XPeng’s New ‘Budget’ EV Looks Like the Ferrari Luce

As you walk into XPeng's Munich showcase event, you're greeted by, I kid you not, a elephantine woody Trojan horse. Not precisely a subtle connection from a Chinese marque announcing its first-ever planetary merchandise of an electrical vehicle, close successful the backyard of the German car industry.

It’s hard to judge that XPeng was founded conscionable shy of 12 years ago. Yet by 2020 it was already shipping EVs to Norway, marking the commencement of the Chinese company’s European journey.

Look astatine the apical 10 EV manufacturers successful China by volume, and you won’t find XPeng, but it’s increasing and has forged a bigger estimation extracurricular of its location country. Now it wants to spell planetary with its latest model, the L03, the brand's archetypal caller car that volition motorboat successful 60 countries crossed Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, and the Asia-Pacific.

The L03 is simply a large play for XPeng due to the fact that this is its “budget” model, starting astatine €35,600 (about $40,000), priced to beryllium beneath its G6 Tesla Model Y competitor, and to merchantability successful volume.

Yes, the L03 is the company’s mass-market play. Despite the keen pricing, XPeng has sought to marque the specs attractive: a claimed WLTP 320-mile range; accelerated charging from 10 to 80 percent successful 20 minutes; panoramic solid roof; heated and cooled massage seats; 256-color ambient lighting; an awesome 0.228 resistance coefficient to compression retired much range; astute parking; a 15.6-inch 2.5K cardinal screen; 27-inch HUD; AI-powered dependable control; and adjacent Google Maps built in.

All this and much travel arsenic standard, whether you spell for the vanilla model, the Long Range, AWD, oregon Ultra. The operation XPeng keeps utilizing for this embarrassment of riches is “beyond class.” It wants the L03 to spell toe-to-toe with EVs successful the conception supra it—cars similar the Volkswagen ID.4.

Performance? Well, the five-seat, 4,650-mm L03 tin deed 0 to 60 mph successful conscionable 4.5 seconds connected the apical models, but this drops to 7.5 seconds connected the Standard Range basal version.

While the different L03 models are Level 2 for autonomous driving, the Ultra bumps to L2++ for next-gen point-to-point, hands-off navigation that is supposedly coming to Europe successful 2027 (thanks to a trio of XPeng’s Turing 7-nanometer AI chips). An over-the-air update volition beryllium each that’s required to activate this eyes on/hands disconnected system.

This is all, connected paper, large worth for money. L03 owners volition beryllium getting a batch of EV for their buck. But it's not each upside. In China, the L03 is called the Mona L03 arsenic it's portion of XPeng's fund Mona sub-brand. XPeng doesn't privation to item this fact, and I'm told the specs person been tweaked for this planetary “non-Mona” L03, which I accidental is intended to warrant the sanction change.

For L4 autonomy successful the future, adjacent though the Ultra L03 has the brains to run astatine that level, Xianming Liu, XPeng's elder manager of engineering, tells maine the car lacks the hardware that meets the required six levels of redundancy. This “budget” EV volition ne'er beryllium allowed beyond L2++ skills.