I should get my bias out of the way first. I am a huge fan of cars, especially supercars. I have spent more evenings than I will admit watching onboard laps of the Nordschleife, and I can tell a V10 from a flat-plane V8 with my eyes shut.
Whatever affection is left over, I give to vintage cars, and most of it goes to the classic Porsches and Ferraris. An air-cooled 911 is not quick by any modern measure. Neither is a 365 GTB/4 Daytona…
Image Credits: The Classic Motor Hub
Neither ever needed to be. The shape carries something a spec sheet cannot hold: a feeling, a vibe, the particular time it came from, and an elegance nobody has managed to design on purpose since. I can stand in front of one that is switched off and going nowhere and be perfectly happy.
So when a consumer electronics fair starts parking hypercars next to the air fryers, I pay attention, and I bring both of those instincts with me.
That is roughly what happened in Berlin this week. IFA 2026 ran from 4 to 8 September at Messe Berlin with more than 1,900 brands from 49 countries, and the most talked-about stands were not televisions or laptops. They were cars. Xiaomi turned up at its first IFA with a 3,300-square-metre hall of its own. Volkswagen cooked currywurst using a power socket in an electric SUV. XPeng brought a car, a humanoid robot, and a flying machine, and argued they were the same product.
None of this is an accident. The centre of gravity in cars has moved from the engine bay to the software stack, and the companies that are good at software stacks already have a booth at IFA.
The centrepiece of Xiaomi’s stand (H6.2-101, Hall 6.2) was the Vision Gran Turismo, and it is a properly strange object.
Image Credits: Heise
It was built for Polyphony Digital’s Vision Gran Turismo programme, the long-running project that began in 2013, in which manufacturers design a fantasy car for the Gran Turismo games. Ferrari has done one. Porsche has done one. Bugatti has done one. Xiaomi is the first Chinese brand invited in, and the first technology company of any nationality. The physical concept first appeared in metal at MWC in Barcelona in March, and Berlin was its second public outing.
The numbers are video-game numbers, which is the point. More than 1,900 horsepower, running on a 900-volt silicon carbide architecture. A drag coefficient of 0.29 with a claimed downforce figure of 1.2 and an aerodynamic efficiency rating of 4.1, which puts its downforce-to-drag ratio in Le Mans hypercar territory. Top speed is around 350 km/h.
That’s when it ceases to be a standard fantasy car. Instead of using bucket seats, Xiaomi has adopted what it terms the Sofa Racer arrangement, the seats, the door cards and the dashboard merging together to form one unbroken ring that goes around the driver. An aircraft-type throttle shifter and a steer-by-wire steering wheel in the shape of an infinity symbol are included.
In the middle is Xiaomi Pulse, a 360-degree assistant integrated into the instrument panel that keeps an eye on the driver’s inputs, while a system named HyperVision alters the content displayed on the screens according to the driving mode: showing minimal telemetry when on the track and providing full navigation during a road trip.
It will never actually be constructed; the only aspect of it is that it is playable in Gran Turismo 7, which is all that has been required. As a form of brand publicity it is successful since it does what concept cars are meant to do and almost never manage: it shows what the company believes a car should be used for.
Parked next to the concept was the SU7 Ultra, and this is where a lot of coverage gets the facts wrong, so it is worth laying out properly.
Image Credits: CNET
The SU7 Ultra is genuinely extreme. Three in-house motors: a front V6s unit making 288 kW and two rear V8s units making 425 kW each, the rear pair spinning to 27,200 rpm. Combined output is 1,138 kW, quoted as 1,548 PS (about 1,527 hp in the imperial measure most English-language outlets use). Zero to 100 km/h in 1.98 seconds. A 93.7 kWh CATL Qilin pack on an 800-volt architecture.
Xiaomi does have a Nürburgring story. It just is not the one usually told.
On 1 April 2025, a production SU7 Ultra driven by Vincent Radermecker lapped the Nordschleife in 7:04.957, taking the production EV record from the Porsche Taycan Turbo GT’s 7:07.55. A stripped-out SU7 Ultra prototype had gone quicker still, 6:46.874 in October 2024, but a prototype is not a production car and the two numbers should never be quoted in the same breath.
Then it lost the record. Twice.
On 22 August 2025, BYD’s Yangwang U9 Xtreme, with Moritz Kranz driving, ran 6:59.157, becoming the first EV to break seven minutes at the Nordschleife. And on 7 May 2026, Porsche took it back: a Taycan Turbo GT with the Weissach Package and the Manthey Kit, Lars Kern driving, posted 6:55.553.
So as of IFA 2026, the fastest production EV around the Nordschleife is a Porsche, not a Xiaomi. If you see the SU7 Ultra described as the current record holder, that claim is around sixteen months out of date.
It’s worth adding the asterisk that applies to all of these: the Manthey Kit brings track tyres, serious aero and powertrain changes that no owner would run on a public road. Porsche’s “production” claim rests on the kit being a factory option. Every car in this list is a specially prepared variant measured against a slightly different definition. I would treat the whole leaderboard as marketing with a stopwatch attached, which does not make it less fun to argue about.
Behind the theatre, Xiaomi came to Berlin to do business.
The volume car on the stand was the second-generation SU7, launched in China in March 2026. In Max trim it makes 508 kW (691 PS) and 866 Nm from a dual-motor all-wheel-drive setup, does 0 to 100 km/h in 3.08 seconds, and carries a 101.7 kWh gross pack on a 897-volt system, rated at 835 km CLTC. Chinese pricing starts at 303,900 yuan for the Max. CLTC is an optimistic cycle, so expect a materially lower WLTP figure when European numbers land.
Image Credits: EVSearch.ca
The YU7, which is Xiaomi’s 4.99-metre SUV based on the Modena platform, was shown outside the hall. It was launched in China in June 2025 and features the same 800-volt silicon carbide architecture as well as 5.2C charging that Xiaomi says enables a charge of up to 620 km in fifteen minutes.
Image Credits: Luxury Car
The most important announcement was concerning its retail strategy. Xiaomi has confirmed that it will launch in Europe in 2027 and has entered into memoranda of understanding with eight of Germany’s largest dealer groups: Ernst Dello, Autohaus Dinnebier, Emil Frey Germany, Fett & Wirtz, Hahn Automobile, LUEG Mobility, Penske-Jacobs Innovation and SPT Avior. This represents a deliberate decision.
While most new entrants into the electric vehicle market rely on a direct-sales app along with a number of city showrooms, Xiaomi is instead joining the established German dealer network, a network which includes groups that have many decades of experience with Mercedes-Benz and other makes. The company already operates an R&D centre in Munich and has delivered over 700,000 vehicles in mainland China since March 2024. The models intended for Europe are the SU7 and the YU7.
The rest of the stand made the strategic point: 380-plus products across seven categories, all wired into the Human × Car × Home framing, with an AIoT platform Xiaomi says spans 1.1 billion connected devices excluding phones, tablets and laptops. The car is being sold as another node.
If Xiaomi came to IFA to look expensive, Volkswagen came to look useful.
The ID. Cross took its bow on 15 July 2026 and is the electric answer to the T-Cross. It is front-wheel drive only, with three outputs: 85 kW (116 PS), 99 kW (135 PS) and 155 kW (211 PS).
Image Credits: AMAG
Batteries are 37 kWh or 52 kWh net, WLTP range runs to 427 km, and DC charging peaks at 90 kW or 105 kW depending on pack, both giving 10 to 80 percent in roughly 23 to 24 minutes. It measures 4,153 mm long on a 2,601 mm wheelbase, with a 450-litre boot and a 25-litre frunk. Prices open at €27,995 for the Trend, rising to €36,525 for the 155 kW car. Inside there is a 10.25-inch Digital Cockpit Pro cluster and a 12.9-inch touchscreen, with the Innovision system as an option rather than standard. It is built at Volkswagen Navarra in Pamplona, with European market launch this autumn.
The demo, though, is what people photographed. Volkswagen ran an induction hob off the ID. Cross’s 3.6 kW vehicle-to-load socket and cooked currywurst on stage. Alongside it, the ID. Polo was set up as a mobile 3D-printing station, with the creator team BigBangBash running a printer out of the boot on the car’s own battery.
The ID. Polo came out in May 2026 as well, being front-wheel drive and having a maximum power output of 211 PS, with battery capacities of 37 kWh (329 km WLTP) or 52 kWh (454 km WLTP) and 105 kW DC charging.
Image Credits: Citygate Leasing
In Germany the starting price for the Trend model is €24,995, although there is a caveat which has not been adequately reported: due to constraints in the supply of LFP cells the cheap entry model is not expected until late 2026 or early 2027, the vehicles launched being the 52 kWh versions priced above €30,000. The advertised price and the price actually payable are not the same at this stage.
One correction while I am here, because I have seen it repeated: these Volkswagens are not 800-volt cars. The MEB-based small EVs run a 400-volt architecture. The 800-volt talk in this segment belongs to Xiaomi and to Porsche, not to the ID. family.
XPeng’s booth in CityCube Hall B (Stand 142) was the most conceptually interesting thing at the show, because it laid out three time horizons side by side.
The near term is the L03, a 4.65-metre SUV coupé and the car XPeng is actually selling in Europe.
Image Credits: Electric Vehicle Web
German pricing starts at €35,600 for the battery-electric version and €38,600 for the PowerX extended-range model, with deliveries from Q4 2026 across a 65-market launch. The BEV manages up to 520 km WLTP and 10 to 80 percent in about twenty minutes; the range-extender claims more than 1,000 km combined. Rear-drive versions do 0 to 100 km/h in around 7.5 seconds, with quicker all-wheel-drive Performance trims above them. Consumption is quoted at 15.3 to 18.4 kWh per 100 km. It was styled by JuanMa Lopez, formerly Ferrari’s chief exterior designer, and it slips through the air at a drag coefficient of 0.228, which is the sort of number that used to require a teardrop tail and no door mirrors.
The interesting bit is the silicon. The L03 Ultra carries three of XPeng’s own Turing chips for a combined 2,250 TOPS of AI compute, running the XOS 6 cockpit (the first XPeng with native Google Maps built in). From 2027 that hardware is meant to enable semi-automated driving through XPeng’s VLA 2.0 system, explicitly subject to European regulatory approval. That last clause is doing a lot of work, and XPeng was upfront about it.
The mid term was IRON, XPeng’s humanoid robot, with more than 82 degrees of freedom and the same Turing silicon as the car. No sale date.
Aridge is the name now being used for the division previously called XPeng AeroHT, and this is the one that features the Land Aircraft Carrier. I would like to set the record straight on another common way of describing it: it is not an aircraft on a trailer. Rather, it is a six-wheeled ground vehicle which carries and charges a detachable six-rotor, dual-duct eVTOL equipped with folding arms and blades.
Outside of Berlin, the programme has progressed further than the stand indicated: the first unit was completed at XPeng’s 120,000 square metre plant in Guangzhou on 3 November 2025, approximately 7,000 preorders have been reported, and the price remains under 2 million yuan (around $280,000), with early deliveries scheduled for 2026 and volume sales to take place in 2027. At IFA, XPeng presented it only as a concept and provided no specifications or timeline, which tells you something about how it rates the European regulatory path.
Three things stood out, and none of them is about horsepower.
The first is that the barrier to entry has moved. Xiaomi went from announcing a car programme to 700,000 deliveries and a Nordschleife record in about four years. That is not because building cars got easy. It is because the parts of a car that now differentiate it, the battery chemistry, the inverters, the compute, the operating system, are the parts a consumer electronics company already knows how to buy and integrate.
The second point is that the interesting fight is over the boring cars. The Vision Gran Turismo will get the clicks, but the ID. Cross at €27,995 and the L03 at €35,600 are the products that decide who wins Europe. That is also where the least glamorous detail matters most: Volkswagen’s €24,995 ID. Polo is real on paper and delayed in practice because of LFP cell supply. Cell contracts, not concept cars, set the timetable.
The third point is that people are now offering an ecosystem rather than just selling vehicles; for example, Xiaomi with its Human × Car × Home approach, XPeng with a single chip family that applies to a car, a robot and an aircraft, and Volkswagen with a socket in the boot which powers a 3D printer. The emphasis has moved from what the car does to what the car can do for all the other things you own.
I will admit the supercar fan in me left slightly wistful. There was no engine noise in Berlin, and a 1,900 hp hypercar you can only drive with a controller is a strange kind of progress. But watching a Porsche, a BYD and a Xiaomi trade lap records within sixteen months of each other, I would argue the competitive instinct that made supercars fun in the first place is alive. It has just moved to a different set of companies, and they exhibit in Hall 6.2.
The other half of me, the half that loves old Porsches and Ferraris, is harder to satisfy here. It is not about speed. It is that a 911 or a Daytona was designed to be worth looking at while parked, and very little in these halls was. The one exception is the Vision Gran Turismo, which is also the only car at IFA that will never be built. There is probably a lesson in that, and I am not sure the industry wants to hear it. It is also worth noticing which badge is on the car that currently holds the Nordschleife record. The company that spent sixty years making shapes people keep in garages is the same one still setting the time to beat.
IFA 2026 ran 4 to 8 September at Messe Berlin. All prices are German list prices at time of writing. Chinese CLTC range figures are not directly comparable to European WLTP figures.