• Xiaomi and Nio recently started offering factory tours to the public.
• They’ve proven so popular, Xiaomi has a lottery system for tickets.
• Visitors are amazed by the highly automated factories.

A huge factor in China’s rise as an EV powerhouse is its advanced, highly automated manufacturing. It’s a point of fascination and pride among the Chinese public—so much so that when automakers started running factory tours, demand far outstripped supply. To see how the sausage is made, you have to be persistent and lucky.

As Wired reports in a fascinating new story, Xiaomi, maker of the SU7 electric sedan and YU7 crossover, started offering factory tours in January. The tours proved so popular, the company quickly had to put a lottery system in place for tickets. One tour-goer who got the chance to see the factory in February shared a screenshot with Wired indicating he was one of 60 out of over 7,000 that tried to get tickets that month. For July, Xiaomi is planning to run one tour every weekday, and six over the weekend, bringing capacity to over 1,100. But evidently, over 27,000 people applied for tickets within the first day of availability. 

Nio lets people pay for factory tours, by buying 1,000 “Nio points” in its app, equivalent to about $14. Customers can also acquire free points by using the app frequently, so in theory, you could get a tour for free. Wired says Nio accommodated 130,000 factory visitors last year.

At both the Xiaomi and Nio tours, customers will see factories that are incredibly automated, with relatively few humans compared to machines. Nio told Wired that some of its production processes are entirely automated, while Xiaomi said that 91% of its total production process is automated. A Xiaomi tour attendee noted that the shuttle that carries visitors has to yield to production robots, too. 

The tours are a way for these brands to promote themselves not just to potential customers, but the public at large. Wired says this is now the “hottest ticket in Beijing.”