XPeng is racing towards becoming a car manufacturing giant

Author | Wang Xiaojun

Editor | Chai Xuchen

Since the second half of last year, XPeng has successively launched two popular models, MONA M03 and P7+, achieving a phased small victory.

In the first quarter of this year, XPeng delivered a total of 94,000 new cars, securing the sales champion among new forces, which has attracted industry attention.

After starting a favorable situation, XPeng's pace has become tighter, having released new models for two consecutive months. However, moving forward, XPeng still needs to improve its positioning and profit margins. This task has been assigned to the XPeng X9.

On April 15, XPeng held a "Global Love Night" launch event at the Kai Tak Cruise Terminal in Hong Kong, officially launching the 2025 flagship MPV XPeng X9, priced at 359,800 to 419,800 yuan. This is also XPeng's first brand launch event aimed at global consumers.

At this launch event, in addition to unveiling the 2025 XPeng X9, XPeng Motors Chairman He Xiaopeng also revealed a series of upcoming business rhythms. Extended-range models, overseas expansion, AI chips, flying cars, humanoid robots... XPeng's technology tree, centered on AI and based on electric power, is being accelerated.

To realize these planned futures, it will test XPeng's organizational capabilities while also testing XPeng's wallet. After all, many players in the industry have already achieved profitability. If XPeng can quickly achieve breakeven, the future cycle will undoubtedly be smoother.

No Price Reduction This Time

One year after its launch, XPeng upgraded its most expensive model, the flagship MPV XPeng X9, and chose Hong Kong as the location for the new model's release.

Hong Kong can be said to be the birthplace of MPVs. The Toyota Alphard and Mercedes-Benz V from the era of fuel vehicles are top benchmarks in the market; in the era of new energy, ZEEKR 009 has also competed in Hong Kong.

This time, the 2025 XPeng X9 also chose Hong Kong. For this car, if its focus on technological luxury can gain consumer recognition in this mature MPV market, it will lay a foundation for success in other markets.

Additionally, He Xiaopeng stated that the location of this launch event was where XPeng conducted its roadshow when it was listed in Hong Kong, and choosing Hong Kong is also a hope to connect with the world from there.

In the past year, the XPeng X9 was once the sales champion in the pure electric MPV market. During the relatively sluggish sales period for XPeng in the first half of last year, this car contributed significantly to XPeng's sales and helped improve profitability.

In this upgrade, XPeng emphasized creating for family users based on over a year of observation of this car's users, with a total of 496 details completely restructured, and 35% of the components fully renewed and upgraded. "It seems like an annual facelift, but it is actually a significant renewal."

Moreover, at this launch event, XPeng also emphasized its NVH capabilities, which have been particularly highlighted by many car companies targeting family users.

To enhance this capability, XPeng invested over 50 million in R&D expenses, achieving a total of 58 upgrades, significantly improving sound insulation and noise reduction performance, even comparable to the quietness level of million-yuan models In terms of driving control, one of the selling points of this car at its initial launch was its rear-wheel steering function and a very small turning radius, making it relatively agile. Today, the car's minimum turning radius of 5.4 meters remains one of the smaller turning radii among MPVs.

In terms of intelligence, the new car continues the strategy of previous models, with the entire lineup equipped with Turing AI smart driving (no optional features, no subscriptions), featuring an end-to-end large model that supports navigation-assisted driving in both highway and urban scenarios.

Regarding range and charging, it still utilizes an 800V high-voltage platform and a 5C ultra-fast charging battery, allowing for a range increase of 400 kilometers with just 13 minutes of charging, and a comprehensive energy consumption as low as 16.2 kWh/100km.

The reason for all these efforts is that XPeng aims to capture the attention of numerous MPV users in Hong Kong. Prior to this, XPeng also opened its Hong Kong flagship store at the Hysan Place in Wan Chai, preparing for the launch of the 2025 XPeng X9.

Moreover, to maintain profit margins and brand positioning, the pricing of the 2025 XPeng X9 does not follow the previous pricing strategy.

Based on XPeng's past successful strategies, a series of configurations are followed by a highly competitive market price. For example, with new models, the focus is on breaking expectations; while for facelifts, the strategy is to lower prices.

However, for this car, XPeng did not choose to lower the price, and the price of the 2025 new model remains the same as when it was released in 2024.

This approach is also reasonable. After all, models like the MONA M03, being lower-priced, will inevitably affect XPeng's overall brand positioning and profits once they gain volume. Therefore, the XPeng X9 is needed to take on the responsibility of enhancing brand positioning and preserving profits.

XPeng Has More Cards to Play

Before unveiling the main new car, He Xiaopeng also reviewed the entrepreneurial journey at the press conference and updated the progress of various businesses.

These businesses include AI cars, AI robots, flying cars, etc., and XPeng connects these businesses under a technology tree centered on AI and based on electrification.

He Xiaopeng stated, "The key to illuminating the technology tree lies in mastering the foundational technologies at the root nodes. The areas we value and have laid out earliest are AI and energy technologies. In the future, XPeng's AI and energy technologies will drive the synchronous evolution of the entire system, which is our biggest difference from other companies."

To this end, the day before the press conference, XPeng held a special sharing session on AI technology. During the session, XPeng disclosed for the first time that it is developing a super-large-scale autonomous driving model with 72 billion parameters, known as the "XPeng World Base Model."

Li Liyun, head of autonomous driving at XPeng Motors, revealed that to develop the base model, XPeng began laying out AI infrastructure as early as last year and has now established the first large-scale intelligent computing cluster in the domestic automotive industry to support tasks such as pre-training, post-training, model distillation, and vehicle-side model training. XPeng refers to this end-to-end production process as the "Cloud-End Model Factory." Currently, XPeng's "Cloud Model Factory" has a computing power of 10 EFLOPS, with cluster operating efficiency consistently maintained at over 90%. The full-link iteration cycle from cloud to edge can reach an average of once every 5 days.

Looking towards the new decade, XPeng plans to focus on new directions under the trend of intelligence, integrating AI, electric, and embodiment, and exploring more forms of mobility.

Supported by this, XPeng's various businesses have also made new progress.

Among them, the XPeng Turing AI chip, customized for large models, is set to enter mass production in mainland China in the second quarter of 2025; in terms of intelligent driving, XPeng stated that it will achieve L3-level intelligent driving capability in mass production in China by the end of 2025; regarding new models, the XPeng Kunpeng super electric system, with a comprehensive range of 1400 km, will enter mass production in mainland China in the fourth quarter of this year.

Additionally, XPeng's product in the low-altitude flight field, the split-type flying car—Land Carrier, has been exhibited in Hong Kong. It has already received nearly 4,000 orders and plans to achieve mass production and delivery by 2026. Currently, XPeng's flying car manufacturing factory is under construction, with an expected annual production capacity of 10,000 units, making it the world's first assembly line-scale mass production flying car factory.

In the field of AI robots, the XPeng IRON robot is equipped with the Turing AI chip and shares the same source as the intelligent driving system, enabling it to walk freely. Currently, IRON has been put into practical training at XPeng's Guangzhou factory and will be applied in factory automation production lines and store services in the future, enhancing production efficiency and service quality.

From the above businesses, XPeng's past "distractions" are now catching the wind.

However, businesses like flying cars and humanoid robots can currently be seen as XPeng's future imagination, still in the phase of burning cash and large-scale investment, with a climate yet to be formed. What XPeng needs to focus on now is still the automotive sector.

In terms of automobiles, XPeng's current story revolves around the range-extended models set for mass production by the end of this year and its overseas expansion, which will be the main support for XPeng's larger scale in the coming years.

After all, only by increasing the volume of the automotive business can XPeng achieve overall profitability, ensuring the investment in subsequent businesses, thereby allowing all businesses to cycle. Next, it remains to be seen whether XPeng can maintain its current momentum