On January 19, a series of fire incidents involving Xiaomi cars occurred in Haikou, Hainan and Kaifeng, Henan, putting Xiaomi cars in the spotlight once again. The incidents resulted in Xiaomi Group’s stock price dropping to a near one-year low the next day.
A viral video showed a Xiaomi SU7 car spontaneously catching fire on January 19 at an auto maintenance shop in Haikou. According to onlookers at the scene, the vehicle belonged to a car rental company and caught fire as soon as it entered the shop for a wash without even starting the water rinse.
On January 20, Xiaomi Motors released an official statement via their Weibo account addressing the incident. They mentioned that the vehicle entered parking mode at 5:30 p.m. on January 19, and after the driver and passenger left the car, at 5:34 p.m., the front seats moved, leading to a fire inside the car three minutes later. The statement noted that “up to the interruption of vehicle offline data, the power battery was in normal condition.” The fire was promptly extinguished on-site without causing any injuries.
On the same day at 4:03 p.m., another Xiaomi YU7 car caught fire after a traffic accident on the S83 Lannan Highway in Cai Zhuang Town, Weishi County, Kaifeng, Henan.
According to Xiaomi’s announcement, before the accident, the vehicle was in manual driving mode and collided with a dangerous truck on the right side due to slippery road conditions, leading to the fire. The occupants inside the car were evacuated promptly, and there were no casualties. The statement also mentioned that “as of 4:14 p.m., both the power battery and the small battery were within normal range” before the vehicle went offline.
However, the announcement did not provide an explanation for the causes of the two fire incidents. Many netizens criticized Xiaomi, expressing sentiments like “Xiaomi can never be wrong; if there’s an issue, it must be the user’s fault.” Some commented, “Simply put: the battery didn’t burn before the fire, it burned after, but the data was interrupted, so it’s normal (the data was lost during the fire).” Others raised concerns about the company’s lack of transparency in addressing the incidents.
After the announcement was made, Xiaomi’s stock price closed down by 2.74% on the same day, trading at 35.48 Hong Kong dollars per share, marking a new low since January 27th the previous year, and shrinking the market value by 676.4 billion Hong Kong dollars from its peak last year.
Since last year, there have been several fire incidents involving Xiaomi cars resulting in casualties. For example, on the evening of March 29, 2025, three female college students driving a Xiaomi SU7 to Anhui for an exam from a university in Wuhan collided on the Tongling Sunyang Highway, leading to the car exploding in flames. Due to the doors being unable to open, all three students tragically lost their lives.
Another incident occurred on October 13, 2025, when a Xiaomi SU7 collided and caught fire in Chengdu, Sichuan. The driver was trapped inside the car and unfortunately died. Upon the arrival of the fire department, the vehicle was left only as a frame after the fire was extinguished. On that day, Xiaomi’s stock price plummeted by over 7% at the opening bell.