22-04-2025
How China's cutthroat EV revolution leaves little margin for profit
As the sun set over Hong Kong's Victoria Harbour, well-dressed social media influencers swarmed a lineup of sleek electric vehicles from Chinese carmaker Xpeng, among the buzziest brands in the world's premier EV market.
Xpeng had come to the cruise ship terminal ahead of this week's Shanghai auto show to unveil its upscale X9 minivan priced from 359,800 yuan (R916,186) with automated-driving features, a drop-down screen to entertain rear seat passengers, and even a built-in refrigerator.
The biggest crowds surrounded Xpeng's concept flying car, which sat next to a six-wheeled van designed to carry it.
At a press conference the next day, Xpeng CEO He Xiaopeng and president Brian Gu bristled with ambition, predicting the company would emerge as one of few survivors from China's hypercompetitive EV industry by expanding globally and building in-house artificial intelligence capabilities. Like Tesla , it aims to develop robotaxis and humanoid robots.
Unlike Tesla, Xpeng has yet to turn a profit, despite fast growing sales since its first car debuted in 2018 and an investment from Volkswagen. The same is true of scores of other China EV makers, even as the sector leads a technological revolution that is upending the automotive industry globally. Only a handful make money, most notably BYD , China's biggest EV and hybrid producer and Tesla's leading rival.
