Chinese electric vehicle maker Xpeng made its European ambitions clear on Thursday, as the firm unveiled its Mona L03 compact SUV at an event in the heart of Germany\u2019s car industry, Munich.<\/p>\n
The launch, arguably the largest ever staged in Europe by a Chinese carmaker, was not just about introducing a new model, but also about convincing Europe that Xpeng is here to stay.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are here not only to bring our products to Europe, but also to build them for Europe,\u201d said He Xiaopeng, Xpeng\u2019s chairman and CEO, as he opened his first keynote delivered entirely in English \u2013 after joking that listeners would have to forgive his \u201cHubei accent\u201d.<\/p>\n
He said the company chose Germany because it was \u201cthe home of the auto industry\u201d. Less than two years after entering the country, Xpeng is targeting 8,000 sales in Germany this year, rising to 20,000 next year.<\/p>\n
The L03\u2019s pricing underscored that ambition. Starting at \u20ac35,600 (US$40,700) in Germany, it undercuts Tesla\u2019s Model Y \u2013 Europe\u2019s bestselling electric car \u2013 by more than \u20ac3,000, and Audi\u2019s Q4 e-tron by over \u20ac10,000.<\/p>\n
At the venue bar, however, guests were talking as much about the company itself as its new model. Volkswagen Group, which owns about 5 per cent of Xpeng, loomed over many conversations<\/a>.While the German auto giant is reportedly considering cutting up to 100,000 jobs<\/a> across the group, including at Porsche and Audi, its partner from China is expanding aggressively into its backyard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Chinese electric vehicle maker Xpeng made its European ambitions clear on Thursday, as the firm unveiled its Mona…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":56904,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[8364,89,151,5,44914,44915,1297,8406,1621,5523,24894],"class_list":["post-56903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-germany","tag-audi","tag-china","tag-europe","tag-germany","tag-he-xiaopeng","tag-mona-l03","tag-munich","tag-porsche","tag-tesla","tag-volkswagen-group","tag-xpeng"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56903"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56903\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}