Can China’s XPeng Really Compete With Tesla?
XPeng is a Chinese electric vehicle manufacturer created, like many others, with the goal of toppling Tesla as the leading manufacturer of electric vehicles. It was founded in 2014, and it began selling vehicles in China four years later. In 2022, it sold over 120,000 electric vehicles around the world after passing the 100,000 mark one year prior.
This new automaker has been in the news quite often in its almost one decade of existence, but not always for the right reasons. The company was praised for the design, technology, and innovations that it packaged into its electric vehicles, but it was also criticized for several instances of data theft that compromised the identities of many XPeng owners.
All factored in, though, XPeng is still seen as a potential major rival for Tesla, and does it have what it takes to challenge the most successful EV manufacturer the world has ever seen?
How It Started
Before diving deeper, it’s worth examining how XPeng came to be. The company was founded almost a decade ago by two former high-ranking executives from another Chinese automaker, the GAC Group. Initial backers included other important names from the Chinese tech scene, like the founder of Xiaomi or former Alibaba executive He Xiaopeng, who gave the company his name and also serves as XPeng CEO.
It took XPeng around four years from being founded to building its first production EV, the G3 crossover, which was actually unveiled in the United States at the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show (CES). It never actually went on sale Stateside, but the fact that XPeng chose CES as the reveal venue showed where the startup’s ambitions were—it wanted to become a global automaker, not just one catering to the Chinese market.
Self-Driving Focus
In trying to challenge Tesla, known for developing what is usually called the most advanced self-driving system in the automotive industry, XPeng has also invested heavily in autonomous technology. Its system is called Navigation Guided Pilo (NGP), and while it’s supposed to perform the same basic task asTesla’s Full Self-Driving solution, it is actually pretty different.
Tesla no longer equips its vehicles with radar or ultrasonic sensorsfor self-driving, relying only on its cars’ camera array linked to an advanced neural network to allow for completely autonomous driving. Xpeng also equips its vehicles with cameras that face in all directions, sothe car sees what’s around it, but it also adds other sensors such as LiDAR into the mix for better precision and performance.
In fact, XPeng was the world’s first automaker to launch a series production vehicle equipped with LiDAR, the P5 electric sedan, which launched in China in 2019. Just like Tesla, XPeng also has its own deep learning neural network, which it calls XNet, and it has enabled the company to make remarkably quick progress with its self-driving program.
Also, seemingly mirroring Tesla, XPeng initiated a trial run before the mass rollout of its NGP self-driving system. The City NGP program is operational in Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Shanghai, and, as of June 2023, Beijing as well, and the company wants to eventually expand it across China and other markets where its vehicles will be sold.
XPeng has a lineup comprised of four models, all of which are electric: the P5, P7, G3, and G9. It also has several other EVs in the pipeline, such as the G6 coupe-like crossover or the X9, which is expected to be a practical people carrier.
The most popular XPeng car is the larger of the two sedan models, the P7, which was introduced in late 2018, and it quickly started outselling the more affordable G3 crossover. The latter was also the first XPeng model to be sold outside China—it debuted in Norway in 2020, where it was joined by the P7 executive sedan and the G9 large SUV, and since then, the brand has expanded its European presence into Denmark, Sweden, and the Netherlands.
XPeng has made no secret of the fact that it is aiming to be one of the world’s leading manufacturers of electric vehicles. It eventually wants to start selling its autonomous electric vehicles in North America too, but it has not announced a clear time frame for when that will happen.
It won’t be the first Chinese automaker to begin electric vehicle sales in the States, though, as that distinction will go to NIO, a manufacturer whose presence outside China is already larger than XPeng’s, and it has already announced its US debut for 2025.
XPeng is generally regarded as a success story in China, but the company isn’t making money yet. It expects to break even by 2025, and only afterward can it look to make a profit. Until then, XPeng will continue to expand its European presence so that it can increase sales and become a true international automaker.
It sold 23 percent more cars in 2022 than it did the year before, but that puts it behind rivals from NIO and Li Auto, so it will have to pick up the pace if it wants to keep up with its Chinese rivals.
The next big milestone for XPeng is the promised rollout of its NGP advanced driver assistance software across all major Chinese cities by 2024.
Is XPeng a Real Tesla Rival?
XPeng has clearly taken inspiration from Tesla when it comes to its self-driving tech. However, unlike Tesla, which initially found little competition on home soil and easily achieved success before it expanded to other continents, XPeng needs to participate in the far more competitive Chinese electric vehicle market.
For XPeng to become a threat to Tesla, the Chinese electric vehicle maker needs to become a global success, and for that to happen, it needs to sell cars in the US. The company has announced its intention to expand to America, and the fact that it’s already in Europe is a sign that it means business, but until it gives a clear time frame to underpin its plans, we can’t quite consider it a true Chinese Tesla competitor.
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