Episode five of a ten-part series with which heise/Autos takes a look at the Chinese car market. There, Chinese electric car manufacturers are warming up – partly with strong support from the so-called Communist Party – in order to soon roll up the domestic and international markets with a lot of momentum and a colorful bouquet of the most modern cars. This should not remain without consequences for the German car manufacturers, whose largest single global market has been China for several years.
On the one hand, this will foreseeably change the picture on German and European roads, but will also have an impact on German producers and their sales in China, the world’s largest single market.
The best is only now to come: if Xpeng has his way, it will be an SUV called the G9. For the manufacturer, the vehicle marks something like a new generation of electric cars. It should combine everything that makes the brand strong and become the new gold standard for electric cars, also in Europe. Xpeng has long dared to go west.
The G9 is 4.89 meters long and comes with either 230 with rear-wheel drive or 405 kW with all-wheel drive. The car costs the equivalent of between 42,000 and 64,000 euros in China. The car has been available to order there since the beginning of September 2022 – and 23,000 customers did so within the first 24 hours. For comparison: Tesla delivered 172,418 Model Y units to customers in the People’s Republic in the first nine months of the year.
Xpeng G9: fast charging and autonomous driving
The G9 should be able to do two things in particular: fast charging and autonomous driving. Thanks to the 800-volt on-board network, enough power for around 200 kilometers reaches the battery within five minutes under favorable conditions. Xpeng markets the vehicle as “the world’s fastest-charging mass-produced EV”. If you have a little more time to charge, you can achieve a total range of 702 kilometers in the Chinese cycle CLTC. The CATL battery should also be particularly easy to recycle. Xpeng follows the same tactics as Tesla, so in China the cars can be charged free of charge at the charging stations of the manufacturer and the cooperation partners. Xpeng maintains around 1,200 charging points of its own and has contracts with partners for around 200,000 more.
The full-size SUV should bring the manufacturer new market shares thanks to enormously advanced AI.
Point two is autonomous driving. Xpeng will launch autonomous taxi service in Guangzhou in 2023. Other cities are to follow, all with said G9. In China, robotaxis are considered to be a major business field of the future. Xpeng has the advantage of being able to use the production G9, while other manufacturers have yet to upgrade their vehicles with the appropriate technology. The G9 is considered one of the production cars with the most advanced AI for autonomous driving in China.
Xpeng on course for Europe
So it’s no wonder that Xpeng is hoping for a boost from the G9. In the first nine months of 2022, the brand has a total of 98,000 vehicles. It should be around 125,000 to 130,000 throughout the year. This means that the sales figures have almost doubled. Xpeng is already present on the European market. In Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Holland there are centrally located showrooms that resemble living rooms.
The Danish Xpeng store is located in the center of Copenhagen, directly opposite Tivoli. Only three minutes walk from the main train station. Everything is clad in wood, there is espresso, and if you want to take a test drive in the P7 limousine, you have to wait a maximum of 15 minutes. In the future, the brand wants to sell half of all vehicles outside of China. However, the manufacturer does not give a year for the ambitious goal.
In China, car designers generally opted for a rather plain interior.
With the current range of models, the goal is just a pipe dream anyway. The P7 is a very good electric car. It’s unspectacular in the best sense of the word. The choice of materials is first-class, the workmanship at a premium level. However, it is just a sedan. A vehicle class that lost importance in the SUV boom and only still plays a role because of the company vehicles. After all: Because of the high taxes on combustion engines in Denmark, the Xpeng P7 (around 56,000 euros) is cheaper there than a comparable Audi A4.
Xpeng has the wherewithal
Funds are available for Xpeng’s expansion plans. The IPO in the summer of 2020 raised $1.5 billion, and an additional share issue brought in another $2.5 billion. Because the money was cheap in the financial markets, the brand also took out extremely cheap loans of over 2.5 billion dollars from the Bank of China, the China Construction Bank and the Agricultural Bank of China. In addition, with Alibaba, Foxconn and Xiaomi, three large and prominent companies are involved, as well as more discreet financiers from the USA, Qatar and Abu Dhabi.
Given the successes in the areas of charging and autonomous driving, the money seems to have been used successfully. So successful that Elon Musk accused the Chinese competitor of stealing his technology. For autonomous driving, XPeng relies on a combination of high-resolution cameras, ultrasonic and lidar sensors. The latter made Tesla suspicious, although the technology is no longer a rarity in the automotive sector. The allegations remained, Tesla was unable to provide any evidence.
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(fpi)
