Great Lakes Wire

Jim Farley, president and CEO of Ford Motor Company, said in an interview that he drives a Chinese-built Xiaomi SU7 electric car.

”I drive a Xiaomi SU7,” Farley said in an interview on CBS Sunday Morning.  “High quality. Great digital experience.”

“So you’re driving a Chinese (car)?” asked CBS host Kris Van Cleave.

”I am,” replied Farley.

The Xiaomi SU7 electric sedan, the first vehicle from Xiaomi Auto, officially launched in China in March 2024. Xiaomi Auto, founded in 2021 as a subsidiary of Xiaomi Corporation, is headquartered in Beijing.

Xiaomi Corporation, the parent company of Xiaomi Auto, has reported ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) through internal party structures. The company established a CCP committee in 2015, according to a September 2025 report from the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington-based research institute that analyzes Chinese political and security developments.

According to Belgian State Security Service (VSSE), large Chinese companies including Xiaomi Corporation maintain internal party cells of the CCP whose role is “to ensure that the company follows the CCP’s policy guidelines,” as detailed in a 2021 article by Follow the Money. That article also reported that that smartphones from Xiaomi “massively share user data with the company’s servers, including data of European users,” and that the VSSE told FTM “every Chinese company, including Xiaomi, has to share data with the government when asked to do so.”

Farley, 62, has been the president and CEO of Ford Motor Company since October 1, 2020, after joining the automaker in 2007 from Toyota, where he helped launch the Lexus brand. Before becoming CEO, he served in several executive roles, including president of Ford Europe and executive vice president of global markets.