Latest news with #XPengX9
Business Times
16-05-2025
- Automotive
- Business Times
XPeng X9 review: Too big to fail
[SINGAPORE] I had two ambitions as a boy: to marry Christie Brinkley and to become a spaceship pilot, though not necessarily in that order. Alas, fortune declined to smile on the Uptown Girl, but spending time with the XPeng X9 made me feel like my star captain fantasies finally came true – especially when it comes to the whole 'space' thing. The X9 is vast both inside and out, so much so that it could obscure a Bentley by pulling up alongside it. At 5.3 m long and 2m wide, it would have its own postal code if it didn't have wheels. Despite all appearances, the XPeng is not a building but a pure electric Multi Purpose Vehicle (MPV). It has seven seats and a 320 horsepower motor for the front wheels, drawing power from either an 84.5 kWh or 101.5 kWh battery, with up to 500km or 590 km of range, respectively. Zero to 100 kmh involves 7.7 seconds and a polite whoosh. That makes it roughly as quick as a good 3.0-litre car, which is handy if your kids are running late for their golf lessons. The X9 has seven seats and a 320 horsepower motor for the front wheels, drawing power from either an 84.5 kWh or 101.5 kWh battery, with up to 500km or 590 km of range, respectively. PHOTO: BIG FISH PUBLISHING But numbers alone don't explain this car. To understand it, you have to realise that XPeng was founded by a software engineer, and then imagine that the X9 is what happens when you ask a bunch of tech bros to design the ultimate family car. They scratch their heads, then throw the latest Qualcomm 8295 chip at the problem, along with 30,000 lines of code. Then they add all the hardware they imagine would suit a big, plush car. The result is a sort of maximalist people mover. The second-row thrones not only recline, they heat, cool and knead your spine six different ways. There are tray tables, motorised legrests, individual cupholders and USB charging ports, plus a rear screen that's bigger than some desktop monitors. A NEWSLETTER FOR YOU Friday, 2 pm Lifestyle Our picks of the latest dining, travel and leisure options to treat yourself. Sign Up Sign Up The X9 features tray tables, motorised legrests, individual cupholders and USB charging ports, plus a rear screen that's bigger than some desktop monitors. PHOTO: BIG FISH PUBLISHING The X9 also has five-zone climate control, meaning it's literally big enough to have its own microclimates. The fridge between the front seats keeps drinks at 0 deg C or heats them to 50 deg C, depending on whether you're transporting milk tea or soup. The third row isn't just there to make up the numbers, either. Adults fit, and when you don't need them, you can fold the seats away to create a proper flat floor, a task done entirely with buttons. Do that and you get an enormous 2,554-litre boot. There's a photo out there of five bicycles parked inside the boot with the second-row chairs still upright, which is five more bicycles than you can stuff into most Ferraris. Yet, for something this large, the X9 is surprisingly nimble. It's the first MPV I know of with rear-wheel steering, which lets it pull off U-turns with ridiculous ease. The XPeng's sheer size means it will never be agile, but the steering is light enough to make it feel wieldy. The X9's sheer size means it will never be agile, but the steering is light enough to make it feel wieldy. Parking it would have been stressful, except I didn't have to do it myself. Hit a virtual button and the car slots itself neatly into a space without fuss or human input. Another clever trick is how, when the rear screen is down and blocks your view, the rearview mirror becomes a camera feed so you can still keep an eye on what's behind you. Where it borders on digital overkill is in how endlessly tweakable the whole thing is. There are three settings each for accelerator response, steering weight, brake pedal feel, suspension stiffness and power steering effort. There are four overall drive modes, four levels of regenerative braking and five for ride height. It's like the tech guys couldn't help themselves. One thing I didn't like was how the air-con takes a while to get going, and that someone decided that aiming the vents via touchscreen was a good idea. That person should be suspended. Preferably from the ceiling, by their thumbs. It's worth mentioning too that XPeng released an updated version of the X9 in April, with redesigned second-row seats, a new battery and other tweaks. That version hasn't reached Singapore yet, but it's something to consider if you're thinking of buying one now. Early adopters may feel a twinge, but that's how it goes in the tech world – even when the product in question is an MPV that looks like it belongs in an intergalactic fleet. XPeng moves so quickly, it's almost as if it thinks it's in a space race. XPeng X9 Long Range Motor Power/Torque: 320 hp/450 Nm Battery Type/Net Capacity: Lithium Nickel Manganese Cobalt/101.5 kWh Charging Time/Type: Approximately 10 hours (11 kW AC), 20 minutes 10 to 80 per cent (317 kW DC) Range: 590 km 0-100 km/h: 7.7 seconds Top Speed: 200 kmh Efficiency: 19.8 kWh/100 km Agent: Premium Automobiles BEV Price: S$335,999 with COE Available Now
Business Times
28-04-2025
- Automotive
- Business Times
XPeng Motors: A car company that doesn't really want to be one in the first place
[HONG KONG] Right before He Xiaopeng went on stage to launch the 2025 XPeng X9 car, he battled what he called a 'miserable' cold. 'I slept for 30 out of the past 48 hours. I wanted to be fully energetic to meet all of you,' the co-founder of China's XPeng Motors told a large crowd of reporters, investors and supporters at an event in Hong Kong on Apr 15. That anecdote was a sign of just how important the X9 is to the ambitions of 11-year-old XPeng Motors and He himself. But the futuristic, seven-seat multi-purpose vehicle (MPV) might merely be a Trojan horse for XPeng's killer weapon in the electric vehicle (EV) market's next battlefront. Founded in 2014, XPeng has sold more than 600,000 vehicles since inception, a milestone that serves to underline how the company is still very much a startup. In comparison, market leader BYD takes only two months to sell that many cars. Still, with 60,158 vehicles delivered in the first quarter of 2025, XPeng is showing signs of building the kind of volume it needs for sustainable growth. It operates in over 30 countries and plans to double its overseas presence to 60 markets, with a goal in place for half its volume to eventually come from outside China. At the unveiling – the brand's first global car event – He positioned the X9 as the opening act in what he called a 'new decade' for XPeng, one that will put artificial intelligence (AI) at the centre of the New York and Hong Kong-listed company's strategy. BT in your inbox Start and end each day with the latest news stories and analyses delivered straight to your inbox. Sign Up Sign Up For two hours, the 47-year-old laid out a case for how AI will underpin everything XPeng does, using the new X9 as a prime example. Engineers updated 35 per cent of its components, but one change mattered more than the rest: a switch from Nvidia's chips to XPeng's self-developed Turing AI chip. The 40-core processor can run large models with 30 billion parameters locally, meaning without help from the cloud. Mass production is scheduled to begin in the second quarter of 2025 in China, potentially giving XPeng a head start over rivals still reliant on external suppliers for high-performance automotive AI. XPeng says the chip could give its cars enough self-driving ability to need just one intervention from a human driver every hundred kilometres (once regulations allow that level of autonomy). AI will also make its cars more energy efficient by learning how drivers behave in different traffic conditions, then adapting the motor responses to suit, or make them more comfortable by using cameras to read the road ahead and tune the suspension for bumps before they hit them. The same cameras will also make the AI multi-modal – if you are curious about the new Mercedes driving ahead of you, for example, you could simply ask your XPeng to identify it and give you the run-down on its performance figures. In fact, by forming the technological backbone for a sprawling product ecosystem, the Turing chip could turn out to be XPeng's real product offering. 'XPeng was never built to be a traditional automaker. We never want to become one,' He said. 'What really drives us is creating boundary-pushing innovations, whether it's intelligent driving, AI-powered cars or beyond.' What's meant by 'beyond' has so far taken shape as flying cars and humanoid robots, both of them with Turing AI chips for brains. The humanoid machines, which XPeng named Iron, are 178 cm tall and weigh 70 kg. They have 60 joints and camera vision and are already on trial in the company's factories, where they work side-by-side with humans. He expects the Turing chip to let an Iron robot figure out problems by itself, instead of mindlessly repeating tasks that programmers set for it. 'If a robot does not have the intelligence that it's required to have, it is going to be useless,' he said bluntly. XPeng's Land Aircraft Carrier combines a six-wheel electric vehicle with an AI-powered, two-seater flying craft that it stores and recharges. PHOTO: XPENG MOTORS Perhaps sensibly, AI isn't intended to make XPeng's flying car think for itself, but to make it easier to control. At the X9's launch party, AeroHT – a startup that became an XPeng subsidiary in 2020 – showed off the Land Aircraft Carrier, a six-wheeler that comes with a two-seater drone. The flying machine fits neatly into the vehicle, which also charges its batteries. The design solves two major headaches that come with owning a traditional helicopter, namely storage and refuelling, according to Tan Wang, who co-founded AeroHT. AI removes another pain point by making it a breeze to control. Tan told reporters that helicopters are fiendishly hard to fly, but claims that the Turing chip does enough of the heavy lifting that anyone can learn to operate the XPeng in just three minutes. 'In three hours, you would be a master,' he said. The Land Aircraft Carrier might seem like a pie-in-the-sky idea, but He said XPeng is on track to start delivering them to customers in 2026. The company says it has more than 4,000 pre-orders, at just under two million yuan (S$359,000) each. The target is to sell 10,000 a year, which seems almost outlandishly ambitious, given that no aviation company has ever managed annual sales of more than a thousand. The opportunity is significant. The Chinese government elevated the development of the 'low-altitude economy' to national priority status for the first time in its 2024 Government Work Report, giving the sector a significant boost. The Civil Aviation Administration of China forecasts that the market could reach 3.5 trillion yuan by 2035. Despite that, He is measured in his expectations about how quickly his clutch of AI-powered machines could change the way we live, putting the timeline at '10 or 20 years' when asked how long it would take for robots to become ubiquitous. 'We will have a robot at home and outside we will have robot cars. Flying cars would also be a type of robot. But I think it may take decades of R&D to get us there,' He said. Yet, it's far from certain if XPeng will survive long enough to participate in that future, let alone create it. Like many startups, it struggles with profitability. It has never run in the black, and in the fourth quarter of 2024 its net loss was 1.33 billion yuan, slightly better than the 1.35 billion yuan loss in the same period of 2023. With margins improving and vehicle sales rising, management expects the company to start breaking even by the end of this year. But the founder sounds a cautious note about XPeng's chances. 'I believe that the next decade will witness very brutal competition in China, and I believe that ultimately, we will have only five to seven carmakers left,' He said. 'Right now, we are ranked seventh, so there's a long way to go.'
