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STORY: Xiaomi looks to be enjoying a strong debut in the market for electric cars.

Better known as a phone maker, the firm launched its first EV last week.

The SU7 sedan is priced from just under $30,000.

On Monday, the Xiaomi app was showing waits of up to seven months to get one of the cars.

The firm says it took almost 89,000 orders in the vehicle's first 24 hours on sale.

Over the weekend, company boss Lei Jun said Xiaomi had taken action to stop scalpers placing orders for the cars.

However, analysts will be watching to see if the company can sustain its early success, because it enters the market at a very tough time.

China is in the middle of a fierce price war over EVs, and there could already be signs of casualties.

On Monday, Reuters reported that state-owned carmaker SAIC Motor plans to cut thousands of jobs.

That includes more than half of all workers at its Rising Auto EV unit.

Long China’s biggest automaker, SAIC has been hit by the rise of newcomers like Tesla and local rival BYD - now the world’s biggest maker of electric cars.

A SAIC spokesperson called the Reuters report “speculation”.