As you walk into XPeng’s Munich showcase event, you’re greeted by, I kid you not, a giant wooden Trojan horse. Not exactly a subtle message from a Chinese brand announcing its first-ever global release of an electric vehicle, right in the backyard of the German auto industry.
It’s hard to believe that XPeng was founded just shy of 12 years ago. Yet by 2020, it was already shipping EVs to Norway, marking the start of the Chinese company’s European journey. Today, alongside cars, the company includes robots and flying cars in its commercial product portfolio.
Look at the top 10 EV manufacturers in China by volume, and you won’t find XPeng, but it’s growing and has forged a bigger reputation outside its home country. Now it wants to go global with its latest model, the L03, the brand’s first new car that will launch in 60 countries across Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, and the Asia Pacific.
The L03 is a big play for XPeng because this is its “budget” model, starting at €35,600 (about $41,000), priced to sit below its G6 Tesla Model Y competitor, and to sell in volume.
Yes, the L03 is the company’s mass-market play. Despite the keen pricing, XPeng has sought to make the specs attractive: a claimed WLTP 320-mile range; fast charging, from 10 to 80 percent in 20 minutes; panoramic glass roof; heated and cooled massage seats; 256-color ambient lighting; brushed metal speaker covers; an impressive 0.228 drag coefficient to squeeze out more range; smart parking; a 15.6-inch 2.5K central screen; 27-inch HUD; AI-powered voice control; and even Google Maps built in.
All this and more come as standard, whether you go for the vanilla model, the Long Range, AWD, or Ultra. The phrase XPeng keeps repeating for this embarrassment of riches is “beyond class.” It wants the L03 to go toe to toe with EVs in the segment above it—cars like the Volkswagen ID.4.
Performance? Well, the five-seat, 4,650-mm L03 can hit 0 to 60 mph in just 4.5 seconds on the top models, but this drops to 7.5 seconds on the Standard Range base version.
Photograph: Courtesy of XPeng
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