全球销售了400多万辆新车。

It is just a matter of time before Xiaomi cars are on the road outside China, said Cui Dongshu, secretary general of the China Passenger Car Association.

中国乘用车协会秘书长崔东树表示，小米汽车在中国以外的地方上路只是时间问题。

Xiaomi’s popularity as a maker of all kinds of consumer electronics gave it a deep well of knowledge about Chinese consumer preferences. On the first day SU7s were delivered, buyers could go to Xiaomi’s app store and get accessories to trick out the cars, like analog dashboard clocks and a row of physical switches that attach to a touch-screen panel.

作为各种消费电子产品的热门制造商，小米对中国消费者的偏好积累了深刻的了解。在SU7交付的第一天，买家就可以去小米的应用商店购买配件来装饰汽车，比如模拟仪表盘时钟和一排连接在触摸屏面板上的物理开关。

“The strength of the brand puts Xiaomi ahead of a lot of their competitors,” said Tu Le, a managing director of the consultancy Sino Auto Insights. “That’s what it takes to sell cars globally, because it’s not just a consumer product, it’s an emotional product.”

“小米品牌的实力让它领先于很多竞争对手，”咨询公司中国汽车洞察的董事总经理涂乐表示。“这就是在全球销售汽车所需要的，因为它不仅是一种消费品，更是一种情绪产品。”